The poetry of Machado de Assis appears in four collections, all of which go to make up a book of moderate size. And, if the truth is to be told, their worth is about as moderate as their size. If critics have found him, in his verse, very correct and somewhat cold; if they have pointed out that he lacked a vivid imagination, suffered from a limited vocabulary, was indifferent to nature, and thus deficient in description, they have but spoken what is evident from a reading of the lines. This is not to say that a poem here and there has not become part of the national memory--as, for example, the well-known _Circulo Vicioso_ (Vicious Circle) and _Mosca Azul_ (The Blue Fly)--verses of a broadly moralistic significance and of little originality. His _Chrysalides_, the first collection, dates back to 1864; already his muse appears as a lady desirous of tranquillity (and this at the age of twenty-five!) while in the poem _Erro_ he makes the telltale declaration: Amei-te um dia Com esse amor passageiro Que nasce na phantasia E não chega ao coração. “I loved you one day with that transient love which is born in the imagination and does not reach the heart.” There you have the type of love that appears in his poetry; and there you have one of the reasons why the man is so much more successful as a psychological ironist in his novels than as a poet. Yet close study would show that at times this tranquillity, far from being always the absence of torment, is the result of neutralizing forces; it is like the revolving disk of primary hues that seems white in the rapidity of its whirling. These early poems dwell upon such love; upon a desire for justice, as revealed in his _Epitaphio do Mexico_ (Mexico’s Epitaph) and _Polonia_ (Poland); upon an elegiac note that seems statement rather than feeling. “Like a pelican of love,” he writes in one of his poems that recalls the famous image of de Musset, “I will rend my breast and nurture my offspring with my own blood; my offspring: desire, chimera, hope.…” But read through the verses of _Chrysalides_ and it is hard to find where any red blood flows. The vocabulary is small, the phrases are trite; his very muse is named _Musa Consolatrix_, bringing solace rather than agitated emotion.