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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  On the Death of Garcilaso

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

On the Death of Garcilaso

By Juan Boscán (d. 1542)

Translation of Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen

TELL me, dear Garcilaso,—thou

Who ever aim’dst at Good,

And in the spirit of thy vow,

So swift her course pursued

That thy few steps sufficed to place

The angel in thy loved embrace,

Won instant, soon as wooed,—

Why took’st thou not, when winged to flee

From this dark world, Boscan with thee?

Why, when ascending to the star

Where now thou sitt’st enshrined,

Left’st thou thy weeping friend afar,

Alas! so far behind?

Oh, I do think, had it remained

With thee to alter aught ordained

By the Eternal Mind,

Thou wouldst not on this desert spot

Have left thy other self forgot!

For if through life thy love was such

As still to take a pride

In having me so oft and much

Close to thy envied side,—

I cannot doubt, I must believe,

Thou wouldst at least have taken leave

Of me; or, if denied,

Have come back afterwards, unblest

Till I too shared thy heavenly rest.