That imposing Portuguese poem, the Lusiad of Camoens, is full of jubilation over the discovery of the New World.  Camoens made his notes of foreign places at first hand; he had served as a soldier, fought at the foot of Atlas in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, had doubled the Cape twice, and, inspired by a deep love for Nature, had spent sixteen years in examining the phenomena of the ocean on the Indian and Chinese shores.  He was a great sea painter.  His poetic and inventive power remind one at times of Dante—­for instance, in the description of the Dream Face; and he pictures foreign lands with the clearness and detail of the discoverers and later travellers.  Here and there his poetry is like the Diary of Columbus translated into verse—­epic verse.

He had the same fiery spirit, nerve, and fresh insight, with the poet’s gift added.

(None the less, the classic apparatus of deities in Thetys’ Apology is no adornment.)

Comparisons from Nature and animals are few but detailed: 

  E’en as the prudent ants which towards their nest
  Bearing the apportioned heavy burden go,
  Exercise all their forces at their best,
  Hostile to hostile winter’s frost and snow;
  There, all their toils and labours stand confessed,
  There, never looked-for energy they show;
  So, from the Lusitanians to avert
  Their horrid Fate, the nymphs their power exert.

  Thus, as in some sequestered sylvan mere
  The frogs (the Lycian people formerly),
  If that by chance some person should appear
  While out of water they incautious be,
  Awake the pool by hopping here and there,
  To fly the danger which they deem they see,
  And gathering to some safe retreat they know,
  Only their heads above the water show—­So fly the Moors.

  E’en as when o’er the parching flame there glows
  A flame, which may from some chance cause ignite,
  (All while the whistling, puffing Boreas blows),
  Fanned by the wind sets all the growth alight,
  The shepherd’s group, lying in their repose
  Of quiet sleep, aroused in wild afright
  At crackling flames that spread both wide and high,
  Gather their goods and to the village fly;
  So doth the Moor.

  E’en as the daisy which once brightly smiled,
  Plucked by unruly hands before its hour,
  And harshly treated by the careless child,
  All in her chaplet tied with artless power. 
  Droops, of its colour and its scent despoiled,
  So seems this pale and lifeless damsel flower;
  The roses of her lips are dry and dead,
  With her sweet life the mingled white and red.

The following simile reminds us of the far-fetched comparison of
Apollonios Rhodios[11]: 

  As the reflected lustre from the bright
  Steel mirror, or of beauteous crystal fine,
  Which, being stricken by the solar light,
  Strikes back and on some other part doth shine;
  And when, to please the child’s vain curious sight,
  Moved o’er the house, as may his hand incline,
  Dances on walls and roof and everywhere,
  Restless and tremulous, now here now there,
  So did the wandering judgment fluctuate.