The 40 best poems by Federico García Lorca

We put together a selection of verses by Federico García Lorca so you can explore the work of one of the most influential poets of the 20th century.

The poems of Federico García Lorca stand out for their emotional intensity, their lyrical beauty and their symbolic depth. This influential playwright of 20th century Spanish literature left an unmatched literary legacy that still resonates in the hearts of readers and scholars around the world.

With its unique blend of tradition and modernity, García Lorca explores universal themes such as love, death, passion, nature and cultural identity Spanish. These are works that reflect her passionate and tragic life, marked by her love for Andalusia, her artistic sensitivity and her tragic end during the Spanish Civil War.

Poetic selection of García Lorca

Federico García Lorca wrote poems of great sensitivity and depth, but he was also an innovator who knew how to combine the Spanish lyrical tradition with the avant-garde currents of his time.

Each poem selected here is a sample of his versatility and genius, a reflection of his artistic, political and existential concerns. From the melancholy of his sonnets to the vibrant intensity of his romances, to his meditations on nature and love, we invite you to explore these verses.

1. Sonnet of sweet complaint

Through this passionate poem by García Lorca, melancholy and the fear of losing love is distilled.

I’m afraid of losing the wonder
of your statue eyes, and the accent
that at night puts it on my cheek
the lonely rose of your breath.

I am sorry to be on this shore
trunk without branches; and what I feel the most
is not having the flower, pulp or clay,
for the worm of my suffering.

If you are my hidden treasure,
If you are my cross and my wet pain,
If I am the dog of your dominion,
don’t let me lose what I’ve gained
and decorate the waters of your river
with leaves of my alienated autumn.

2. absent soul

In these lines, the author shares a lament for loss that evokes images of absence and eternity.

Neither the bull nor the fig tree knows you,
neither horses nor ants from your house.
The child does not know you nor the afternoon
because you have died forever.

The back of the stone does not know you,
nor the black satin where you destroy yourself.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died forever.

Autumn will come with shells,
grape of fog and grouped mountains,
but no one will want to look into your eyes
because you have died forever.

Because you have died forever,
like all the dead on Earth,
like all the dead that are forgotten
in a pile of dull dogs.

Nobody knows you. No. But I sing to you.
I sing for later your profile and your grace.
The distinguished maturity of your knowledge.
Your desire for death and the taste of your mouth.
The sadness that your brave joy had.

It will take a long time to be born, if it is born at all,
an Andalusian so clear, so rich in adventure.
I sing its elegance with words that moan
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.

3. Venus

This poem by García Lorca is about Venus, the Roman divinity of love.

The dead girl
in the shell of the bed,
naked of flower and breeze
emerged in the perennial light.

The world remained,
cotton and shadow lily,
looking out of the glass
watching the infinite traffic.

The dead girl,
love flowed inside.
Between the foam of the sheets
her hair was lost.

4. Desire

Through the following lines, the poet García Lorca expresses a longing, simple and profound, where the essential thing is pure love.

Only your warm heart,
And nothing more.

My paradise, a field
No nightingale
Not even liras,
With a discreet river
And a little fountain.

Without the spur of the wind
On the frond,
Not even the star that wants
Be a leaf

A huge light
That was
Firefly
Of other,
In a field of
Broken looks.

A clear rest
And there our kisses,
Sound moles
From the echo,
They would open very far.

And your heart warm,
Nothing else.

5. memento

Next, watch this short poem loaded with reflections on death and legacy, with an intimate and serene tone.

When I die,
bury me with my guitar
under the sand

When I die,
among the orange trees
and peppermint.

When I die,
bury me if you want
on a weather vane.

When I die!

6. Romance of the moon

Here you can see a mix of the mystical and the earthly, where the moon plays a central role.

The moon came to the forge
with his tuberose bustle.
The boy looks at her.
The boy is looking at her.

In the moved air
the moon moves its arms
and teaches, lubricious and pure,
her breasts of hard tin.

Flee moon, moon, moon.
If the gypsies came,
would do with your heart
white necklaces and rings.

Child let me dance.
When the gypsies come,
They will find you on the anvil
with eyes closed.

Flee moon, moon, moon,
I already feel their horses.
Child, leave me, don’t step,
my starched whiteness.

The rider was approaching
playing the drum of the plain.
Inside the forge the child,
He has his eyes closed.

Through the olive grove they came,
bronze and dream, the gypsies.
Heads raised
and half-closed eyes.

How the zumaya sings,
Oh how he sings in the tree!
The moon goes through the sky
with the child by the hand.

Inside the forge they cry,
shouting, the gypsies.
The air sails, sails.
the air is veiling her.

7. The silence

This is a poem that invites introspection, highlighting the importance of silence in understanding.

Hey, my son, the silence.
It’s an undulating silence,
a silence,
where valleys and echoes slide
and that bows the foreheads
to the ground.

8. Waltz in the branches

Here it is highlights the dynamism of nature and its movement, where the elements interact in a rhythmic dance

a leaf fell
and two
and three.
A fish swam by the moon.
The water sleeps for an hour
and the white sea sleeps a hundred.
The Lady
It was dead on the branch.
The nun
He sang inside the grapefruit.
The girl
I was going through the pine to the pineapple.
and the pine
I was looking for the quill of the trill.
But the nightingale
He cried his wounds around him.
And I also
because a leaf fell
and two
and three.
And a glass head
and a paper violin
and the snow could withstand the world
If the snow slept for a month,
and the branches fought with the world
one by one,
two to two,
and three to three.
Oh hard ivory of invisible flesh!
Oh antless gulf of dawn!
With the moo of the branches,
with the woe of the ladies,
with the croak of the frogs,
and the yellow gloo of honey.
A torso of shadow will arrive
crowned with laurel.
It will be heaven for the wind
hard as a wall
and the broken branches
They will go dancing with him.
one by one
around the moon,
two to two
Around the sun,
and three to three
so that the ivories sleep well.

9. Town

It evokes the essence of an Andalusian town and its daily life. The poem reveals the poet’s relationship with that place.

On the bare mountain
an ordeal.
Clear water
and centuries-old olive trees.
Through the streets
cloaked men,
and in the towers
weather vanes turning.
Eternally
spinning.
Oh lost people,
in the Andalusia of tears!

10. The moon rises

With this poem by García Lorca describes the transformation that occurs under the light of the moon, full of symbolism.

when the moon rises
the bells are lost
and the paths appear
impenetrable.
When the moon rises,
the sea covers the land
and the heart feels
island in infinity.
Nobody eats oranges
under the full moon.
It is necessary to eat
green and frozen fruit.
when the moon rises
of a hundred identical faces,
the silver coin
sobs in his pocket.

eleven. The Aurora

The poet with his sensitivity shows us a vision of New York full of contrasts and deep reflections.

The New York dawn has
four columns of mud
and a hurricane of black doves
that splash the rotten waters.

The dawn of New York moans
down the huge stairs
searching between the edges
tuberoses of drawn anguish.

The dawn arrives and no one receives it in their mouths
because there is no tomorrow and no possible hope.
Sometimes the coins in furious swarms
They drill and devour abandoned children.

The first to come out understand with their bones
that there will be no paradise nor leafless loves;
They know that they are going to the mire of numbers and laws,
to games without art, to sweat without fruit.

The light is buried by chains and noises
in shameless challenge of science without roots.
In the neighborhoods there are people who hesitate sleeplessly
as if they had just emerged from a shipwreck of blood.

12. Sunrise

Federico García Lorca wrote in Sunrise a poem of longing and distance, where the dawn brings with it memories and wishes.

my oppressed heart
Feel next to the dawn
The pain of his loves
And the dream of distances.
The light of the dawn carries
Hotbeds of nostalgia
And the sadness without eyes
From the marrow of the soul.
The great tomb of the night
Her black veil lifts
To hide with the day
The immense starry summit.

What will I do on these fields
Picking up nests and branches
Surrounded by the dawn
And fill the soul with night!
What will I do if you have your eyes
Dead by the clear lights
And he must not feel my flesh
The heat of your looks!
Why did I lose you forever
On that clear afternoon?
Today my chest is dry
Like an extinguished star.

13. Dead Child’s Gazelle

With the following lines, the author addresses a painful topic from a tragic and poetic perspective at once.

Every afternoon in Granada,
every afternoon a child dies.
Every afternoon the water sits
to talk with his friends.

The dead have wings of moss.
The cloudy wind and the clear wind
They are two pheasants that fly through the towers
and the day is a wounded boy.

Not a blade of lark was left in the air
when I found you in the wine caves.
Not a crumb of cloud was left on earth
when you were drowning in the river.

A water giant fell on the mountains
and the valley was rolling with dogs and lilies.
Your body, with the violet shadow of my hands,
He was, dead on the shore, an archangel of cold.

14. Adam

This is a poem that explores the biblical figure of Adam through mythical elements and existential reflections.

Blood Tree waters the morning
where the newly born moans.
His voice leaves crystals in the wound
and a bone graphic in the window.

While the light that comes fixes and wins
white fable goals that you forget
the tumult of veins in flight
towards the cloudy freshness of the apple,

Adam dreams of clay fever
a child galloping towards
by the double beating of his cheek.

But another dark Adam is dreaming
neutral seedless stone moon
where the child of light will burn.

fifteen. the shadow of my soul

This poetry pursues an introspection on one’s own identity and pain, with symbolic language.

the shadow of my soul
flee through a twilight of alphabets,
book fog
and words.

The shadow of my soul!

I have reached the line where it stops
nostalgia,
and the drop of tears is transformed
alabaster of spirit.

(The shadow of my soul!)

The flake of pain
it’s over,
but the reason and the substance remain
of my old noon of lips,
of my old noon
of looks.

A murky labyrinth
of smoky stars
entangles my illusion
almost withered.

The shadow of my soul!

and a hallucination
He milks my looks.
I see the word love
crumbled

My nightingale!
Mockingbird!
Do you still sing?

16. wounds of love

The author expresses intense loving pain, almost physical in its description. Look at it in the following poem.

This light, this devouring fire.
This grey scenary surrounds me.
This pain for just an idea.
This anguish of heaven, world and time.

This cry of blood that decorates
lyre without pulse now, lubricious tea.
This weight of the sea that hits me.
This scorpion that lives in my chest.

They are garlands of love, a bed for the wounded,
where without sleep, I dream of your presence
among the ruins of my…