No mais, canção, no mais, que irei fallando, Sem o sentir, mil annos; e se acaso Te culparem de larga e de pesada, Não pode ser, lhe dize, limitada A agoa do mar em tão pequeno vaso. Nem eu delicadezas vou cantando Co’ gosto do louvor, mas explicando Puras verdades ja por mi passadas: Oxalá foram fabulas sonhadas! Here we see the force and precision, the amazing ease and rapidity, the crystalline transparency, the sad _saudade_, and above all the deep sincerity that mark so much of his work. Both Petrarca and Camões are representative of their country, the latter not only in his poems, in which almost every Portuguese hero is included, but in his character and his life. In his wit and melancholy, his love of Nature, his passionate devotion, his persistency and endurance, his independence and sensitive pride, in his lyrical gift and power of expression, in his courage and ardent patriotism, he is the personification and ideal of the Portuguese nation. Many of Camões’ friends were also lyric poets, but their poems have mostly vanished. One of them, Luis Franco Corrêa, compiled a _cancioneiro_ of contemporary poems which still exists in manuscript. A few later poets, chiefly pastoral, have already been mentioned, but after Camões’ death the star of lyric poetry waned and set, and the only compensation was a brilliant noonday in the realm of prose. Camões was a learned poet, but he also plunged both hands in the songs and traditions of the people. The later poets withdrew themselves more and more from this perennial spring of poetical images and expression, till at last in the ripeness of time Almeida Garrett turned to it again for inspiration, even Bocage, devoted admirer of Camões though he was, having neglected this side of his genius, as was inevitable in the eighteenth century. Epic poetry scarcely fared better than the lyric, despite a hundred honest efforts to eclipse the _Lusiads_. A favourite legend of Portuguese and other folk-lore tells how the step-daughter comes from the fairies’ dwelling speaking flowers for words or with a star on her forehead, but her envious half-sister, who then visits the fairies, returns uttering mud and toads or with an ass’s head. If the epic poems of those who emulated the fame of Camões are something better than mud they nevertheless fail for the most part lamentably in that inspiration which Portuguese history might have been expected to give. Alguns (misera gente) inutilmente Compõem grandes Iliadas,