ABSTRACT
AT this same period, so fertile in Spain with poetic genius, there flourished two Portuguese poets, whose names are introduced here from their connection with Spanish poetry. Saa de Miranda was born in 1494, and died in 1558. His Spanish poems are bucolic, and more truly imbued with rural imagery than that of those warrior poets, whose love of the country was that of gentlemen who enjoy the beauties of scenery and the blandishments of the odorous breezes, rather than of persons accustomed to the detail of pastoral life. Saa de Miranda sometimes mingled a higher tone of description with his rural pictures; thus imitating nature, who associates the terrible with the lovely, the storm and the soft breath of evening.a At the same time, none excels Saa de Miranda in the union of simplicity and grace: some of his verses remind the Italian reader of the odes of Chiabrera,b such as these, describing the wanderings of a nymph, with which his fancy adorned a woodland scene: – Gently straying,Gently staying,She breathed the fragrance of the breezy field;And, singing, fill’d her lap with flowers,The which the meadows yield,Painting their verdure with a thousand colours.*c Nor does his poetry want the charm of melancholy sentiment, nor the vehemence of passion; while all that he writes has the peculiar merit of a harmony and grace all his own. /
