t's _cantares_ may be compared without
losing anything by the comparison. In one poem he says: "In the depths
of my heart are great sorrows: some of them are known to men, others to
God alone. But I shall rarely mention my griefs in my songs, for I have
no hope that they can be alleviated; and where is the mortal who, in
passing through this valley, has not encountered among the flowers some
sharp thorn?" In the same poem he says: "All ask me, Who taught you to
sing? No one: I sing because God wills it--I sing like the birds;" and
he explains his method by a touching incident. One evening he was
singing on the bank of the Manzanares when he saw a child smiling on the
breast of its mother. The poet went and caressed it, and the child threw
its arms about Antonio's neck and turning to its mother cried, "Mother,
Antonio, he of the songs, is a blind man who sees."[3] The poet
continues: "I am a blind man who sees: that angel told the truth. With
my guitar resting on my loving heart, you may see me wandering from the
city to the valley, from the cabin of the poor to the palace of the
great, weeping with those who weep, singing with those who sing, for my
rude guitar is the lasting echo of all joys and all sorrows. I shall
sing my songs in the simple language of the laborer and the soldier, of
the children and the mothers, of those who have not frequented learned
schools.... In this language I shall extol the faith and the holy
combats of the soldiers of Christ with the sacrilegious Saracen; I shall
sing the heroic efforts of our fathers to conquer the proud legions of
Bonaparte; and the beauty of the skies, and the flowers of the valley,
and love and innocence--all that is beautiful and great--will find a
lasting echo in my rude guitar."

Many of these songs are ingenious variations on a theme supplied by some
old and well-known poem, a few lines of which are woven into each
division of the new song.

The success of the _Libro de los Cantares_ was immediate and great; the
first three editions were exhausted in a few months; the duc de
Montpensier wished to defray the expenses of the fourth, and Queen
Isabella of the fifth; since then others have followed. Some years later
the poet married, and since then has written chiefly in prose.

In 1859 appeared a volume of short tales entitled _Rose-colored Stories_
(_Cuentos de Color de Rosa_): these were followed by _Tales of the
Country_ (_Cuentos campesinos_), _Popular Tales_ (_