And behold the Queen’s apron was filled with roses. In the matter of buildings King Dinis not only fortified many towns with castles and walls, but founded numerous churches and convents. The traveller in Portugal even now can scarcely pass a day without coming upon something to remind him of the sixth King of Portugal. The convent of Odivellas, the cloisters of Alcobaça, the beautiful ruins of the castle above Leiria are but three of many instances which show how King Dinis’ work survives even in the twentieth century. It was said of him that-- Whate’er he willed Dinis fulfilled. But he nearly always wrought even better than he knew. He realised no doubt that Portugal was an all-but-island, especially when the relations with Castille were unfriendly; but he could scarcely foresee that of his pinewoods would be built the “ships that went to the discovery of new worlds and seas”; that a future Master of his new Order of Christ would devote its vast revenues to the great work of exploring the West Coast of Africa, the work which bore so important a share in transforming Europe from all that we connect with mediævalism to all that is modern; that his embryo fleet would grow and prosper till Portugal became the foremost sea-power; or that the treaty with England would still be bearing fruit six centuries after his death. The University, too, lasted and became one of the glories of Portugal, and a source of many of her greatest men in the sixteenth century. Since the sixteenth century, after being several times moved from Coimbra to Lisbon and from Lisbon to Coimbra, it has been fixed in the little town on the right bank of the Mondego and remains one of the most treasured possessions of modern Portugal. The quality that explains how so many of King Dinis’ institutions endured and prospered marvellously in succeeding centuries was thoroughness, the conviction that any work, however humble, if thoroughly done must bear excellent fruit, and a certain solidity which finds little satisfaction in feeding beggars precariously, but great satisfaction in setting them to work on the land. Perhaps, then, it may come as a surprise that King Dinis was also a poet, one of the greatest of Portugal’s early poets. We have nearly one hundred and fifty poems under his name. He may not have written them all, some may have been composed by the palace _jograes_, but he showed his good taste and inclination for the national and popular elements in writing or collecting not only poems in the Provençal manner, then on the wane in Portugal, but that older, indigenous poetry which is the most charming feature of early Portuguese literature. And King Dinis’ poems are among the most charming of all. Here is one of his quaint popular songs, the fascination of which is only faintly discernible in translation: Friend and lover mine --Be God our shield!-- See the flower o’ the pine And fare afield.