[1] “It has already been said,” writes Verissimo, “that the Latins have no poetry, but rather eloquence; they confound sentimental emotion, which is the predicate of poetry, with intellectual sensation, which is the attribute of eloquence. There is in the poetry of the so-called Latin peoples more rhetoric than spontaneity, more art than nature, more artifice than simplicity. It is more erudite, more ‘laboured,’ more intellectual, and for that reason less felt, less sincere, less ingenuous than that of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, for example. I do not discuss this notion. We Brazilians, who are scarcely half Latin, are highly sensitive, I know, to poetic rhetoric,--which does not prevent us, however, from being moved by the sentimentalism of poetry--though superficially--when it comes in the simple form of popular lyrism and sings, as that does, with its naïve rhetoric, the sensual passions of our amorous ardor, which is characteristic of hybrids. Examples of this are Casimiro de Abreu, Laurindo Rabello, Varella and Gonçalves Dias himself. When the poets became refined, and wrapped their passion, real or feigned--and in fact rather feigned than real--in the sightly and false externals of the Parnassian rhetoric, bending all their efforts toward meticulous perfection of form, rhyme, metre, sound, they ceased to move the people, or impressed it only by the outer aspect of their perfect poems through the sonority of their verses. For at bottom, what we prefer is form, but form that is rhetorical and eloquent, or what seems to us such,--_palavrão_ (wordiness), emphasis, beautiful images.…” [2] Christ! In vain you died upon a mountain.… Your blood did not erase the original spot upon my forehead. Even today, through adverse fate, my children are the cattle of the universe, and I--universal pasture. Today America feeds on my blood.--A condor transformed into a vulture, bird of slavery. She has joined the rest … treacherous sister! Like the base brothers of Joseph who in ancient days sold their brother.… Enough, O Lord. With your powerful arm send through the planets and through space pardon for my crimes! For two thousand years I have been wailing a cry.… Hear my call yonder in the infinite, my God, Lord my God!