This page has been validated.
DEFEAT OF SEBASTIAN.
169

racteristic is blended with a deep and enthusiastic feeling of religion, which rather exalts, than tempers, the haughty confidence of the poet in the high destinies of his country. Spain is to him, what Judea was to the bards who sung beneath the shadow of her palm trees; the chosen and favoured land, whose people, severed from all others by the purity and devotedness of their faith, are peculiarly called to wreak the vengeance of heaven upon the infidel. This triumphant conviction is powerfully expressed in his magnificent Ode on the Battle of Lepanto.

The impression of deep solemnity left upon the mind of the Spanish reader, by another of Herrera's lyric compositions, will, it is feared, be very inadequately conveyed through the medium of the following translation.




"Voz de dolor, y canto de gemido," &c.




A voice of woe, a murmur of lament,
A spirit of deep fear and mingled ire;
Let such record the day, the day of wail
For Lusitania's bitter chastening sent!
She who hath seen her power, her fame expire,
And mourns them in the dust, discrowned and pale!