WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Oxford book of Portuguese verse cover

The Oxford book of Portuguese verse

Chapter 268: 195. Sahara Vitae
Open in WeRead

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.

OLAVO BILAC

1865-1918

195. Sahara Vitae

Lá vão! O ceo se arquea
como um teito de bronze infindo e quente,
e o sol fusila e fusilando ardente
criva de flechas de aço o mar de area.
La vão, com os olhos onde a sede atea
um fogo estranho, procurando em frente
esse oasis do amor que claramente
alem belo e falaz se delinea.
Mas o simun da morte sopra, a tromba
convulsa envolve-os, prostra-os, e aplacada
sobre si mesmo roda e exhausta tomba;
e o sol de novo no igneo ceo fusila,
e sobre a geração exterminada
a area dorme placida e tranquila.