Explore "Do You See Me, Alcino" by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The very distressing effects of love, but no matter how great, they do not equal the qualities of the one who causes them
Do you see me, Alcino, here am I caught / in the chains of love, shackled in its irons, / a wretched slave despairing of her freedom, / and so far, so distant from consolation?
Do you see my soul filled with pain and anguish, / wounded by torments so savage, so fierce, / burned in the midst of living flames and judging / herself unworthy of her castigation?
Do you see me without a soul, pursuing / a folly I myself condemn as strange?
Do you see me bleeding along the way / as I follow the trail of an illusion?
Are you very surprised? See then, Alcino: / the cause of harm to me deserves much more.
5 Standard name used in pastoral poetry of the Golden Age.