Or, sport between the pillars of the gate:
But, beauty more had brighten’d in their face
Had modesty attemper’d ev’ry grace;
In vestures green each damsel swept the ground,
Their temples fair, with leafy garlands crown’d.
These, with a courteous welcome, led the knight
To this sweet Paradise of soft delight....
Enamour’d youths and tender damsels seem
To chant their loves beside a purling stream.
Some by a branching tree, or mountain’s shade,
In sports and dances press the downy glade,
While one discloses to his friend, apart,
The secret transport of his am’rous heart.” — Book vi.
But these descriptions also, which bring the homes of knight-errantry into the way of beautiful wantons, are as common in the old romance as the use of the alphabet: and indeed the greatest part of these love-adventures are evidently borrowed from the fable of Circe. Astolpho, who was transformed into a myrtle by Alcina, thus informs Rogero: —
“Her former lovers she esteem’d no more,
For many lovers she possess’d before;
I was her joy ——
Too late, alas, I found her wav’ring mind
In love inconstant as the changing wind!
Scarce had I held two months the fairy’s grace,
When a new youth was taken to my place:
Rejected, then, I join’d the banish’d herd
That lost her love, as others were preferr’d ...
Some here, some there, her potent charms retain,
In diverse forms imprison’d to remain;
In beeches, olives, palms, or cedars clos’d,
Or, such as me, you here behold expos’d;
In fountains some, and some in beasts confin’d,
As suits the wayward fairy’s cruel mind.”
Hoole, Ar. bk. vi.
When incidents, character, and conduct confess the resemblance, we may, with certainty, pronounce from whence the copy is taken. Where only a similar stroke of passion or description occurs, it belongs alone to the arrogance of dulness, to tell us on what passage the poet had his eye. Every great poet has been persecuted in this manner: Milton in particular. His commentators have not left him a flower of his own growth. Yet, like the creed of the atheist, their system is involved in the deepest absurdity. It is easy to suppose that men of poetical feelings, in describing the same thing, should give us the same picture. But, that the Paradise Lost, which forms one animated whole of the noblest poetry, is a mere cento, compiled from innumerable authors, ancient and modern, is a supposition which gives Milton a cast of talents infinitely more extraordinary and inexplicable than the greatest poetical genius. When Gaspar Poussin painted clouds and trees in his landscapes, he did not borrow the green and the blue of the leaf and the sky from Claude Lorraine. Neither did Camoëns, when he painted his island of Venus, spend the half of his life in collecting his colours from all his predecessors who had described the beauties of the vernal year, or the stages of passion. Camoëns knew how others had painted the flowery bowers of love; these formed his taste, and corrected his judgment. He viewed the beauties of nature with poetical eyes, from thence he drew his landscapes; he had felt all the allurements of love, and from thence he describes the agitations of that passion.
Nor is the description of fairy bowers and palaces, though most favourite topics, peculiar to the romances of chivalry. The poetry of the orientals also abounds with them, yet, with some characteristic differences. Like the constitutions and dress of the Asiatics, the landscapes of the eastern muse are warm and feeble, brilliant and slight, and, like the manners of the people, wear an eternal sameness. The western muse, on the contrary, is nervous as her heroes, sometimes flowery as her Italian or English fields, sometimes majestically great as her Runic forests of oak and pine; and always various, as the character of her inhabitants. Yet, with all those differences of feature, several oriental fictions greatly resemble the island of Circe, and the flowery dominions of Alcina. In particular, the adventures of Prince Agib, or the third Calender, in the Arabian Tales, afford a striking likeness of painting and catastrophe.
If Ariosto’s, however, seem to resemble any eastern fiction, the island of Venus in Camoëns bears a more striking resemblance to a passage in Chaucer. The following beautiful piece of poetical painting occurs in the Assembly of the Fowles: —
“The bildir oak, and eke the hardie ashe,
The pillir elme, the coffir unto caraine,
The boxe pipetre, the holme to whippis lasshe,
The sailing firre, the cypres deth to plaine,
The shortir ewe, the aspe for shaftis plaine,
The olive of pece, and eke the dronkin vine,
The victor palme, the laurir to divine.
A gardein sawe I full of blossomed bowis,
Upon a river, in a grené mede
There as sweetness evirmore inough is,
With flouris white, and blewe, yelowe, and rede,
And colde and clere wellestremis, nothing dede,
That swommin full of smale fishis light,
With finnis rede, and scalis silver bright.
On every bough the birdis herd I syng
With voice of angell, in ther harmonie
That busied ‘hem, ther birdis forthe to bryng,
And little pretie conies to ther plaie gan hie;
And furthir all about I gan espie
The dredful roe, the buck, the hart and hind,
Squirils, and bestis smal of gentle kind.
Of instrumentes of stringis, in accorde
Herd I so plaie a ravishyng swetnesse,
That God, that makir is of all and Lorde,
Ne herd nevir a better, as I gesse,
There with a winde, unneth it might be lesse,
Made in the levis grene a noisé soft
Accordant to the foulis song en loft.
The aire of the place so attempre was,
That ner was there grevaunce of hot ne cold —
* * * * *
Under a tre beside a well I seye
Cupid our lorde his arrowes forge and file,
And at his fete his bowe all redie laye,
And well his doughtir temprid all the while
The heddis in the well, and with her wile
She couchid ‘hem aftir as thei should serve,
Some for to flea, and some to wound and carve.
* * * * *
And upon pillirs grete of Jaspir long
I saw a temple of Brasse ifoundid strong.
And about the temple dauncid alwaie
Women inow, of which some there ywere
Faire of ‘hemself, and some of ‘hem were gaie,
In kirtils all disheveled went thei there,
That was ther office or from yere to yere,
And on the temple sawe I white and faire
Of dovis sittyng many a thousande paire.”
Here we have Cupid forging his arrows, the woodland, the streams, the music of instruments and birds, the frolics of deer and other animals; and women enow. In a word, the island of Venus is here sketched out, yet Chaucer was never translated into Latin or any language of the continent, nor did Camoëns understand a line of English. The subject was common, and the same poetical feelings in Chaucer and Camoëns pointed out to each what were the beauties of landscapes and of bowers devoted to pleasure.
Yet, though the fiction of bowers, of islands, and palaces, was no novelty in poetry, much, however, remains to be attributed to the poetical powers and invention of Camoëns. The island of Venus contains, of all others, by much the completest gradation, and fullest assemblage of that species of luxuriant painting. Nothing in the older writers is equal to it in fulness. Nor can the island of Armida, in Tasso, be compared to it, in poetical embroidery or passionate expression; though Tasso as undoubtedly built upon the model of Camoëns, as Spenser
appropriated the imagery of Tasso when he described the bower of Acrasia, part of which he has literally translated from the Italian poet. The beautiful fictions of Armida and Acrasia, however, are much too long to be here inserted, and they are well known to every reader of taste.
But the chief praise of our poet is yet unmentioned. The introduction of so beautiful a fiction as an essential part of the conduct and machinery of an epic poem, does the greatest honour to the invention of Camoëns. The machinery of the former part of the poem not only acquires dignity, but is completed by it. And the conduct of Homer and Virgil has, in this, not only received a fine imitation, but a masterly contrast. In the finest allegory the heroes of the Lusiad receive their reward: and, by means of this allegory, our poet gives a noble imitation of the noblest part of the Æneid. In the tenth Lusiad, Gama and his heroes hear the nymphs in the divine palace of Thetis sing the triumphs of their countrymen in the conquest of India: after this the goddess shows Gama a view of the eastern world, from the Cape of Good Hope to the furthest islands of Japan. She poetically describes every region, and the principal islands, and concludes, “All these are given to the western world by you.” It is impossible any poem can be summed up with greater sublimity. The Fall of Troy is nothing to this. Nor is this all: the most masterly fiction, finest compliment, and ultimate purpose of the Æneid is not only nobly imitated, but the conduct of Homer, in concluding the Iliad, as already observed, is paralleled, without one circumstance being borrowed. Poetical conduct cannot possibly bear a stronger resemblance, than the reward of the heroes of the Lusiad, the prophetic song, and the vision shown to Gama bear to the games at the funeral of Patroclus and the redemption of the body of Hector, considered as the completion of the anger of Achilles, the subject of the Iliad. Nor is it a greater honour to resemble a Homer and a Virgil, than it is to be resembled by a Milton. Milton certainly heard of Fanshaw’s translation of the Lusiad, though he might never have seen the original, for it was published fourteen years before he gave his Paradise Lost to the world. But, whatever he knew of it, had the last book of the Lusiad been two thousand years known to the learned, every one would have owned that the two last boots of the Paradise Lost were evidently formed upon it. But whether Milton borrowed any hint from Camoëns is of little consequence. That the genius of the great Milton suggested the conclusion of his immortal poem in the manner and with the machinery of the Lusiad, is enough. It is enough that the part of Michael and Adam in the two last books of the Paradise Lost are, in point of conduct, exactly the same with the part of Thetis and Gama in the conclusion of the Lusiad. Yet, this difference must be observed; in the narrative of his last book, Milton has flagged, as Addison calls it, and fallen infinitely short of the untired spirit of the Portuguese poet.
END OF THE NINTH BOOK.
BOOK X.
THE ARGUMENT.
In the opening of this, the last canto, the poet resumes the allegory of the Isle of Joy, or of Venus: the fair nymphs conduct their lovers to their radiant palaces, where delicious wines sparkle in every cup. Before the poet describes the song of a prophetic siren, who celebrates the praise of the heroes who are destined in ennoble the name of their country, he addresses himself to his muse in a tone of sorrow, which touches us the more deeply when we reflect upon the unhappy situation to which this great poet was at last reduced. In the song of the siren, which follows, is afforded a prophetic view from the period of Gama’s expedition down to Camoëns’ own times, in which Pacheco, and other heroes of Portugal, pass in review before the eye of the reader. When the siren has concluded her prophetic song, Thetis conducts Gama to the top of a mountain and addresses him in a set speech. The poem concludes with the poet’s apostrophe to King Sebastian.
FAR o’er the western ocean’s distant bed
Apollo now his fiery coursers sped;
Far o’er the silver lake of Mexic589* roll’d
His rapid chariot wheels of burning gold:
The eastern sky was left to dusky grey,
And o’er the last hot breath of parting day,
Cool o’er the sultry noon’s remaining flame,
On gentle gales the grateful twilight came.
Dimpling the lucid pools, the fragrant breeze
Sighs o’er the lawns, and whispers thro’ the trees;
Refresh’d, the lily rears the silver head,
And opening jasmines o’er the arbours spread.
Fair o’er the wave that gleam’d like distant snow,
Graceful arose the moon, serenely slow;
Not yet full orb’d, in clouded splendour dress’d,
Her married arms embrace her pregnant breast.
Sweet to his mate, recumbent o’er his young,
The nightingale his spousal anthem sung;
From ev’ry bower the holy chorus rose,
From ev’ry bower the rival anthem flows.
Translucent, twinkling through the upland grove,
In all her lustre shines the star of love;
Led by the sacred ray from ev’ry bower,
A joyful train, the wedded lovers pour:
Each with the youth above the rest approv’d,
Each with the nymph above the rest belov’d,
They seek the palace of the sov’reign dame;
High on a mountain glow’d the wondrous frame:
Of gold the towers, of gold the pillars shone,
The walls were crystal, starr’d with precious stone.
Amid the hall arose the festive board,
With nature’s choicest gifts promiscuous stor’d:
So will’d the goddess to renew the smile
Of vital strength, long worn by days of toil.
On crystal chairs, that shin’d as lambent flame,
Each gallant youth attends his lovely dame;
Beneath a purple canopy of state
The beauteous goddess and the leader sat:
The banquet glows — Not such the feast, when all
The pride of luxury in Egypt’s hall
Before the love-sick Roman590* spread the boast
Of ev’ry teeming sea and fertile coast.
Sacred to noblest worth and Virtue’s ear,
Divine, as genial, was the banquet here;
The wine, the song, by sweet returns inspire,
Now wake the lover’s, now the hero’s fire.
On gold and silver from th’ Atlantic main,
The sumptuous tribute of the sea’s wide reign,
Of various savour, was the banquet pil’d;
Amid the fruitage mingling roses smil’d.
In cups of gold that shed a yellow light,
In silver, shining as the moon of night,
Amid the banquet flow’d the sparkling wine,
Nor gave Falernia’s fields the parent vine:
Falernia’s vintage, nor the fabled power
Of Jove’s ambrosia in th’ Olympian bower
To this compare not; wild, nor frantic fires,
Divinest transport this alone inspires.
The bev’rage, foaming o’er the goblet’s breast,
The crystal fountain’s cooling aid confess’d;591*
The while, as circling flow’d the cheerful bowl,
Sapient discourse, the banquet of the soul,
Of richest argument and brightest glow,
Array’d in dimpling smiles, in easiest flow
Pour’d all its graces: nor in silence stood
The powers of music, such as erst subdued
The horrid frown of hell’s profound domains,592*
And sooth’d the tortur’d ghosts to slumber on their chains.
To music’s sweetest chords, in loftiest vein,
An angel siren joins the vocal strain;
The silver roofs resound the living song,
The harp and organ’s lofty mood prolong
The hallow’d warblings; list’ning Silence rides
The sky, and o’er the bridled winds presides;
I
n softest murmurs flows the glassy deep,
And each, lull’d in his shade, the bestials sleep.
The lofty song ascends the thrilling skies,
The song of godlike heroes yet to rise;
Jove gave the dream, whose glow the siren fir’d,
And present Jove the prophecy inspir’d.
Not he, the bard of love-sick Dido’s board,
Nor he, the minstrel of Phæacia’s lord,
Though fam’d in song, could touch the warbling string,
Or, with a voice so sweet, melodious sing.
And thou, my muse, O fairest of the train,
Calliope, inspire my closing strain.
No more the summer of my life remains,593*
My autumn’s length’ning ev’nings chill my veins;
Down the black stream of years by woes on woes
Wing’d on, I hasten to the tomb’s repose,
The port whose deep, dark bottom shall detain
My anchor, never to be weigh’d again,
Never on other sea of life to steer
The human course. — Yet thou, O goddess, hear,
Yet let me live, though round my silver’d head
Misfortune’s bitt’rest rage unpitying shed
Her coldest storms; yet, let me live to crown
The song that boasts my nation’s proud renown.
Of godlike heroes sung the nymph divine,
Heroes whose deeds on Gama’s crest shall shine;
Who through the seas, by Gama first explor’d,
Shall bear the Lusian standard and the sword,
Till ev’ry coast where roars the orient main,
Blest in its sway, shall own the Lusian reign;
Till ev’ry pagan king his neck shall yield,
Or vanquish’d, gnaw the dust on battle-field.
“High Priest of Malabar,” the goddess sung,
“Thy faith repent not, nor lament thy wrong;594*
Though, for thy faith to Lusus’ gen’rous race,
The raging zamoreem thy fields deface:
From Tagus, lo, the great Pacheco sails
To India, wafted on auspicious gales.
Soon as his crooked prow the tide shall press,
A new Achilles shall the tide confess;
His ship’s strong sides shall groan beneath his weight,
And deeper waves receive the sacred freight.595*
Soon as on India’s strand he shakes his spear,
Luis de Camoes Collected Poetical Works Page 117