"But while his tell-tale cheek the cause betrays,
To him who marks it with affection's eye,
And speaks in silence to a father's gaze
The fatal strength of love's resistless sigh;
Parental art, resolved, alas! to prove
The stronger power of absence over love."
Unimaginative people fancy that when a poet laments in song; his heart is cold. How false this is, persons even of the chilliest fancy can judge if they call to mind, how, in times of vehement affliction, they are more alive, and the world is more alive to them, in images that hear upon their grief, than during periods of monotony. The act of writing may compose the mind; but the boiling of the soul, and quake of heart, that precede, transcend all the sufferings which tame spirits feel. Camoens wrote a sonnet[144] and an elegy on this loss, which he sent in a letter to a friend.
"I wish so much for a letter from you," he says in this letter, "that I fear that my wishes balked themselves—for it is a trick of fortune to inspire a strong desire for the very purpose of disappointing it. But as I would not have such wrong done me, as that you should suspect that I do not remember you, I determined to remind you by this, in which you will see little more or less than that I wish you to write to me from your native land; and in anticipated payment I send you news from this, which will do no harm at the bottom of a box, and may serve as a word of advice to other adventurers, that they may learn that every country grows grass. When I left Portugal, as one bound for another world, I sent all the hopes I had nourished, with a crier before them, to be hanged, as coiners of false money, and I freed myself from all the thoughts of home, so that there might not remain in me one stone upon another. Thus situated, in the midst of uncertainty and confusion, the last words I uttered were those of Scipio Africanus—'Ingrata patria, non possidebis ossa mea.' For without having committed any sin that would doom me to three days of purgatory, I have endured three-thousand from evil tongues, worse intentions, and wicked designs, born of mere envy,
"to view
Their darling ivy, torn from them, take root
Against another wall."[145]
Even friendships softer than wax have been warmed into hatred and set alight, whence my fame has received more blisters than the crackling of a roasted pig. Thus they found in my skin the valour of Achilles, who could only be wounded at the sole of the foot; for they were never able to see mine, though I forced many to show theirs. In short, Senhor, I know not how to thank myself for having escaped all the snares with which circumstances surrounded me in that country, except by coming to this, where I am more respected than the bulls of Merciana[146], and live more peacefully than in the cell of friar. This country, I say, which is the mother of rascals, and the mother-in-law of honest men. For those who seek to enrich themselves float like bladders on the water; but those whose inclinations lead them to deeds on arms, are thrown, as the tide throws dead bodies on shore, to be dried up first, and then to decay."
He then proceeds to speak of the women. The Portuguese whom he finds there, he says, are old; and of the natives he dislikes their language—"for if you address them," he continues, "in the style of Petrarch and Boscan, they reply in a language so sown with tares, that it sticks in the throat of the understanding, and would throw cold water on the most burning flame in the world. And now no more, Senhor, than this sonnet, which I wrote on the death of dom Antonio de Noronha, which I send as a mark of how much it grieved me. I wrote an eclogue on the same subject, which appears to me the best I have written. I wished also to send it to Miguel Diaz, who would be glad to see it, on account of his great friendship for dom Antonio, but being occupied by the many letters I have to write to Portugal, I have no time."
Camoens could not remain inactive; he had left a country which, notwithstanding all he had suffered, he fondly loved, because no career was open to him. He sought one in India, and when none presented itself, he cast himself in the first expedition set on foot, however dangerous or tedious it promised to be, and with all the bravery and ardour of his soul, using both pen and sword, endeavoured to fight or write himself into reputation and preferment.
1554.
Ætat.
30.
The year following his arrival at Goa, Noronha was succeeded in his viceroyalty by dom Pedro Mascarenhas, who soon after died, and Francisco Barreto acted as governor. The cruising of the Mahometans in the straits of Mecca was very detrimental to the Portuguese trade, and expeditions were sent out to protect the merchantmen, under the command of Manoel de Vasconcellos. On the second occasion, Camoens offered to serve as volunteer, and accompanying Vasconcellos, shared the great hardships of the expedition.
1555.
Ætat.
31.