Page:The Lusiad (Camões, tr. Mickle, 1791), Volume 2.djvu/154

A grave, the awful gift of every shore!
Alas! what weary toils with us they bore!
Long, long endear'd by fellowship in woe,
O'er their cold dust we give the tears to flow;
And, in their hapless lot forbode our own,
A foreign burial, and a grave unknown!

Now deeply yearning o'er our deathful fate,
With joyful hope of India's shore elate,
We loose the hawsers and the sail expand,
And upward coast the Ethiopian strand.
What danger threaten'd at Quiloa's isle,
Mozambic's treason, and Mombassa's guile:
What miracles kind heaven, our guardian, wrought,
Loud fame already to thine ears has brought:
Kind heaven again that guardian care display'd,
And to thy port our weary fleet convey'd,
Where thou, O king, heaven's regent power below,
Bidst thy full bounty and thy truth to flow:
Health to the sick, and to the weary rest,
And sprightly hope revived in every breast,
Proclaim thy gifts, with grateful joy repay'd,
The brave man's tribute for the brave man's aid.
And now in honour of thy fond command,
The glorious annals of my native land;
And what the perils of a route so bold,
So dread as ours, my faithful lips have told.
Then judge, great monarch, if the world before
Ere saw the prow such length of seas explore!

Nor