"A coffin doth the bark appear"

"A coffin doth the bark appear"

Theatre--Seventeenth Century--Pedro Calderón de la Barca--Saint Patrick's Purgatory

"POLONIA. No one accompanied can brave
The terrors of this gloomy lake..."

Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 1600-1681

Barca, Pedro Calderón de la, The Purgatory of St. Patrick, trans. by Denis Florence MacCarthy, Act III, Scene VII

Henry S. King & Co., London

1873

Digitised for Project Gutenberg

Public domain

Collected Plays

Spanish (English trans.)

Play

Text

DD_0063

54.6153, -7.8864

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6371

"POLONIA. No one accompanied can brave
The terrors of this gloomy lake;
And so a skiff you needs must take,
And try alone the icy wave;
Being in that most trying strait
The absolute master of your acts and fate.

Come where within a secret cave
Beside the shore the boat doth lie,
And trusting in the Lord on high,
Embark upon the crystal wave
Of this remote lone inland sea.

LUIS. My life and all I have I place, O Lord! in Thee.
And so I trust me to the bark;
But, O my soul! what sight is here,
A coffin doth the bark appear;
And I upon the waters dark
Alone must cross the icy tide.
[He enters.]" (Act III, Scene VII)

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