Spanish Ballads

W.S. Merwin, trans.

When United States Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin was a young poet, Ezra Pound advised him to “read seeds / not twigs.” Since the ballads of Spain are among the essential seeds of Western literature, Merwin set out to read them as closely as possible—through the act of translating them. The result was Spanish Ballads.
 
Originally published in 1961 as a mass-market paperback—and dedicated to Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes—Merwin’s translations show a dedication to form, staying true to “the economy and dramatic tradition which abound in the romances.”
 
For Spanish Ballads—long out of print and newly reissued as a Copper Canyon Press Classic—W.S. Merwin selected representative examples of every kind of ballad: from episodic narratives to unusual “wonder-mongering” songs. Grouped by kind and arranged in chronological order, these poems provide an essential key to Spanish culture from the late Middle Ages to the twentieth century.

Paperback: $14.00 list price

Bookshop Amazon
Receive this book as a gift when you donate.

ISBN: 9781556592782

Format: Paperback

Girl with the Dark Hair

        Girl with the dark hair
If you are asleep, be warned:
Half of our life is a dream
Which runs and slips by us,
As rapid in its flight
As a light sleep wakened,
As brief while we are young
As when age is upon us,
For the sad disclosure
Of our fleet career
When it would wake us comes
Late and avails us nothing.
Your youth and beauty are
No more than a new merchant,
Rich to be left poor
By the lapse of time;
A glory of the world
And a veil for the eyes
And chains for the feet
And fetters for the fingers;
A ground for hazards,
A midden of envy,
A butcher of men,
A famous thief of time.
When death has shuffled
Ugly and fair together
In the narrow sepulcher
The bones do not know each other.
And though the cyprus is higher
And the cedar more lovely, neither,
Burned into charcoal, is whiter
Than charcoal from the ash tree.
For in this woeful existence
Delight comes to us in dreams only
And distress and tribulation
When we are widest awake.
Dry autumn will consume
The flower of fresh April,
To unloved ivory
Turning your ebon hair.

About the Translator

W.S. Merwin was born in New York City in 1927 and was United States Poet Laureate in 2010. He graduated from Princeton University in 1948, where he studied with John Berryman and R.P. Blackmur. From 1949 to 1951 he worked as a tutor in France, Mallorca, and Portugal; for several years afterward he made the greater part of his living by translating from French, Spanish, Latin, and Portuguese. His first book of poetry, A Mask for Janus (1952) was selected …

Read more

Reviews

“Merwin has been the principal heir to the tradition Pound established in English translation… These translations have a pristine quality and lack of literary affectation that make you sure Merwin’s choices would have been Pound’s… [Spanish Ballads] certainly serves as a reminder of the vital influence of Ezra Pound and W.S. Merwin himself in making English a vehicle for the poetic voices of other languages.” —Hudson Review

“For a translator to be faithful and readable, as Mr. Merwin always is, is no small achievement, and this selection of his translations is certainly one of the most readable and enjoyable volumes to appear in a long time.” —New York Times

“Merwin has proven himself a wise and talented translator throughout Spanish Ballads, maintaining some of the form of the romances while opting for content in English rather than the rhythm and assonance of the Spanish.” —Coldfront

“This impressive anthology of poetry truly lives up [to] the claim of ‘classic’ with W.S. Merwin’s magnificent verse and deftly skilled writing… Spanish Ballads is an original representation showcasing the last few centuries of Spain’s poetic literature and legacy.” —Wisconsin Bookwatch