Porque teu nome é para mim o nome
De uma patria distante e idolatrada,
Cuja saudade ardente me consome:
E ouvil-o é ver a eterna primavera
E a eterna luz da terra abençoada,
Onde, entre flores, teu amor me espera.[6]
Sarças de Fogo, as its name would imply, abandons the restraint of Via Lactea. In O Julgamento de Phryné beauty becomes not only its own excuse for being, but the excuse for wrong as well. Phryne’s judges, confronted with her unveiled beauty, tremble like lions before the calm gaze of their tamer, and she appears before the multitude “in the immortal triumph of Flesh and Beauty.” In Santania a maiden’s desires rise powerfully to the surface only to take flight in fright at their own daring. No Limiar de Morte (On The Threshold of Death) is the voluptuary’s memento mori after his carpe diem. There is a touch of irony borrowed from Machado de Assis in the closing tercets:
You, who loved and suffered, now turn your steps
Toward me. O, weeping soul,
You leave behind the hate of the worldly hell.…