Page:The Lusiad (Camões, tr. Mickle, 1791), Volume 2.djvu/117

A shore so flowery, and so sweet an air,
Venus might build her dearest temple there.
Onward we pass Massilia's barren strand,
A waste of wither'd grass and burning sand;
Where his thin herds the meagre native leads,
Where not a rivulet laves the doleful meads;
Nor herds nor fruitage deck the woodland maze;
O'er the wild waste the stupid ostrich strays,
In devious search to pick her scanty meal,
Whose fierce digestion gnaws the temper'd steel.
From the green verge, where Tigitania ends,
To Ethiopia's line the dreary wild extends.
Now past the limit, which his course divides,
When to the north the sun's bright chariot rides,
We leave the winding bays and swarthy shores,
Where Senegal's black wave impetuous roars;
A flood, whose course a thousand tribes surveys,
The tribes who blacken'd in the fiery blaze,
When Phaeton, devious from the solar height,
Gave Afric's sons the sable hue of night.
And now from far the Libyan cape is seen,
Now by my mandate named the Cape of Green.^[1]
Where midst the billows of the ocean smiles
A flowery sister-train, the happy isles,^[2]
Our onward prows the murmuring surges lave;
And now our vessels plough the gentle wave,

Where

1. ——Cape of Green—Called by Ptolemy, Caput Asinarium.
2. ——the happy isles—Called by the ancients, Insulæ Fortunatæ, now the Canaries.