Abstract
All the accounts of this poem which I have seen find in it an expression of the power of music to exalt the soul, and speak of the influence of Pythagoras, Macrobius, and Plotinus. The best summary of this view is set out by Sarmiento in the notes to his edition of the original poems. He writes—though tentatively—“ we have simply a eulogy of musical harmony as such.” On this basis the poem is unremarkable, and certainly does not deserve the praise it receives. The attempt to “ justify” fray Luis as a philosophical poet makes him a shallow versifier of common-places, and it is well known that he had a loftier conception of poetry. I want first to look at the poem to see what it says, and then suggest that the proper source of notes to it is the Christian St. Augustine, not the pagan Greeks.
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