Luís de Camões quotes - page 2
You saw, with what unheard of insolence
The highest heavens they did invade of yore:
You saw, how (against reason, against sense)
They did invade the sea with sail and oar:
Actions so proud, so daring, so immense,
You saw; and we see daily more, and more:
That in few years (I fear) of heaven and sea,
Men, will be called gods; and but men, we.
Luís de Camões
To this old song:
Partridge lost his quill,
there's no harm won't befall him.
Partridge, whose winged fancy
aspired to a high estate,
lost a feather in his flight
and won the pen of despondency.
He finds in the breeze no buoyancy
for his pennants to haul him:
there's no harm won't befall him.
He wished to soar to a high tower
but found his plumage clipped,
and, observing himself plucked,
pines away in despair.
If he cries out for succor,
stoke the fire to forestall him:
there's no harm won't befall him.
Luís de Camões
How sweet is praise, and justly purchased glory,
By one's own actions, when to Heaven they soar!
Each nobler soul will strain, to have his story,
Match, if not darken, all that went before.
Envy of other's fame, not transitory,
Screws up illustrious actions more, and more.
Such, as contend in honorable deeds,
The spur of high applause incites their speeds.
Luís de Camões
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon's shore,
Through Seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the watery waste,
With prowess more than human forced their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they waged, what seas, what dangers passed,
What glorious empire crowned their toils at last!
Luís de Camões
