A HAPPY COINCIDENCE

 

I subscribe to "Poem-a-Day" at Poets.org and the site sends . . . a poem a day. Some I like and save in a folder, and some I don't and delete. I saved this one. (Check out the site by clicking the link.) 

Naturally I loved today's poem, a sonnet by Luís Vaz de Camões, the famous Portuguese Renaissance poet who figures so prominently in my mystery, Deadly Verse.

I seriously doubt this was the sonnet in my book. The sonnet of my mystery is handwritten, original, and never-before-published. (And therefore worth a lot of money and worth killing for.) But it was exciting to get a poem by Camões in my inbox! Since it is in the public domain, I'll share the English translation here: (No, I did not tranlate it - alas, my Portuguese is not that good. It was translated by an Irishman back in the day,  Viscount Strangford.) The Mondego of the poem is the river of Camões's beloved city of Coimbra. Here is the poem in English:

Sonnet VIII

Mondego! thou, whose waters cold and clear 
Gird those green banks, where fancy fain would stay, 
Fondly to muse on that departed day 
When Hope was kind and Friendship seem’d sincere; 
—Ere I had purchas’d knowledge with a tear.
—Mondego! though I bend my pilgrim way 
To other shores, where other fountains stray,
And other rivers roll their proud career, 
Still—nor shall time, nor grief, nor stars severe, 
Nor widening distance e’er prevail in aught 
To make thee less to this sad bosom dear; 
And Memory oft, by old Affection taught, 
Shall lightly speed upon the plumes of thought, 
To bathe amongst thy waters cold and clear!

And here is a little blurb bio about Camões:

"About this particular sonnet, Strangford writes, 'The earliest and happiest years of [Camões’s] life were passed at Coimbra. The walls of that town were bathed by the river Mondego, to which this beautiful Sonnet is addressed.”'

I can't say Camões is my favorite poet because I have so many, but I will say that after reading about him and reading translations of many of his sonnets, the sonnet is growing on me.

How about you? Do you like poetry? Do you have a favorite poet or poem? A favorite poetry form? And have you had any happy coincidences lately?