Mientras por competir con tu cabello

Sonetos, 1582

Mientras por competir con tu cabellooro bruñido al sol relumbra en vano;mientras con menosprecio en medio el llanomira tu blanca frente el lilio bello;

mientras a cada labio, por cogello,siguen más ojos que al clavel temprano,y mientras triunfa con desdén lozanodel luciente cristal tu gentil cuello;

goza cuello, cabello, labio, y frente,antes que lo que fue en tu edad doradaoro, lilio, clavel, cristal luciente,

no solo en plata o víola troncadase vuelva, mas tú y ello juntamenteen tierra, en humo, en polvo, en sombra, en nada.

The complete sonnet as transcribed on Spanish Wikisource. No emendation was made.

Public domainThis poem is in the public domain. You may read it, copy it, recite it and publish it without asking anyone.

About the poem

This is Góngora's most famous sonnet and one of the peaks of carpe diem in Spanish. For two quatrains it lists the beauty of a young woman — hair that competes with gold, a brow whiter than the lily, the lip, the crystal neck — only, in the tercets, to command her to enjoy it now, «before what in your golden age was» withers.

The ending is a chain of falls, word by word: beauty turns not merely to old age but to «earth, smoke, dust, shadow, nothing». It is the same series with which Sor Juana would close, decades later, her sonnet to her portrait: the baroque looking the passing of time full in the face, without consolation.

The verse is kept in Spanish. Translating it in passing would replace the work with a paraphrase of it.