Mirror of patience

{{short description|1838 epic poem by Silvestre de Balboa}}

{{infobox book

| name = Espejo de paciencia

| author = Silvestre de Balboa

| language = Spanish

| country = Cuba

| genre = Epic poem

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| release_date = 1838

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| pages = 40 pages

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"Mirror of patience" ({{Langx|es|Espejo de paciencia}}) is an epic poem written in 1608 by Silvestre de Balboa.{{Cite book |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16kkz3k |title=The Rise of Spanish American Poetry 1500-1700: Literary and Cultural Transmission in the New World |date=2019 |publisher=Modern Humanities Research Association |isbn=978-1-78188-706-6 |edition= |volume=22|doi=10.2307/j.ctv16kkz3k |jstor=j.ctv16kkz3k }} It is considered the first literature piece written in Cuba. It was occult until the year 1838 when was published in El Plantel, a nineteenth-century magazine. Before, the writer José Antonio Echevarría found it between the shelves of the library of the "Society of Friends of the Country".{{citation needed|date=August 2022}}

The poem is about a true story that occurred in the port of Manzanillo in 1604, when the bishop of the Island of Cuba, Don Juan de las Cabezas Altamirano, in a travel to visit the farms in Yara, was kidnapped by the French corsair Gilberto Girón, with the intent to make the town pay a huge ransom. Then a group of neighbors from Bayamo prepare to fight against the corsairs. In combat, a black slave named Golomón defeats Gilberto Girón and cuts off his head. The bishop is rescued and the people celebrate.