United States or Bosnia and Herzegovina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
From the ancient Portuguese colony of Macao, distant forty miles from Hongkong and celebrated as the home of the poet Camoëns, come fleets of fishing-boats, which, in pursuit of their calling, cruise amongst the islands in the delta of the West River. These "Macao junks" are about the best sea-boats and the fastest sailers of all Chinese vessels.
We have prepared two eclogues, one by the famous poet Garcilasso, the other by the most excellent Camoens, in its own Portuguese tongue, but we have not as yet acted them.
"Its object," observed Burton facetiously, to a friend, "is to make John Bull eat more beef and drink more beer." Mrs. Burton imagined naively that if it were put into a pretty bottle the demand would exceed the supply. They had hopes, too, for the Camoens, which had taken many years of close application and was now approaching completion.
In this and other descriptions of Nature Camoëns shows more of the scientific spirit than any other poet of his time. He was in this regard the first of modern writers to combine a spiritual admiration for Nature with some sense of its scientific meaning.
If you would know Portugal in her great age of discovery and conquest and national expansion, read the "Lusiads" of Camoëns. If you would know Christianity militant against the embattled legions of the Saracens, read the "Jerusalem Liberated" of Tasso. If you would know what the Puritan religion once meant to the greatest minds of England, read the "Paradise Lost" of Milton.
The enthusiasts of genius still wander on the hills of Pausilippo, and muse on VIRGIL to retrace his landscape. There is a grove at Magdalen College which retains the name of ADDISON's walk, where still the student will linger; and there is a cave at Macao, which is still visited by the Portuguese from a national feeling, for CAMOENS there passed many days in composing his Lusiad.
The style in which the houses are built, did not strike me as very remarkable; the front generally looks out upon the courtyard or garden. Among other objects which I visited was the grotto, in which the celebrated Portuguese poet, Camoens, is said to have composed the Lusiade.
I have never read the "Lusiade of Camoens," except in prose translation, consequently I have never read it at all, so shall say nothing of it; but the Henriade is all sense from the beginning to the end, often adorned by the justest and liveliest reflections, the most beautiful descriptions, the noblest images, and the sublimest sentiments; not to mention the harmony of the verse, in which Voltaire undoubtedly exceeds all the French poets: should you insist upon an exception in favor of Racine, I must insist, on my part, that he at least equals him.
After them would come perhaps the names of Magellan, of Prince Henry the Navigator and of the ill-fated Don Sebastian. One poet of the country, Camoens, is as often referred to as Tasso or Ariosto. Those whose memories go back to the European events of 1830 and thereabouts may recall the Portuguese civil wars, the woes of Dona Maria and the dark infamy of Don Miguel.
In the evening groups sitting at the door, he may sometimes see with a sigh how wealth and the prince’s favour cause a booby to pass for a Solon, and be reverenced as such, while perhaps a poor neglected Camoëns stands silent at a distance, awed by the dazzling glare of wealth and power.
Word Of The Day