m owes much of its suggestiveness, as witness the
following passage quoted here, with a translation sadly unworthy of the
original, as being the clearest link between the poetical meditation
and the main thought that underlies all the work and the life of
Unamuno.

NUBE NEGRA

O es que una nube negra de los cielos
ese negror le dio a tu cabellera
de nazareno, cual de mustio sauce
de una noche sin luna sobre el rio?
?Es la sombra del ala sin perfiles
del angel de la nada negadora,
de Luzbel, que en su caida inacabable
--fondo no puede dar--su eterna cuita
clava en tu frente, en tu razon? ?Se vela,
el claro Verbo en Ti con esa nube,
negra cual de Luzbel las negras alas,
mientras brilla el Amor, todo desnudo,
con tu desnudo pecho por cendal?

BLACK CLOUD

Or was it then that a black cloud from heaven
Such blackness gave to your Nazarene's hair,
As of a languid willow o'er the river
Brooding in moonless night? Is it the shadow
Of the profileless wing of Luzbel, the Angel
Of denying nothingness, endlessly falling--
Bottom he ne'er can touch--whose grief eternal
He nails on to Thy forehead, to Thy reason?
Is the clear Word in Thee with that cloud veiled
--A cloud as black as the black wings of Luzbel--
While Love shines naked within Thy naked breast?

The poem, despite its length, easily maintains this lofty level
throughout, and if he had written nothing else Unamuno would still
remain as having given to Spanish letters the noblest and most sustained
lyrical flight in the language. It abounds in passages of ample beauty
and often strikes a note of primitive strength in the true Old Testament
style. It is most distinctively a poem in a major key, in a group with
_Paradise Lost_ and _The Excursion_, but in a tone halfway between the
two; and, as coming from the most Northern-minded and substantial poet
that Spain ever had, wholly free from that tendency towards
grandiloquence and Ciceronian drapery which blighted previous similar
efforts in Spain. Its weakness lies in a certain monotony due to the
interplay of Unamuno's two main limitations as an artist: the absolute
surrender to one dominant thought and a certain deficiency of form
bordering here on contempt. The plan is but a loose sequence of
meditations on successive aspects of Christ as suggested by images or
advocations of His divine person, or even of parts of H