CRUZ, Sor Juana Inès de la
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supplications, ardor and insomnia; It increases with risks, quarrels and rejections; It feeds on tears and pleads
Love remains itself amid cloudy veils, until, with insults or with jealousy,
it quenches its own fire wit hits own tears.
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by your decree, Fabio, and don’t appeal, resist or flee the wrathful judgment, hear me, for there’s no culprit of such guilt should be refused confession.
my breast has caused offence to you, I stand condemned, ferocious one. Does uncertain news, not fact, achieve more in your obdurate breast than experience of so many truths?
why not believe in your own eyes? Why, reversing the sense of Law, deliver to the rope my neck? You’re as liberal with your rigours as meanly strict with favours.
kill me with your wrathful eyes. If I serve another care, let your implacable anger serve me. And if another’s love diverts me, you, who’ve been my life, strike me dead.
never be delight in our mutual looks; if with another I engaged in pleasant speech, let your eternal displeasure point at me. And if another love disturbs my sense,
chase out of me my soul, who’ve been my soul.
my unhappy lot, my only wish is you allow me choose the death I like. Let my death be of my choice, for your mere choice
continues me in life.
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El Sueño
/ The Dream
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Nature lifts and lowers
one, and then the other, of her pans,
distributing her several chores—now
restful leisure, now gainful activity—
on the imbalanced balance with which she
rules the world’s complex machinery
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Man, in sum, the greatest marvel
posed to human comprehension,
a synthesis composed
of qualities of angel, plant, and beast,
whose elevated baseness
shows traits of each of these.
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