From opposition, and rage, and rancor.

Perhaps the Creator of the world may listen to my prayer,

And thou mayest yet be publicly proclaimed my wife."

And Rudabeh said: "And I also, in the presence of the righteous God,

Take the same pledge, and swear to thee my faith;

And He who created the world be witness to my words,

That no one but the hero of the world,

The throned, the crowned, the far-famed Zal,

Will I ever permit to be sovereign over me."

So their love every moment became greater;
Prudence was afar, and passion was predominant,
Till the gray dawn began to show itself,

And the drum to be heard from the royal pavilion.
Then Zal bade adieu to the fair one;

His soul was darkened, and his bosom on fire,
And the eyes of both were filled with tears;
And they lifted up their voices against the sun:
"O glory of the universe, why come so quick?
Couldst thou not wait one little moment?"

Then Zal cast his noose on a pinnacle,

And descended from those happy battlements,
As the sun was rising redly above the mountains,

And the bands of warriors were gathering in their ranks.

Robinson's Translation.

R

THE POEM OF THE CID.

ODRIGO Ruy Diaz, El Cid Campeador, was born near Burgos, in Spain, about 1040. The name Cid was given him by the Moors, and means lord. Campeador means champion.

Ruy Diaz was the trusty lord of Sancho, King of Castile, who at his death divided his kingdom among his children. He then espoused the cause of the eldest son, Sancho, and assisted him in wresting their portion of the kingdom from his brothers Garcia and Alfonso. Sancho having been treacherously slain while besieging his sister Urraca's town of Zamora, the Cid attached himself to Alfonso, humiliating him, however, by making him and his chief lords swear that they had had no hand in Sancho's death. For this, Alfonso revenged himself by exiling the Cid on the slightest pretexts, recalling him only when his services were needed in the defence of the country.

This much, and the Cid's victories over the Moors, his occupation of Valencia, and his army's departure therefrom in 1102, led by his corpse seated on horseback, " clothed in his habit as he lived", are historical facts.

A great mass of romances, among them the story of his slaying Count Don Gomez because he had insulted his father, Diego Laynez; of Don Gomez's daughter Ximena wooing and wedding him; of his assisting the leper and having his future success foretold by him, and of his embalmed body sitting many years in the cathedral at Toledo, are related in the "Chronicle of the Cid" and the "Ballads."

The Poem of the Cid narrates only a portion of his career, and "if it had been named," says Ormsby, “would have been called 'The Triumph of the Cid." "

The Poem of the Cid was written about 1200 A. D. Its authorship is unknown.

It contains three thousand seven hundred and forty-five lines, and is divided into two cantares. The versification is careless; when rhyme hampered the poet he dropped it, and used instead the assonant rhyme.

The Poem of the Cid is of peculiar interest because it belongs to the very dawn of our modern literature, and because its hero was evidently a real personage, a portion of whose history was recorded in this epic not long after the events took place. The Cid is one of the most simple and natural of the epic heroes; he has all a man's weaknesses, and it is difficult to repress a smile at the perfectly natural manner in which, while he slaughters enough Moors to secure himself a place in the heavenly kingdom, he takes good care to lay up gold for the enjoyment of life on earth. The poem is told with the greatest simplicity, naturalness, and directness, as well as with much poetic fire.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM, THE CID. Robert Southey's Chronicle of the Cid. . . . Appendix contains Poetry of the Cid by J. H. Frere, 1808, new ed., 1845; Matthew Arnold's Poem of the Cid, MacMillan, 1871, vol. xxiv., pp. 471-485; George Dennio's The Cid: A short Chronicle founded on the early Poetry of Spain, 1845; Butler Clarke's The Cid (in his Spanish Literature, 1893, pp. 46-53); E. E. Hale and Susan Hale's The Cid (in their Story of Spain, 1893, pp. 248-261); Stanley Lane Poole's The Cid (in his Story of the Moors in Spain, 1891, pp. 191-213); Sismondi's Poem of the Cid (in his Literature of the South of Europe, 1884, vol. ii., pp. 95-140); George Ticknor's Poem of the Cid (in his History of Spanish Literature, ed. 6, 1893, vol. i., pp. 12-26); W. T. Dobson's Classic Poets, 1879, pp. 35– 138); J. G. von Herder's Der Cid, nach spanischen Romanzen besungen (in his works, 1852, vol. xiv.), translated.

STANDARD ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS, THE POEM OF THE CID. The Poem of the Cid, Tr. by John Ormsby, 1879; Translations from the Poem of the Cid by John Hookam Frere (in his works, 1872, vol. ii., p. 409); Ballads of the Cid, Tr. by Lewis Gerard, 1883; Ancient Spanish Ballads, Tr. by John Gibson Lockhart, 1823.