 | The poems of Mrs. Emma Catherine Embury |  |
LAMENT OF CAMOENS.
Donna Catharina de Atayde, a lady of rank and fortune, inspired Camoens with a love as deep as it proved lasting. He was her equal in birth, though destitute of riches. His poverty, however, in the opinion of her parents, was a crime which could be expiated only by exile; and as she was attached to the court, they found no difficulty in procuring from the sovereign a decree for his banishment. This summary mode of proceeding, though it separated the lovers, served but to increase their mutual affection, while it brought upon the unhappy Camoens misfortune and disgrace. After a lapse of years, during which he had suffered penury, shipwreck, and the loss of the little property he had accumulated in the East Indies, he returned to his native country, broken in health and in spirits, only to weep over the grave of his beloved Catharina, who had cherished her hopeless love for him to the last moments of her life.—
Life of Camoens. “O when in boyhood's happier scene,I pledged my love to thee,
How very little did I ween
My recompense would now have been
So much of misery!”
Camoens.
My limbs have worn the exile's heavy chain;
And now, in weariness of heart, I come
To seek my home—
Alas! alas! what home is left me save
The marble stone that marks my Catharine's grave.
When every hour was traced in bitter tears,
When 'gainst itself my bosom learned to war,
Thou wert the star
That o'er my path of dreary darkness shone,
My own sweet Catharine, and thou too art gone!
The love, the perfect tenderness that slept
Till thou wert laid
Within the shelter of earth's quiet breast,
The sinless victim of a love unblest.
With deep affection's brightest flush would glow;
And though with bitter tears, when last we met,
Thy cheek was wet,
Yet thou didst bear a spirit high and proud,
And bid me suffer on with soul unbowed.
Linked with the voice of song, the breath of fame:
I fondly deemed that thou wouldst yet behold
My name enrolled
Amid my country's records, while my lyre
Should wake within all hearts a patriot fire.
And cursed the fate that, through such perils, saved
Me to lament o'er early-faded dreams;
Now reason seems
Gifted with life to add new stings to pain;
For frenzy rules my heart, but not my brain.
No tears, my Catharine, stain my hollow cheek;
For ah! this languid frame, this sinking heart
Tell me we part
But for a season; soon my toil-worn soul
Shall throw aside this weary life's control.
Shall nations praise “him of the sword and pen;”
Then shall my grave become a pilgrim shrine;
And then too thine,
Thus hallowed by a poet's love, shall be
Sought when forgot are thy proud ancestry.
| The poems of Mrs. Emma Catherine Embury | |