what she gave she took away. O Fortune, long I’ve sued to thee; The gifts thou gavest me restore, For, trust me, I would ask no more, Could ‘was’ become an ‘is’ for me. No other prize I seek to gain, No triumph, glory, or success, Only the long-lost happiness, The memory whereof is pain. One taste, methinks, of bygone bliss The heart-consuming fire might stay; And, so it come without delay, Then would I ask no more than this. I ask what cannot be, alas! That time should ever be, and then Come back to us, and be again, No power on earth can bring to pass; For fleet of foot is he, I wis, And idly, therefore, do we pray That what for aye hath left us may Become for us the time that is. Perplexed, uncertain, to remain ’Twixt hope and fear, is death, not life; ’Twere better, sure, to end the strife, And dying, seek release from pain. And yet, thought were the best for me. Anon the thought aside I fling, And to the present fondly cling, And dread the time that is to be.”
When Don Lorenzo had finished reciting his gloss, Don Quixote stood up, and in a loud voice, almost a shout, exclaimed as he grasped Don Lorenzo’s right hand in his, “By the highest heavens, noble youth, but you are the best poet on earth, and deserve to be crowned with laurel, not by Cyprus or by Gaeta—as a certain poet, God forgive him, said—but by the Academies of Athens, if they still flourished, and by those that flourish now, Paris, Bologna, Salamanca. Heaven grant that the judges who rob you of the first prize—that Phoebus may pierce them with his arrows, and the Muses never cross the thresholds of their doors. Repeat me some of your long-measure verses, señor, if you will be so good, for I want thoroughly to feel the pulse of your rare genius.”