GERALD MASSEY TO RICHARD F. BURTON,

"Englished by Richard Burton." And well done,
As it was well worth doing; for this is one

Of those old Poets, who are always new,
That share eternity with all that's true,

And of their own abounding spirit do give

Substance to Earth's dead Shadows; and make men live

Who in action merely did but flit and pass;
Now fixed for ever in thought's reflecting-glass.
This is the Poet of weary wanderers

In perilous lands; and wide-sea Voyagers,
And climbers fall'n and broken on the stairs.
A man of men; a master of affairs,
Whose own life-story is, in touching ruth,
Poem more potent than all feigned truth.
His Epic trails a glory in the wake
Of Gama, Raleigh, Frobisher, and Drake.
The poem of Discovery! sacred to
Discoverers, and their deeds of derring-do,
Is fitly rendered, in The Traveller's land,
By one o' the foremost of the fearless band.

GERALD MASSEY.

CONT

PREFACE.

CONTRARY to custom I have begun with my translation of the Poem, and have ended with what usually comes first, the Commentary. "Camoens : his Life and his Lusiads," an Introduction now converted to a postscript, is necessary for the full comprehension of an Epic upwards of three centuries old; and the following synopsis of the Portuguese Odyssey shows its raison d'être :

The text of the Poem is immediately followed by the 19 Estancias desprezadas, or Rejected stanzas, omitted by Camoens, which were printed from manuscripts after