Luis de Camoes Collected Poetical Works

by Luis de Camoes

  The halcyons call; ye Lusians, spread the sail;

  Old ocean, now appeas’d, shall rage no more.

  Haste, point the bowsprit to your native shore:

  Soon shall the transports of the natal soil

  O’erwhelm, in bounding joy, the thoughts of ev’ry toil.”

  The goddess spake676*; and Vasco wav’d his hand,

  And soon the joyful heroes crowd the strand.

  The lofty ships with deepen’d burthens prove

  The various bounties of the Isle of Love.

  Nor leave the youths their lovely brides behind,

  In wedded bands, while time glides on, conjoin’d;

  Fair as immortal fame in smiles array’d,

  In bridal smiles, attends each lovely maid.

  O’er India’s sea, wing’d on by balmy gales

  That whisper’d peace, soft swell’d the steady sails:

  Smooth as on wing unmov’d the eagle flies,

  When to his eyrie cliff he sails the skies,

  Swift o’er the gentle billows of the tide,

  So smooth, so soft, the prows of Gama glide;

  And now their native fields, for ever dear,

  In all their wild transporting charms appear;

  And Tago’s bosom, while his banks repeat

  The sounding peals of joy, receives the fleet.

  With orient titles and immortal fame

  The hero band adorn their monarch’s name;

  Sceptres and crowns beneath his feet they lay,

  And the wide East is doom’d to Lusian sway.677*

  Enough, my muse, thy wearied wing no more

  Must to the seat of Jove triumphant soar.

  Chill’d by my nation’s cold neglect, thy fires

  Glow bold no more, and all thy rage expires.

  Yet thou, Sebastian, thou, my king, attend;

  Behold what glories on thy throne descend!

  Shall haughty Gaul or sterner Albion boast

  That all the Lusian fame in thee is lost!

  Oh, be it thine these glories to renew,

  And John’s bold path and Pedro’s course pursue:678*

  Snatch from the tyrant-noble’s hand the sword,

  And be the rights of humankind restor’d.

  The statesman prelate to his vows confine,

  Alone auspicious at the holy shrine;

  The priest, in whose meek heart Heav’n pours its fires,

  Alone to Heav’n, not earth’s vain pomp, aspires.

  Nor let the muse, great king, on Tago’s shore,

  In dying notes the barb’rous age deplore.

  The king or hero to the muse unjust

  Sinks as the nameless slave, extinct in dust.

  But such the deeds thy radiant morn portends,

  Aw’d by thy frown ev’n now old Atlas bends

  His hoary head, and Ampeluza’s fields

  Expect thy sounding steeds and rattling shields.

  And shall these deeds unsung, unknown, expire!

  Oh, would thy smiles relume my fainting ire!

  I, then inspir’d, the wond’ring world should see

  Great Ammon’s warlike son reviv’d in thee;

  Reviv’d, unenvied679* of the muse’s flame

  That o’er the world resounds Pelides’680* name.

  “O let th’ Iambic Muse revenge that wrong

  Which cannot slumber in thy sheets of lead;

  Let thy abused honour crie as long

  As there be quills to write, or eyes to reade:

  On his rank name let thine own votes be turn’d,

  Oh may that man that hath the Muses scorn’d

  Alive, nor dead, be ever of a Muse adorn’d.”

  THE END

  FOOTNOTES

  1 Poems of Luis de Camoëns, with Remarks on his Life and Writings. By Lord Viscount Strangford. Fifth edition. London, 1808.

  2 The Camaõ. Formerly every well-regulated family in Spain retained one of these terrible attendants. The infidelity of its mistress was the only circumstance which could deprive it of life. This odious distrust of female honour is ever characteristic of a barbarous age.

  3 The laws of Portugal were peculiarly severe against those who carried on a love-intrigue within the palace: they punished the offence with death. Joam I. suffered one of his favourites to be burnt alive for it. — Ed.

  4 The Maekhaun, or Camboja. — Ed.

  5 Thomas Moore Musgrave’s translation of The Lusiad is in blank verse, and is dedicated to the Earl of Chichester. I vol. 8vo. Murray; 1826.

  6 A document in the archives of the Portuguese India House, on which Lord Strangford relies, places it in 1524, or the following year. — Ed.

  7 The French translator gives us so fine a description of the person of Camoëns, that it seems borrowed from the Fairy Tales. It is universally agreed, however, that he was handsome, and had a most engaging mien and address. He is thus described by Nicolas Antonio “Mediocri statura fuit, et carne plena, capillis usque ad croci colorem flavescentibus, maxime in juventute. Eminebat ei frons, et medius nasus, cætera longus, et in fine crassiusculus.”

  8 Castera tells us, “that posterity by no means enters into the resentment of our poet, and that the Portuguese historians make glorious mention of Barreto, who was a man of true merit.” The Portuguese historians, however, knew not what true merit was. The brutal, uncommercial wars of Sampayo are by them mentioned as much more glorious than the less bloody campaigns of a Nunio, which established commerce and empire.

  9 Having named the Mecon, or Meekhaun, a river of Cochin China, he says —

  Este recebera placido, e brando,

  No seu regaço o Canto, que molhado, etc.

  Literally thus: “On his gentle hospitable bosom (sic brando poeticé) shall he receive the song, wet from woful unhappy shipwreck, escaped from destroying tempests, from ravenous dangers, the effect of the unjust sentence upon him, whose lyre shall be more renowned than enriched.” When Camoëns was commissary, he visited the islands of Ternate, Timor, etc., described in the Lusiad.

  10 According to the Portuguese Life of Camoëns, prefixed to Gedron’s the best edition of his works, Diogo de Couto, the historian, one of the company in this homeward voyage, wrote annotations upon the Lusiad, under the eye of its author. But these, unhappily, have never appeared in public.

  11 Cardinal Henry’s patronage of learning and learned men is mentioned with cordial esteem by the Portuguese writers. Happily they also tell us what that learning was. It was to him the Romish Friars of the East transmitted their childish forgeries of inscriptions and miracles. He corresponded with them, directed their labours, and received the first accounts of their success. Under his patronage it was discovered, that St. Thomas ordered the Indians to worship the cross; and that the Moorish tradition of Perimal (who, having embraced Mohammedanism, divided his kingdom among his officers, whom he rendered tributary to the Zamorim) was a malicious misrepresentation, for that Perimal, having turned Christian, resigned his kingdom and became a monk. Such was the learning patronized by Henry, under whose auspices that horrid tribunal, the Inquisition, was erected at Lisbon, where he himself long presided as Inquisitor-General. Nor was he content with this: he established an Inquisition, also, at Goa, and sent a whole apparatus of holy fathers to form a court of inquisitors, to suppress the Jews and reduce the native Christians to the see of Rome. Nor must the treatment experienced by Buchanan at Lisbon be here omitted. John III., earnest to promote the cultivation of polite literature among his subjects, engaged Buchanan, the most elegant Latinist, perhaps, of modern times, to teach philosophy and the belles lettres at Lisbon. But the design of the monarch was soon frustrated by the clergy, at the head of whom was Henry, afterwards king. Buchanan was committed to prison, because it was alleged that he had eaten flesh in Lent, and because in his early youth, at St. Andrew’s in Scotland, he had written a satire against the Franciscans; for which, however, ere he would venture to Lisbon, John had promised absolut
e indemnity. John, with much difficulty, procured his release from a loathsome jail, but could not effect his restoration as a teacher. No, he only changed his prison, for Buchanan was sent to a monastery “to be instructed by the monks,” of the men of letters patronized by Henry. These are thus characterized by their pupil Buchanan, — nec inhumanis, nec malis, sed omnis religionis ignaris: “Not uncivilized, not flagitious, but ignorant of every religion.”

  12 According to Gedron, a second edition of the Lusiad appeared in the same year with the first. There are two Italian and four Spanish translations of it. A hundred years before Castera’s version it appeared in French. Thomas de Faria, Bp. of Targa in Africa, translated it into Latin. Le P. Niceron says there were two other Latin translations. It is translated, also, into Hebrew, with great elegance and spirit, by one Luzzatto, a learned and ingenious Jew, author of several poems in that language, who died in the Holy Land.

  13 This passage in inverted commas is cited, with the alteration of the name only, from Langhorne’s account of the life of William Collins.

  14 The drama and the epopœia are in nothing so different as in this — the subjects of the drama are inexhaustible, those of the epopœia are perhaps exhausted. He who chooses war, and warlike characters, cannot appear as an original. It was well for the memory of Pope that he did not write the epic poem he intended. It would have been only a copy of Virgil. Camoëns and Milton have been happy in the novelty of their subjects, and these they have exhausted. There cannot possibly be so important a voyage as that which gave the eastern world to the western. And, did even the story of Columbus afford materials equal to that of Gama, the adventures of the hero, and the view of the extent of his discoveries must now appear as servile copies of the Lusiad.

  15 See his Satyricon. — Ed.

  16 See letters on Chivalry and Romance.

  17 The Lusiad is also rendered poetical by other fictions. The elegant satire on King Sebastian, under the name of Acteon; and the prosopopœia of the populace of Portugal venting their murmurs upon the beach when Gama sets sail, display the richness of our author’s poetical genius, and are not inferior to anything of the kind in the classics.

  18 Hence the great interest which we as Britons either do, or ought to, feel in this noble epic. We are the successors of the Portuguese in the possession and government of India; and therefore what interested them must have for us, as the actual possessors, a double interest. — Ed.

  19 Castera was every way unequal to his task. He did not perceive his author’s beauties. He either suppresses or lowers the most poetical passages, and substitutes French tinsel and impertinence in their place.

  20 Pope, Odyss. XX.

  21 Richard Fanshaw, Esq., afterwards Sir Richard, was English Ambassador both at Madrid and Lisbon. He had a taste for literature, and translated from the Italian several pieces which were of service in the refinement of our poetry. Though his Lusiad, by the dedication of it to William, Earl of Strafford, dated May 1, 1655, seems as if published by himself, we are told by the editor of his Letters, that “during the unsettled times of our anarchy, some of his MSS., falling by misfortune into unskilful hands, were printed and published without his knowledge or consent, and before he could give them his last finishing strokes: such was his translation of the Lusiad.” He can never have enough of conceits, low allusions, and expressions. When gathering of flowers is simply mentioned (C. 9, st. 24) he gives it, “gather’d flowers by pecks;” and the Indian Regent is avaricious (C. 8, st. 95) —

  Meaning a better penny thence to get.

  But enough of these have already appeared in the notes. It may be necessary to add, that the version of Fanshaw, though the Lusiad very particularly requires them, was given to the public without one note.

  22 Some liberties of a less poetical kind, however, require to be mentioned. In Homer and Virgil’s lists of slain warriors, Dryden and Pope have omitted several names which would have rendered English versification dull and tiresome. Several allusions to ancient history and fable have for this reason been abridged; e.g. in the prayer of Gama (Book 6) the mention of Paul, “thou who deliveredst Paul and defendest him from quicksands and wild waves —

  Das scyrtes arenosas e ondas feas—”

  is omitted. However excellent in the original, the prayer in English would lose both its dignity and ardour. Nor let the critic, if he find the meaning of Camoëns in some instances altered, imagine that he has found a blunder in the translator. He who chooses to see a slight alteration of this kind will find an instance, which will give him an idea of others, in Canto 8, st. 48, and another in Canto 7, st. 41. It was not to gratify the dull few, whose greatest pleasure in reading a translation is to see what the author exactly says; it was to give a poem that might live in the English language, which was the ambition of the translator. And, for the same reason, he has not confined himself to the Portuguese or Spanish pronunciation of proper names. Regardless, therefore, of Spanish pronunciation, the translator has accented Granáda, Evóra, etc. in the manner which seemed to him to give most dignity to English versification. In the word Sofala he has even rejected the authority of Milton, and followed the more sonorous usage of Fanshaw. Thus Sir Richard: “Against Sofála’s batter’d fort.” Which is the more sonorous there can be no dispute.

  23 Judges xviii. 7, 9, 27, 28.

  24 This ferocity of savage manners affords a philosophical account how the most distant and inhospitable climes were first peopled. When a Romulus erects a monarchy and makes war on his neighbours, some naturally fly to the wilds. As their families increase, the stronger commit depredations on the weaker; and thus from generation to generation, they who either dread just punishment or unjust oppression, fly farther and farther in search of that protection which is only to be found in civilized society.

  25 The author of that voluminous work, Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements et du Commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, is one of the many who assert that savage life is happier than civil. His reasons are thus abridged: The savage has no care or fear for the future; his hunting and fishing give him a certain subsistence. He sleeps sound, and knows not the diseases of cities. He cannot want what he does not desire, nor desire that which he does not know, and vexation or grief do not enter his soul. He is not under the control of a superior in his actions; in a word, says our author, the savage only suffers the evils of nature.

  If the civilized, he adds, enjoy the elegancies of life, have better food, and are more comfortably defended against the change of seasons, it is use which makes these things necessary, and they are purchased by the painful labours of the multitude who are the basis of society. To what outrages is not the man of civil life exposed? if he has property, it is in danger; and government or authority is, according to our author, the greatest of all evils. If there is a famine in North America, the savage, led by the wind and the sun, can go to a better clime; but in the horrors of famine, war, or pestilence, the ports and barriers of civilized states place the subjects in a prison, where they must perish. There still remains an infinite difference between the lot of the civilized and the savage; a difference, all entirely to the disadvantage of society, that injustice which reigns in the inequality of fortunes and conditions.

  26 The innocent simplicity of the Americans in their conferences with the Spaniards, and the horrid cruelties they suffered from them, divert our view from their complete character. Almost everything was horrid in their civil customs and religious rites. In some tribes, to cohabit with their mothers, sisters, and daughters was esteemed the means of domestic peace. In others, catamites were maintained in every village; they went from house to house as they pleased, and it was unlawful to refuse them what victuals they chose. In every tribe, the captives taken in war were murdered with the most wanton cruelty, and afterwards devoured by the victors. Their religious rites were, if possible, still more horrid. The abominations of ancient Moloch were here outnumbered; children, virgins, slaves, and captives bled on
different altars, to appease their various gods. If there was a scarcity of human victims, the priests announced that the gods were dying of thirst for human blood. And, to prevent a threatened famine, the kings of Mexico were obliged to make war on the neighbouring states. The prisoners of either side died by the hand of the priest. But the number of the Mexican sacrifices so greatly exceeded those of other nations, that the Tlascalans, who were hunted down for this purpose, readily joined Cortez with about 200,000 men, and enabled him to make one great sacrifice of the Mexican nation. Who that views Mexico, steeped in her own blood, can restrain the emotion which whispers to him, This is the hand of Heaven! — By the number of these sacred butcheries, one would think that cruelty was the greatest amusement of Mexico. At the dedication of the temple of Vitzliputzli, A.D. 1486, no less than 64,080 human victims were sacrificed in four days. And, according to the best accounts, the annual sacrifices of Mexico required several thousands. The skulls of the victims sometimes were hung on strings which reached from tree to tree around their temples, and sometimes were built up in towers and cemented with lime. In some of these towers Andrew de Tapia one day counted 136,000 skulls. During the war with Cortez they increased their usual sacrifices, till priest and people were tired of their bloody religion. — See, for ample justification of these statements, the Histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru, by Prescott. — Ed.

  27 Mahommed Ali Khan, Nawab of the Carnatic, declared, “I met the British with that freedom of openness which they love, and I esteem it my honour as well as security to be the ally of such a nation of princes.”

  28 Every man must follow his father’s trade, and must marry a daughter of the same occupation. Innumerable are their other barbarous restrictions of genius and inclination.

  29 Extremity; for it were both highly unjust and impolitic in government to allow importation in such a degree as might be destructive of domestic agriculture.

  30 Even that warm admirer of savage happiness, the author of Histoire Philosophique et Politique des Etablissements, confesses that the wild Americans seem destitute of the feeling of love. When the heat of passion, says he, is gratified, they lose all affection and attachment for their women, whom they degrade to the most servile offices. — A tender remembrance of the first endearments, a generous participation of care and hope, the compassionate sentiments of honour; all these delicate feelings, which arise into affection, and bind attachment, are indeed, incompatible with the ferocious and gross sensations of barbarians.