Classic Love Poems
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Antonio Machado (1875-1939) was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of 1898. Born in Seville, he moved with his family to Madrid and then to Soria where he met his wife and discovered his passion for poetry. In 1901, his first poems were published in the literary journal Electra, and his first book of poetry, entitled “Soledades,” was published in 1903. While his earlier poems are in an ornate, Modernist style, after the death of his young wife in 1912, Machado showed an evolution toward greater simplicity, a characteristic that was to distinguish his poetry from then on.
Antonio Machado: Selected PoemsAntonio Machado is regarded by many as the finest poet of twentieth-century Spain. Along with the poems presented here, this volume of verse will enable you to experience first-hand the subtle nuances of his work.
Translated by Alan S. Trueblood
Antonio Machado and his young wife, Leonor
Listen again, my God,to my heart’s cry:Your will was done,Lord, not mine.Lord, my heart and the seaare already alone.
—Antonio Machado
Hope Says
Hope says: One day
you will see her, if you wait well.
Says despair:
She is only your bitterness.
Beat, my heart . . . not all
has been swallowed by the earth.
Dreamt You Took Me
I dreamt you took me
up a white lane
through the heart of the green field
toward the blue of the high mountains,
toward the blue peaks,
one still morning.
I felt your hand in mine,
your perfect matching hand,
your girlish voice in my ear
like a new bell,
like the untouched bell
of a spring dawn.
It was your voice and your hand
in the dreams, so real, so true! . . .
Hope, live on — who knows
what the earth can swallow up!
The Eyes
When his beloved died
he thought he’d just grow old,
shutting himself in the house
alone, with memories and the mirror
that she had looked in one bright day.
Like gold in the miser’s chest,
he thought he’d keep all yesterday
in the clear mirror intact.
For him time’s flow would cease.
But after a year had passed,
he began to wonder about her eyes:
“Were they brown or black? Or green? . . . Or grey?
What were they like? Good God! I can’t recall . . .”
One day in spring he left the house
and took his double mourning down the street
in silence, his heart tight shut . . .
In the dim hollow of a window
he caught a flash of eyes. He lowered his . . .
and walked right on . . . Like those!
on “Machado, Antonio”
