# The most famous lines of Jorge Manrique's Coplas

'Let the sleeping soul remember', 'Our lives are the rivers that flow into the sea, which is death', 'What became of King John?': the lines from the Verses on the Death of His Father (c. 1476) that Spanish speakers know by heart, with the stanza number.

- 13 votes · 14 items
- Aug 28, 2021 · golosa
- https://even.best/en/l/4665/the-most-famous-lines-of-jorge-manrique-s-coplas

## Top 14

1. **how life passes, how death comes so silently** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Stanza I.
2. **how, as we see it, any time gone by was better** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — Stanza I.
3. **Let the sleeping soul remember, let the mind awaken and stir, contemplating…** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — Stanza I, the opening of the poem.
4. **I leave aside the invocations of the famous poets and orators** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Stanza IV.
5. **for Death treats popes, emperors and prelates just as it treats the poor herdsmen** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Stanza XIV.
6. **What became of the ladies, their headdresses and gowns, their perfumes?** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Stanza XVII.
7. **he gave his soul back to the One who gave it** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Stanza XL, the last.
8. **Our lives are the rivers that flow into the sea, which is death** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Stanza III.
9. **there go the mighty rivers, there the middling and the smaller ones; once arrived, they are all equal** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Stanza III.
10. **This world is the road to the next, which is a dwelling without sorrow** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Stanza V.
11. **We set out when we are born, we walk while we live, and we arrive at the moment we die** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Stanza V.
12. **What a friend to his friends! What a lord to his servants and kin!** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Stanza XXVI, portrait of Don Rodrigo Manrique.
13. **What became of King John? The princes of Aragon, what became of them?** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Stanza XVI.
14. **and though he lost his life, his memory left us comfort enough** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — Stanza XL, the end of the poem.

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