Luis de Camoes Collected Poetical Works

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Luis de Camoes Collected Poetical Works Page 139

by Luis de Camoes


  664 The ground they touch not. — These are commonly called the birds of Paradise. It was the old erroneous opinion that they always soared in the air, and that the female hatched her young on the back of the male. Their feathers bear a mixture of the most beautiful azure, purple, and golden colours, which have a fine effect in the rays of the sun.

  665 From hence the pilgrim brings the wondrous tale. — Streams of this kind are common in many countries. Castera attributes this quality to the excessive coldness of the waters, but this is a mistake. The waters of some springs are impregnated with sparry particles, which adhering to the herbage, or the clay, on the banks of their channel, harden into stone, and incrust the original retainers.

  666 Here from the trees the gum. — Benzoin, a species of frankincense. The oil mentioned in the next line, is that called the rock oil, petroleum, a black fetid mineral oil, good for bruises and sprains.

  667 Wide forests there beneath Maldivia’s tide. — A sea plant, resembling the palm, grows in great abundance in the bays about the Maldivian islands. The boughs rise to the top of the water, and bear a kind of apple, called the coco of Maldivia, which is esteemed an antidote against poison.

  668 The tread of sainted footstep. — The imprint of a human foot is found on the high mountain, called the Pic of Adam. Legendary tradition says, that Adam, after he was expelled from Paradise, did penance 300 years on this hill, on which he left the print of his footstep. This tale seems to be Jewish, or Mohammedan; for the natives, according to Captain Knox (who was twenty years a captive in Ceylon), pretend the impression was made by the god Budha, when he ascended to heaven, after having, for the salvation of mankind, appeared on the earth. His priests beg charity for the sake of Budha, whose worship they perform among groves of the Bogahah-tree, under which, when on earth, they say he usually sat and taught.

  669 And lo, the Island of the Moon. — Madagascar is thus named by the natives.

  670 The kingfishers.

  671 Now to the West, by thee, great chief, is given. — The sublimity of this eulogy on the expedition of the Lusiad has been already observed. What follows is a natural completion of the whole; and, the digressive exclamation at the end excepted, is exactly similar to the manner in which Homer has concluded the Iliad.

  672 Near either pole. — We are now presented with a beautiful view of the American world. Columbus discovered the West Indies before, but not the continent till 1498 — the year after Gama sailed from Lisbon.

  673 The first bold hero. — Cabral, the first after Gama who sailed to India, was driven by tempest to the Brazils, a proof that more ancient voyagers might have met with the same fate. He named the country Santa Cruz, or Holy Cross; it was afterwards named Brazil, from the colour of the wood with which it abounds. It is one of the finest countries in the new world.

  674 To match thy deeds shall Magalhaens aspire. — Camoëns, though he boasts of the actions of Magalhaens as an honour to Portugal, yet condemns his defection to the King of Spain, and calls him —

  O Magalhaens, no feito com verdade

  Portuguez, porèm naó na lealdade.

  “In deeds truly a Portuguese, but not in loyalty.” And others have bestowed upon him the name of traitor, but perhaps undeservedly. Justice to the name of this great man requires an examination of the charge. Ere he entered into the service of the King of Spain by a solemn act, he unnaturalized himself. Osorius is very severe against this unavailing rite, and argues that no injury which a prince may possibly give, can authorize a subject to act the part of a traitor against his native country. This is certainly true, but it is not strictly applicable to the case of Magalhaens. Many eminent services performed in Africa and India entitled him to a certain allowance, which, though inconsiderable in itself, was esteemed as the reward of distinguished merit, and therefore highly valued. For this Magalhaens petitioned in vain. He found, says Faria, that the malicious accusations of some men had more weight with his sovereign than all his services. After this unworthy repulse, what patronage at the Court of Lisbon could he hope? And though no injury can vindicate the man who draws his sword against his native country, yet no moral duty requires that he who has some important discovery in meditation should stifle his design, if uncountenanced by his native prince. It has been alleged, that he embroiled his country in disputes with Spain. But neither is this strictly applicable to the neglected Magalhaens. The courts of Spain and Portugal had solemnly settled the limits within which they were to make discoveries and settlements, and within these did Magalhaens and the court of Spain propose that his discoveries should terminate. And allowing that his calculations might mislead him beyond the bounds prescribed to the Spaniards, still his apology is clear, for it would have been injurious to each court, had he supposed that the faith of the boundary treaty would be trampled upon by either power. If it is said that he aggrandized the enemies of his country, the Spaniards, and introduced them to a dangerous rivalship with the Portuguese settlements; let the sentence of Faria on this subject be remembered: “Let princes beware,” says he, “how by neglect or injustice they force into desperate actions the men who have merited rewards.”

  In the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, the spirit of discovery broke forth in its greatest vigour. The East and the West had been visited by Gama and Columbus; and the bold idea of sailing to the East by the West was revived by Magalhaens. Revived, for misled by Strabo and Pliny, who place India near to the west of Spain, Columbus expecting to find the India of the ancients when he landed on Hispaniola, thought he had discovered the Ophir of Solomon. And hence the name of Indies was given to that and the neighbouring islands. Though America and the Moluccas were now found to be at a great distance, the genius of Magalhaens still suggested the possibility of a western passage. And accordingly, possessed of his great design, and neglected with contempt at home, he offered his service to the court of Spain, and was accepted. With five ships and 250 men he sailed from Spain in September, 1519, and after many difficulties, occasioned by mutiny and the extreme cold, he entered the great Pacific Ocean or South Seas by those straits which bear his Spanish name Magellan. From these straits, in the 52½ degree of southern latitude, he traversed that great ocean, till in the 10th degree of north latitude he landed on the island of Subo or Marten. The king of this country was then at war with a neighbouring prince, and Magalhaens, on condition of his conversion to Christianity, became his auxiliary. In two battles the Spaniards were victorious, but in the third, Magalhaens, together with one Martinho, a judicial astrologer, whom he usually consulted, was unfortunately killed. Chagrined with the disappointment of promised victory, the new baptised king of Subo made peace with his enemies, and having invited to an entertainment the Spaniards on shore, he treacherously poisoned them all. The wretched remains of the fleet arrived at the Portuguese settlements in the isles of Banda and Ternate, where they were received, says Faria, as friends, and not as intruding strangers; a proof that the boundary treaty was esteemed sufficiently sacred. Several of the adventurers were sent to India, and from thence to Spain, in Portuguese ships, one ship only being in a condition to return to Europe by the Cape of Good Hope. This vessel, named the Victoria, however, had the honour to be the first which ever surrounded the globe; an honour by some ignorantly attributed to the ship of Sir Francis Drake. Thus unhappily ended, says Osorius, the expedition of Magalhaens. But the good bishop was mistaken, for a few years after he wrote, and somewhat upwards of fifty after the return of the Victoria, Philip II. of Spain availed himself of the discoveries of Magalhaens. And the navigation of the South Seas between Spanish America and the Asian Archipelago, at this day forms the basis of the power of Spain: a basis, however, which is at the mercy of Great Britain, while her ministers are wise enough to preserve her great naval superiority. A Gibraltar in the South Seas is only wanting. But when this is mentioned, who can withhold his eyes from the isthmus of Darien — the rendezvous appointed by nature for the fleets which may one day give law t
o the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans: a settlement which to-day might have owned subjection to Great Britain, if justice and honour had always presided in the cabinet of William the Third?

  675 A land of giants. — The Patagonians. Various are the fables of navigators concerning these people. The Spaniards who went with Magalhaens affirmed they were about ten feet in height, since which voyage they have risen and fallen in their stature, according to the different humours of our sea wits.

  676 The goddess spake. — We are now come to the conclusion of the fiction of the island of Venus, a fiction which is divided into three principal parts. In each of these the poetical merit is obvious, nor need we fear to assert, that the happiness of our author, in uniting all these parts together in one great episode, would have excited the admiration of Longinus. The heroes of the Lusiad receive their reward in the Island of Love. They are led to the palace of Thetis, where, during a divine feast, they hear the glorious victories and conquests of the heroes who are to succeed them in their Indian expedition, sung by a siren; and the face of the globe itself, described by the goddess, discovers the universe, and particularly the extent of the eastern world, now given to Europe by the success of Gama. Neither in grandeur, nor in happiness of completion, may the Æneid or Odyssey be mentioned in comparison. The Iliad alone, in epic conduet (as already observed) bears a strong resemblance. But however great in other views of poetical merit, the games at the funeral of Patroclus, and the redemption of the body of Hector, considered as the interesting conclusion of a great whole, can never in propriety and grandeur be brought into competition with the admirable episode which concludes the poem on the discovery of India.

  Soon after the appearance of the Lusiad, the language of Spain was also enriched with an heroic poem, the author of which has often imitated the Portuguese poet, particularly in the fiction of the globe of the world, which is shown to Gama. In the Araucana, a globe, surrounded with a radiant sphere, is also miraculously supported in the air; and on this an enchanter shows to the Spaniards the extent of their dominions in the new world. But Don Alonzo d’Arcilla is in this, as in every other part of his poem, greatly inferior to the poetical spirit of Camoëns. Milton, whose poetical conduct in concluding the action of his Paradise Lost, as already pointed out, seems formed upon the Lusiad, appears to have had this passage particularly in his eye. For, though the machinery of a visionary sphere was rather improper for the situation of his personages, he has, nevertheless, though at the expense of an impossible supposition, given Adam a view of the terrestrial globe. Michael sets the father of mankind on a mountain —

  “From whose top

  The hemisphere of earth in clearest ken

  Stretch’d out to th’ amplest reach of prospect lay....

  His eye might there command wherever stood

  City of old or modern fame, the seat

  Of mightiest empire, from the destin’d walls

  Of Cambalu ...

  On Europe thence and where Rome was to sway

  The world.”

  And even the mention of America seems copied by Milton: —

  “In spirit perhaps he also saw

  Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezume,

  And Cusco in Peru, the richer seat

  Of Atabalipa, and yet unspoil’d

  Guiana, whose great city Geryon’s sons

  Call El Dorado.”

  It must also be owned by the warmest admirer of the Paradise Lost, that the description of America in Camoëns —

  “Vedes a grande terra, que contina

  Vai de Calisto ao sen contrario polo —

  To farthest north that world enormous bends,

  And cold beneath the southern pole-star ends,”

  conveys a bolder and a grander idea than all the names enumerated by Milton.

  Some short account of the writers whose authorities have been adduced in the course of these notes may not now be improper. Fernando Lopez de Castagneda went to India on purpose to do honour to his countrymen, by enabling himself to record their actions and conquests in the East. As he was one of the first writers on that subject, his geography is often imperfect. This defect is remedied in the writings of John de Barros, who was particularly attentive to this head. But the two most eminent, as well as fullest, writers on the transaction of the Portuguese in the East, are Manuel de Faria y Sousa, knight of the Order of Christ, and Hieronimus Osorius, bishop of Sylves. Faria, who wrote in Spanish, was a laborious inquirer, and is very full and circumstantial. With honest indignation he rebukes the rapine of commanders and the errors and unworthy resentments of kings. But he is often so drily particular, that he may rather be called a journalist than an historian. And by this uninteresting minuteness, his style, for the greatest part, is rendered inelegant. The Bishop of Sylves, however, claims a different character. His Latin is elegant, and his manly and sentimental manner entitles him to the name of historian, even where a Livy or a Tacitus are mentioned. But a sentence from himself, unexpected in a father of the communion of Rome, will characterize the liberality of his mind. Talking of the edict of King Emmanuel, which compelled the Jews to embrace Christianity under severe persecution: “Nec ex lege, nec ex religione factum ... tibi assumas,” says he, “ut libertatem voluntatis impedias, et vincula mentibus effrenatis injicias? At id neque fleri potest, neque Christi sanctissimum numen approbat. Voluntarium enim sacrificium non vi malo coactum ab hominibus expetit: neque vim mentibus inferri, sed voluntates ad studium veræ religionis allici et invitari jubet.”

  It is said, in the preface to Osorius, that his writings were highly esteemed by Queen Mary of England, wife of Philip II. What a pity is it, that this manly indignation of the good bishop against the impiety of religious persecution, made no impression on the mind of that bigoted princess!

  677 And the wide East is doom’d to Lusian sway. — Thus, in all the force of ancient simplicity, and the true sublime, ends the poem of Camoëns. What follows is one of those exuberances we have already endeavoured to defend in our author, nor in the strictest sense is this concluding one without propriety. A part of the proposition of the poem is artfully addressed to King Sebastian, and he is now called upon in an address (which is an artful second part to the former), to behold and preserve the glories of his throne.

  678 And John’s bold path and Pedro’s course pursue. — John I. and Pedro the Just, two of the greatest of the Portuguese monarchs.

  679 Reviv’d, unenvied. — Thus imitated, or rather translated into Italian by Guarini: —

  “Con si sublime stil’ forse cantato

  Havrei del mio Signor l’armi e l’honori,

  Ch’ or non havria de la Meonia tromba

  Da invidiar Achille.”

  Similarity of condition, we have already observed, produced similarity of complaint and sentiment in Spenser and Camoëns. Each was unworthily neglected by the grandees of his age, yet both their names will live, when the remembrance of the courtiers who spurned them shall sink beneath their mountain tombs. These beautiful stanzas from Phinehas Fletcher on the memory of Spenser, may also serve as an epitaph for Camoëns. The unworthy neglect, which was the lot of the Portuguese bard, but too well appropriates to him the elegy of Spenser. And every reader of taste, who has perused the Lusiad, will think of the Cardinal Henrico, and feel the indignation of these manly lines: —

  “Witness our Colin{*}, whom tho’ all the Graces

  And all the Muses nurst; whose well-taught song

  Parnassus’ self and Glorian{* *} embraces,

  And all the learn’d and all the shepherds throng;

  Yet all his hopes were crost, all suits denied;

  Discouraged, scorn’d, his writings vilified:

  Poorly (poor man) he liv’d; poorly (poor man) he died.

  “And had not that great hart (whose honoured head{* * *}

  All lies full low) pitied thy woful plight,

  There hadst thou lien unwept, unburied,

  Unblest, nor graced with any common rite
;

  Yet shalt thou live, when thy great foe{* * * *} shall sink

  Beneath his mountain tombe, whose fame shall stink;

  And time his blacker name shall blurre with blackest ink.”

  {*} Colin Clout, Spenser.

  {* *} Glorian, Elizabeth in the Faerie Queen.

  {* * *} The Earl of Essex.

  {* * * *} Lord Burleigh.

  680 Achilles, son of Peleus.

  THE LYRICKS

  Translated by Richard Francis Burton

  CONTENTS

  THE TRANSLATOR’S FOREWORD.

  PROLOGO OF FERNANDO RODRIGUES LOBO SURRUPITA.

  SONNETS

  PART I. (Nos. 1-264).

  PART II. (Nos. 265-301).

  PART III. (Nos. 302-360).

  CANZONI

  CANZON I.

  CANZON II.

  CANZON III.

  CANZON IV.

  CANZON V.

  CANZON VI.

  CANZON VII.

  CANZON VIII.

  CANZON IX.

  CANZON X.

  CANZON XI.

  CANZON XII.

  CANZON XIII.

  CANZON XIV.

  CANZON XV.

  CANZON XVI.

  CANZON XVII.

  CANZON XVIII.

  CANZON XIX.

  CANZON XX.

  CANZON XXI.

  ODES

  ODE I.

  ODE II.

  ODE III.

  ODE IV.

  ODE V.

 

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