# Thirty Poems/Notes

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NOTES.
Page 40.
The Lost Bird.
Readers who are acquainted with the Spanish language may not be displeased at seeing the original of this little poem:
EL PAJARO PERDIDO.
The literature of Spain at the present day has this peculiarity, that female writers have, in considerable number, entered into competition with the other sex. One of the most remarkable of these, as a writer of both prose and poetry, is Carolina Coronado de Perry, the author of the little poem here given. The poetical literature of Spain has felt the influence of the female mind in the infusion of a certain delicacy and tenderness, and the more frequent choice of subjects which interest the domestic affections. Concerning the verses of the lady already mentioned, Don Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, one of the most accomplished Spanish critics of the present day, and himself a successful dramatic writer, says:
"If Carolina Coronado had, through modesty, sent her productions from Estremadura to Madrid under the name of a person of the other sex, it would still have been difficult for intelligent readers to persuade themselves that they wore written by a man, or at least, ​considering their graceful sweetnoss, purity of tone, simplicity of conception, brevity of development, and delicate and particular choice of subject, we should be constrained to attribute them to one yet in his early youth, whom the imagination would represent as ingenuous, innocent and gay, who had scarce ever wandered beyond the flowery grove or pleasant valley where his cradle was rocked, and where he had been hulled to sleep by the sweetest songs of Francisco de la Torre, Garcilaso and Melendez."
The author of the Pajaro Perdido, according to a memoir of her by Angel Fernandez de los Rios, was born at Almendralejo, in Estremadura, in 1828. At the age of nine years she began to steal from sleep, after a day passed in various lessons, and in domestic occupations, several hours every night to read the poets of her country, and other books belonging to the library of the household, among which is mentioned as a proof of her vehement love of reading, the Critical History of Spain, by the Abbé Masuden, "and other works equally dry and prolix." She was afterwards sent to Badajoz, where she received the best education which the state of the country, then on fire with a civil war, would admit. Here the intensity of her application to her studies caused a severe malady, which has frequently recurred ​in after life. At the age of thirteen years she wrote a poem entitled La Palma, which the author of her biography declares to be worthy of Herrera, and which led Espronceda, a poet of Estremadura, a man of genius, and the author of several translations from Byron, whom he resembled both in mental and personal characteristics, to address her an eulogistic sonnet. In 1843, when she was but twenty years old, a volume of her poems was published at Madrid, in which were included both that entitled La Palma, and the one I have given in this note. To this volume Hartzenbusch, in his admiration for her genius, prefaced an introduction.
The task of writing verses in Spanish is not difficult. Rhymes are readily found, and the language is easily moulded into metrical forms. Those who have distinguished themselves in this literature have generally made their first essays in verse. What is remarkable enough, the men who afterwards figure in political life mostly begin their career as the authors of madrigals. A poem introduces the future statesman to the public, as a speech at a popular meeting introduces the candidate for political distinction in this country. I have heard of but one of the eminent Spanish politicians of the present time, who made a boast that he was innocent of poetry, and if all ​that his enemies say of him be true, it would have been well both for his country and his own fame, if he had been equally innocent of corrupt practices. The compositions of Carolina Coronado, even her earliest, do not deserve to be classed with the productions of which we have spoken, and which are simply the effect of inclination and facility. They possess the mens divinior.
In 1852 a collection of the poems of Carolina Coronado was brought out at Madrid, including those which were first published. The subjects are of larger variety than those which prompted her earlier productions; some of them are of a religious cast, others refer to political matters. One of them, which appears among the "Improvisations," is an energetic protest against erecting a new amphitheatre for bull-fights. The spirit of all her poetry is humane and friendly to the best interests of mankind.
Her writings in prose must not be overlooked. Among them is a novel entitled Sigea, founded on the adventures of Camoens; another entitled Jorilla, a beautiful story, full of pictures of rural life in Estremadura, which deserves, if it could find a competent translator, to be transferred to our language. Besides these there are two other novels from her pen, Paquita and La Luz del ​Tejo. A few years since appeared, in a Madrid periodical, the Semanario, a series of letters written by her, giving an account of the impressions received in a journey from the Tagus to the Rhine, including a visit to England. Among the subjects on which she has written, is the idea, still warmly cherished in Spain, of uniting the entire peninsula under one government. In an ably conducted journal of Madrid, she has given accounts of the poetesses of Spain, her contemporaries, with extracts from their writings, and a kindly estimate of their respective merits.
Her biographer speaks of her activity and efficiency in charitable enterprises, her interest in the cause of education, her visits to the primary schools of Madrid, encouraging and rewarding the pupils, and her patronage of the escuela de parvulos, or infant school, at Badajoz, established by a society in that city, with the design of improving the education of the laboring class.
It must have been not long after the publication of her poems, in 1852, that Carolina Coronado became the wife of an American gentleman, Mr. Horatio J. Perry, at one time our Secretary of Legation at the Court of Madrid, afterwards our Chargé d'Affaires, and now, in 1868, again Secretary of Legation. Amidst the duties of a wife ​and mother, which she fulfils with exemplary fidelity and grace, she has not either forgotten or forsaken the literary pursuits which have given her so high a reputation.
Page 90.
The Ruins of Italica.
The poems of the Spanish author, Francisco de Rioja, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, are few in number, but much esteemed. His ode on the Ruins of Italica is one of the most admired of these, but in the only collection of his poems which I have seen, it is said that the concluding stanza, in the original copy, was deemed so little worthy of the rest that it was purposoly omitted in the publication. Italica was a city founded by the Romans in the South of Spain, the remains of which are still an object of interest.
Page 118.
Sella.
Page 150.
Homer's Odyssey, Book V., Translated
It may be esteemed presumptuous in the author of this volume to attempt a translation of any part of Homer in blank verse after that of Cowper. It has always seemed to him, however, that Cowper's version had very great defects. The style of Homer is simple, and he has been praised for fire and rapidity of narrative. Does any body find these qualities in Cowper's Homer? If Cowper had rendered him into such English as he employed in his "Task," there would be no reason to complain; but in translating Homer he seems to have thought it necessary to use a different style from that of his original works. Almost every sentence is stiffened by some clumsy inversion; stately phrases are used when simpler ones were at hand, and would have rendered the meaning of the original better. The entire version has the appearance of being hammered out with great labor, and as a whole it is cold and constrained; scarce anything seems spontaneous; it is only now and then that the translator has caught the fervor of his author. Homer, of course, wrote in idiomatic Greek, and, in order to produce either a true copy of the original ​or an agreeable poem, should have been translated into idiomatic English.
I am almost ashamed, after this censure of an author, whom, in the main, I admire so much as I do Cowper, to refer to my own translation of the Fifth Book of the Odyssey. I desire barely to say that I have endeavored to give the verses of the old Greek poet at least a simpler presentation in English, and one more conformable to the genius of our language.