How loyally did David keep His fealty for anointed Saul! That saw the crowned warrior's fall! Yea! duteously he sorrow'd o'er His slaughter'd prince, though from his hand Tyrannic wrongs so oft he bore; Kings in high duties may not fail; Their lawless wills uncheck'd to do. He who finds grace before his king, Men by their acts, not words, are known; Suspicions self can oft elude. One sells himself to others' will; He throws a stone his hand conceals- Vice will be punish'd (none deny The rule), reward is virtue's lot: Rogues have I seen who look'd like men Went warmly wrapp'd and gaily deck'd. Yea, sire! in hamlet and in town They priz'd the ill-got spoils they wore, Beyond rich furs, black, grey, or brown, Beyond the cygnet's softest down; Those spoils cost less, and cover more. In the days of Sá de Miranda the Portuguese had a good navy, and were famed for their spirit of maritime discovery and enterprise. The transitions in this poem are often so quick and abrupt as to occasion some obscurity. Here follows a stanza which, from reverential feeling, we decline to translate; it alludes to the title of "King" being placed upon the cross. Alas for women, timid, weak! Alas! for orphans suffering wrong! Alas! poor souls! who dare not speak Their plaints, nor retribution seek From those to whom high powers belong. The laws, save well dispens'd they are, We shall not find the gracefulness of language and the tenderness of feel ing, for which Sá de Miranda was celebrated by his own compatriot critics, in his didactic poems, or in his Portuguese pastorals;* it is in his lyrics they appear, in his sonnets, cantigas, hymns, &c.; and of these, we regret to say, it is in our power to offer but scanty specimens. Copies of his entire works are now very rare (especially in Great Britain), and we have been unable to procure one. We can only select from such pieces as we find in the Lusitanian "Parnassus," and other miscellaneous collections: CANTIGA.† FROM THE FIRST PORTUGUESE ECLOGUE. Where, then, shall I rest me?-where a solace borrow? If bards of yore said truly, love's most bitter anguish The "Parnassus" contains the fable of Psyche, charmingly versified by Miranda; but it is too long for our limits, and not suitable for extracts; and its peculiar beauty (for it boasts no great originality in handling the subject) cannot be successfully transfused from its soft southern vernacular, into our harsher northern tongue. Circumscribed as we are in our selections from Sa's Portuguese works, we are induced to make two or three translations from his compositions in the Castilian language, thus engrafting into our Portuguese olive a small branch from a Spanish tree reared by a native of Portugal: Which are inferior to his Spanish Pastorals. We proceed to close the brief memoir of Sá de Miranda. He enjoyed, in his literary retirement, many years of true happiness; though he achieved no brilliant success in the paths of wealth or ambition, in which alone so many conceive felicity to exist. But he possessed what he preferred-independence, a rural home, and domestic love. Yet what man shall go to his rest without tasting the cup of sorrow? that cup which, if received with a right feeling, is, though bitter, medicinal to the spirit. The time at length came, when it should be drank in the pleasant retreat of Tapada. Since the expulsion of the Moors from Portugal, the Portuguese had carried the war against that people into Africa, and fought them on their own ground, in frequently-recurring contests, partly inspired by their religious zeal against Mahometanism, and partly by their political interest; fully alive to the importance of possessing ports and territories along the southern shores of the Mediterranean. The Portuguese troops-then brave and well-trained soldiers - contended nobly with the disadvantages under which they necessarily laboured in the country of a powerful, determined, and valiant enemy; but their brilliant successes were checquered by reverses. In a great battle before Ceuta, in April, 1553, a vast slaughter was made of the Portuguese forces; and one of their most gallant leaders, Don Antonio de Noronha, son of the Count de Linhares, lost his life, in the flower of his age. His death is the subject of an eclogue by Camoens, entitled, “Umbrano and Frondelio," in which he is lamented, with patriotic grief, under the name of Tionio. But to Sá de Miranda the battle of Ceuta brought a heavier affliction than merely that of a patriot. Among the slain was his eldest son, Gonzalo Mendes de Sá, who fell in the bloom of his youth, to the deep sorrow of his parents. His father, however, imbued with the enthusiasm of the times, found consolation in considering his son a Christian martyr, as he had died fighting against infidels; and he gave vent to his feelings in an elegy on the memory of his soldier-son; an extract from which we translate, but using the common Eng. lish elegiac measure, as more congenial to the English ear than the tercets in which the original is written. The terza rima is universally admitted to be difficult of management in our language; and the attempts hitherto made to naturalise it have not been very successful. EXTRACT FROM THE PORTUGUESE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF GONZALO DE SA. Lamb, that before the Lamb's high throne hast sped, Spake Paul, in whom Faith's beacon we behold: Mondego, Tagus, with his sands of gold, To meet and mingle with the ocean's tide. 'I came, saw, conquered." Truly mayest thou chide The cruel foe,† and ope or close at will Thy hand; for now in safety dost thou dwell. No more of tears, unless for us whom still Thou leav'st behind, dark as in prison cell. Go, go, in peace!-thou hast no more to fear, To those who seek like thee yon better sphere, The wounded heart of the affectionate mother was not to be solaced by song for the untimely death of her son. Donna Briolanja drooped in a gradual decline, and died in 1555, having survived her child but two years, and with her died all the energies of her devotedly-attached husband. On the death of his gentle, loving, and intellectual companion, he lost all pleasure in every thing that had pleased before. He gave up his rural occupations and exercises, never left his house but to attend public worship, suffered his beard to grow, neglected his dress and person, secluded himself from his friends, and abandoned all his former pursuits, even his favourite poetry. One sonnet he consecrated to his wife's memory. It was his last effusion: he wrote no more. After three years of profound and listless melancholy, during which he merely existed rather than lived, the poet expired, on the 15th March, 1558, and was buried in a chapel dedicated to St. Margaret, within the Church of St. Martin of Canazedo, in the archdiocese of Braga; where a handsome tomb was erected over him by order of Martin Gonzales, Minister of the Council to King Sebastiang (son of Prince John, who had predeceased his father, John III.) On the tomb was engraved a Latin epitaph, the sense of which we give in the following paraphrase : Miranda's muse, that now amid the woods With skill divine could blend the gay, the The simple song, the high religious strain. The fame his gallant sires achieved of yore; Of pastoral pipes. He heeded not the pride Many poets of the Peninsula have celebrated Sa de Miranda in verse, commemorating not only his poetic talents, but also his amiable disposition, his spirit of independence, and his love of rural life. And Lope de Vega, the • See 2 Cor. xii. 14. The allusion is obscure, but the poet means that in the course of of nature parents expect their children to survive them. Obscure; but he means that his son need no longer keep his hand closed on a weapon of war. +eas We have not been able to procure more than the first four lines of this sonnet. poet of a rival nation, honoured him as a Spanish bard (on account of his Spanish eclogues), in his "Laurel of Apollo," wherein the Castilian votaries of the muses are represented as candidates for a laurel wreath, to be bestowed by the God of Song. This "Laurel of Apollo" is, however, but an indifferent production, heavy and prolix; and if on it alone its author's fame depended, it would never have advanced his claim to the laureate crown. Considering that the talents of Sá de Miranda were neither sublime nor brilliantly original, he seems to have THE COW HUNT. A TALE OF FORMER TIMES IN IRELAND. "Though wintry waves and stormy sea May sever me for aye from thee." SUCH were the concluding lines of a short poem which I wrote in an album, where I have reason to believe it is still regarded with some admiration, which it shares in common with fourteen "Forget thee! No first shall this heart;" and five bearing reference to India's burning shore, all written by young officers under the same circumstances as myself. I chose the above, not that I was going to make a long voyage, but because I thought it poetical and novel. I was ordered to join my regiment in Ireland. I know that she for whom I wrote the lines thought me a martyr; and I packed my portmanteau with the feelings of Quintus Curtius, feeling at the same time that, unlike him, my departure would leave blank a chasm in more than one circle. I was prepared for the worst, but like a philosopher, made the best arrangements in my power viz., four boxes of full-flavored Havannah cigars; six volumes of Bulwer's novels; two of Byron; a small wiry-haired terrier dog. With these, an army-list, and a good deal of sleep, I calculated on being able to pass the time. A friend who had been reading Cooke's Voyages, recommended me to bring some glass beads and cheap cutlery to pacify the natives in the more remote districts, but I rejected this, as it seemed pusillanimous. To one fond of snipe-shooting, few places offer a more eligible retreat than the village of Kilmaskulla, to which I was ordered with a captain and a company of soldiers. For miles round, the country presented a wide expanse of rich bog, diversified with cottiers' huts; and from our back-windows we might easily have bagged a brace or two, without leaving the house. Our front ones looked upon a more animated scene. Before each of the houses was a small pond, stocked with duck, heaps of potato-skins, amid which the children played with the pigs and cur-dogs, while the old grandmothers chatted at the doors, smoking short black pipes; occasionally the stillness was broken by a pig hunt, or a dog with a kettle tied to his tail. Our society was small and select, being limited to a Mr. Cuppage, an inspector of public works a small sandy-haired man, with just enough chin to grow an imperial on (it has always struck me as a strange fact, that sandy-haired men should have such a fondness for imperials; and that in cavalry regiments three out of every four moustaches should be red). He had also a strong predilection for punch, and out shooting was not a * Azevedo was the surname of his mother, Donna Briolanja. |