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The Oxford book of Portuguese verse

Chapter 216: 158. Soneto
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About This Book

This anthology gathers Portuguese verse from the twelfth through the twentieth century, presenting medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric—dance and pilgrimage songs—alongside troubadour-influenced courtly love poems, satirical pieces, and later lyric developments. An extended introduction situates the poems in early national formation, foreign contacts, and manuscript songbooks, and highlights forms such as cantigas de amigo, cantigas de amor, serranilhas, barcarolas, and other folk and court genres. Selections stress the music and dance origins of many texts and trace a continuity between popular village songs and cultivated court poetry, offering a historical and formal panorama of Portuguese poetic tradition.

JOÃO XAVIER DE MATTOS

† 1789

158. Soneto

Pos-se o sol: como ja na sombra fea
do dia pouco a pouco a luz desmaia!
E a parda mão da noite, antes que caia,
de grossas nuvens todo o ar semea.
Apenas ja diviso a minha aldea,
ja do cipreste não distingo a faia.
Tudo em silencio está: só la da praia
se ouvem quebrar as ondas pela area.
Com a mão na face a vista ao ceo levanto,
e cheo de mortal melancolia
nos tristes olhos mal sustento o pranto:
e se inda algum alivio ter podia
era ver esta noite durar tanto
que nunca mais amanhecesse o dia!