if somewhat lacking in polish, are remarkably faithful and vigorous.  But when we find him in his translation of the eighteenth ode of the Second Book rendering _salis avarus_ by _de sal avariento_—­the second person singular of the present indicative of the verb _salire_ being mistaken for the genitive of the substantive _sal_[271]—­we may perhaps conclude that a boyish exercise has somehow escaped destruction.

It is sometimes alleged against Luis de Leon that he is restricted in his choice of themes, and it is impossible to deny that his sacred profession acted as something of a limitation to him.  Still, when the mood was on him, he rent his chains asunder as readily as Samson broke the seven green withs at Gaza:  ’as a thread of tow is broken when it toucheth the fire.’  Perhaps nobody would guess off-hand that the Profecia del Tajo was the handiwork of a sixteenth-century monk, a dweller in the rarefied atmosphere of mysticism.  It only remained for a friar in the opposition camp to discover nearly three hundred years later a tendency in Luis de Leon to treat sensual themes in a sensual fashion.[272] To deal seriously with a belated judgement based on malignant ignorance would be a waste of time.  It is the very irony of fate that the poem which has been the subject of severe censure should prove to be a translation from Cardinal Bembo.[273] The standard of the twentieth century is not the standard of the sixteenth, and it is certain that Luis de Leon has not the unfettered liberty of a godless layman.  He is restrained by his austere temperament, by his monk’s habit, by Christian doctrine.  Nevertheless he moves with easy grace and dignity on planes so far apart as those of patriotism, of devotion, of human sympathy, of introspection.  His patriotism finds powerful expression, as already noted, in the Profecia del Tajo, besprinkled with sonorous place-names, these growing fewer as the movement is accelerated, and Father Tagus describes with a mixture of picturesque mediaeval sentiment and martial music the onset of the Arabs and the clangour of arms as they meet the doomed Gothic host.  In the sphere of devotional poetry Luis de Leon nowhere displays more unction, more ecstatic piety than in the verses on the Ascension beginning with the line: 

    Y dexas, Pastor santo.

It will be observed that the conjunction y, so superabundant in La Perfecta Casada, is the first word of this poem, of which Churton has supplied a well-known rendering: 

    And dost Thou, holy Shepherd, leave
      Thy flock in this dark vale alone,
    In cheerless solitude to grieve,
      Whilst Thou to endless rest art gone?

    The sheep, in Thy protection blest,
      Untended wilt Thou leave to mourn? 
    The lambs, once cherished at Thy breast,
      Forlorn,—­oh! whither shall they turn?

    Where shall those eyes now find repose,
      That pine Thy gracious glance to see? 
    What can they hear but sounds of woes,
      Sad exiles from discourse with Thee?