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Sonnet in the style of Góngora in which the poet sends his beloved a dove
This young dove I send you from the Turia,
with its sweet eyes and feathers so white,
strews and spreads over Grecian laurels
the slow flame of love where I stay tonight.
Its honest virtue and its soft throat
make a double lily of hot froth
with a tremor of frost, pearl and mist
and mark the absence of your mouth.
Pass your hand over its whiteness
and you will see what snowy melody
it scatters in snowflakes over your loveliness.
Thus my heart all night and day through
incarcerated in its cell of dark love
cries its melancholy at not seeing you.
English translation by Paul Archer of Lorca's Soneto gongorino en que el poeta manda a su amor una paloma.
For more translations from Lorca's Sonetos del amor oscuro, go to Sonnets of Dark Love.
Note by the translator:
Luis de Góngora y Argote, Spanish poet 1561-1627.
The Turia Valley (Valle del Turía) is a small valley on the western border of the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest of Spain. The Turia river flows from these mountains and eventually reaches the Mediterranean sea at Valencia.
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