BUST OF CAMOENS, MACAO
The life of the great poet is underlaid with romance and sadness. Born at Lisbon about 1524, he was given an education fitting him for a courtier's life, and it was an unfortunate affection for a high-born donna in attendance upon the queen that caused him to be banished from the land of his birth. After a roystering career as a soldier in Africa, he sought shelter at Goa, in India. There he wrote a volume severely castigating the home government for its official abuses in the East, and this led to his being treated by his countrymen as a traitor and outcast. Now in a Goa prison, now at liberty, he at last went to Macao, and it was there that by his pen he redeemed to some extent his good name, to the extent certainly of being permitted to return to Lisbon, and there he died about 1580, poor and neglected. It is insisted that Camoens's influence and efforts preserved the Portuguese language from destruction during the Spanish occupation of the neighboring country, and it is a fact that before 1770 no less than thirty-eight editions of the "Lusiad" were published in Portugal.
To commemorate the eight or ten years he passed in Macao, a public garden is named for him, and there, in a grotto of impressive grandeur, is a bust of the man singing the praises of his natal country as no other writer in verse or prose has ever succeeded in doing. The bronze effigy rests on a plinth upon which is engraved in three languages these lines from the pen of a pilgrim to the Eastern shrine once hallowed by the presence of the bard of a nation:
Gem of the Orient earth and open sea
Macao! that in thy lap and on thy breast
Hast gathered beauties all the loveliest
O'er which the sun smiles in his majesty.
The very clouds that top the mountain crest
Seem to repose there lingering lovingly.
How full of grace the green Cathyan tree
Bends to the breeze and how thy sands are prest
With gentlest waves which ever and anon
Break their awakened furies on thy shore.
* * * * * *
Were these the scenes that poet looked upon,
Whose lyre though known to fame knew misery more?