Rarely has a lovelier sacrifice been offered on the altar of
superstition. The father, who had been married twice before he entered
the priesthood, and who had seen the folly of errant loves without
number, twitters in the most innocent way about the beauty and the charm
of his child, without one thought of the crime of quenching in the gloom
of the cloister the light of that rich young life. After the lapse of
more than two centuries we know better than he what the world lost by
that lifelong imprisonment. The Marquis of Mo-lins, director of the
Spanish Academy, was shown by the ladies of the convent in this year of
1870 a volume of manuscript poems from the hand of Sor Marcela, which
prove her to have been one of the most vigorous and original poets of
the time. They are chiefly mystical and ecstatic, and full of the
refined and spiritual voluptuousness of a devout young heart whose
pulsations had never learned to beat for earthly objects. M. de Molins
is preparing a volume of these manuscripts; but I am glad to present one
of the seguidillas here, as an illustration of the tender and ardent
fantasies of virginal passion this Christian Sappho embroidered upon the
theme of her wasted prayers:--
Let them say to my Lover
That here I lie!
The thing of his pleasure,
His slave am I.
Say that I seek him
Only for love,
And welcome are tortures
My passion to prove.
Love giving gifts
Is suspicious and cold;
I have _all,_ my Beloved,
When thee I hold.
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