El British Cemetery has, for a few weeks now, a valuable piece that further enriches the history of this magical place on the coast of Les Rotes of Dénia. The central monolith, erected by the Rankin family in memory of their little Reginald, has a new plaque that captures a 1599 poem written by Lope de Vega entitled Fieftas of Dènia.
It was a Test, that the Sea beat,
Cover of peñafcos, and rifcos,
That between hollow words stopped
Shells, Crayfish, Octopus and Marifcos:
There they want to say that he refuses
On Ferns, Hinojos and Lentifcos,
At one time the Etrapano Prothèo
From the ancient Semi-Deo Sea of Dénia.
This text, printed in Valencia at 1599, went unnoticed until the professor of Spanish Language and Literature of the universities of Florence and Verona Maria Grazia Profeti rescued it from oblivion. As it appears in an article Ferran Martínez Lliso, In this text, Lope de Vega makes a commendation to the nobility, among others to which would be Duke of Lerma and his family, and especially to the monarch Felipe III and his sister Isabella Clara Eugenia.
Lope de Vega relates the stay of the King of Spain and the sovereign of the Netherlands in the town of Dénia on the way to Valencia, where they were awaiting the wedding with Margarita of Austria and Archduke Alberto. At that moment the celebrations were directed by Don Francisco Gómez de Sandoval, who at that moment was V Marques de Denia and who later became the Duke of Lerma.
In his article, Martínez Lliso states that "Some historians raise the possibility that it was precisely Don Francisco Gómez de Sandoval who hired the Madrid poet to give a good account of the celebrations that were organized in honor of the Royal Family and that this would allow him to grant some more noble title weight, as shortly after it happened with the appointment of Duke of Lerma ".
Now, this text is already part of the history of the Cemetery of the English, where until now could enjoy another poem directed to Denia, in this case the American writer John Dos Passos, in the same monolith that now shares with the letters Of Lope de Vega.
Someone who knows Denia very well
Someone knows, who bet those plates.
How young people died in Denia with the burning force of the sun.
In the calm of the burning blue of the sea and with the stable brooch of the iron hill:
Denia, where the earth is red like rust and gray as ash hill, it shall rest in the red earth to melt with fire omnipotent young white god, the god of the sun flame.
To find ready the resurrection in the hot grapes that are born of the earth and the sun and that will be pressed like pulp under the feet of the girls and boys
Xabia Vaps: "Liquids
How young people died in Denia with the burning force of the sun.
In the calm of the burning blue of the sea and with the stable brooch of the iron hill:
Denia, where the earth is red like rust and gray as ash hill, it shall rest in the red earth to melt with fire omnipotent young white god, the god of the sun flame.
To find ready the resurrection in the hot grapes that are born of the earth and the sun and that will be pressed like pulp under the feet of the girls and boys and to flow for the new generations of men, in a wine full of the land of the sun.