Men and Women

“How it Strikes a Contemporary” is a portrait of the Poet as the unpoetic gossiping public of his day sees him.  It is humorously colored by the alien point of view of the speaker, who suspects without understanding either the greatness of the poet’s spiritual personality and mission, or the nature of his life, which is withdrawn from that of the commonalty, yet spent in clear-sighted universal sympathies and kindly mediation between Humanity and its God.

3.  Valladolid:  the royal city of the kings of Castile, before Philip ii moved the Court to Madrid, where Cervantes, Calderon, and Las Casas lived and Columbus died.

76.  Titian:  pictures by the Venetian, Tiziano Vecellio (1477-1576), glowing in color, presumably of large golden-haired women like his famous Venus.

90.  Corregidor:  the Spanish title for a magistrate, literally, a corrector, from corregir, to correct.