E eu tenho amado tanto! e não conheço o Amor!
Flesh, what would you more? What would you more, my heart?
The seasons pass and women, too, pass with them.…
And I have loved so much, yet know not what is Love!
Tedio (Ennui) is the voluptuousness of Nirvana after the voluptuousness of Dionysus; like all sinners, he comes for rest to a church. “Oh, to cease dreaming of what I cannot behold! To have my blood freeze and my flesh turn cold! And, veiled in a crepuscular glow, let my soul sleep without a desire,—ample, funereal, lugubrious, empty as an abandoned cathedral!…”
The section As Viagens (Voyages) consists chiefly of twelve admirable sonnets—a form in which Bilac’s blending of intense feeling with artistic restraint seems as much at home as any modern poet—ranging from the first migration, through the Phoenicians, the Jews, Alexander, Cæsar, the Barbarians, the Crusades, the Indies, Brazil, the precursor of the airplane in Toledo, the Pole, to Death, which is the end of all voyages. At the risk of overemphasizing a point that has already been made, I would quote the sonnet on Brazil:
Pára! Uma terra nova ao teu olhar fulgura!
Detem-te! Aqui, de encontro a verdejantes plagas,
Em caricias se muda a inclemencia das vagas.…