Explore "Although the Pure Light" by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
She applauds the astronomical science of Father Eusebio Francisco Quino, of the Company of Jesus, who wrote of the comet that appeared in the year 1680, declaring it free of portents
8 Company of Jesus was the name used by St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order. Society of Jesus came into use subsequently as a translation of the Latin document authorizing the establishment of the order.
Although the pure light of heaven is bright, / and bright is the moon and the stars are bright, / and bright the ephemeral lightning streaks / that the air raises and fire consumes;
although the thunderbolt is bright, whose harsh / production costs the wind a thousand disputes, / and the lightning flash that made of its tracks / a fearsome light in the ebony dark;
all of our human knowledge, dim and slow, / lay in darkness without our mortal feathers / able to be, in proud and boastful flight, / another Icarus of reasoned discourse, / until you, O sovereign Eusebio, / shed light upon the very lights of heaven.