Come! for at last you shall enjoy within my arms
All the wantonness, all the fascinations,
All the delights of eternal rest!
This is impressed in far superior fashion by one of the best sonnets Bilac ever wrote: Sahara Vitae. Here, in the image of life’s desert, he conveys a haunting sense of helpless futility such as one gets only rarely, from such sonnets, say, as the great Shelleyan one, Ozymandias of Egypt.
Lá vão! O céo se arqueia
Como um tecto de bronze infindo e quente,
E o sol fuzila e, fuzilando, ardente
Criva de flechas de aço o mar de areia.…
Lá vão, com os olhos onde a sêde ateia