truth be known.
If o'er the seas a lawless pest I roam,
A blood-stain'd exile from my native home,
How many a fertile shore and beauteous isle,
Where Nature's gifts, unclaim'd, unbounded, smile,
Mad have I left, to dare the burning zone,
And all the horrors of the gulfs unknown
That roar beneath the axle of the world.
Where ne'er before was daring sail unfurl'd!
And have I left these beauteous shores behind,
And have I dar'd the rage of ev'ry wind,
That now breath'd fire, and now came wing'd with frost,
Lur'd by the plunder of an unknown coast?
Not thus the robber leaves his certain prey
For the gay promise of a nameless day.
Dread and stupendous, more than death-doom'd man
Might hope to compass, more than wisdom plan,
To thee my toils, to thee my dangers rise:
Ah! Lisbon's kings behold with other eyes.
Where virtue calls, where glory leads the way,
No dangers move them, and no toils dismay.
Long have the kings of Lusus' daring race
Resolv'd the limits of the deep to trace,
Beneath the morn to ride the furthest waves,
And pierce the farthest shore old Ocean laves.
Sprung from the prince,[545] before whose matchless power
The strength of Afric wither'd as a flower
Never to bloom again, great Henry shone,
Each gift of nature and of art his own;
Bold as his sire, by toils on toils untir'd,
To find the Indian shore his pride aspir'd.
Beneath the stars that round the Hydra shine,
And where fam'd Argo hangs the heav'nly sign,
Where thirst and fever burn on ev'ry gale
The dauntless Henry rear'd the Lusian sail.
Embolden'd by the meed that crown'd his toils,
Beyond the wide-spread shores and num'rous isles,
Where both the tropics pour the burning day,
Succeeding heroes forc'd th' exploring way;
That race which never view'd the Pleiad's car,
That barb'rous race beneath the southern star,
Their eyes beheld.--Dread roar'd the blast--the wave
Boils to the sky, the meeting whirlwinds rave
O'er the torn heav'ns; loud on their awe-struck ear
Great Nature seem'd to call, 'Approach not here!'
At Lisbon's court they told their dread escape,
And from her raging tempests, nam'd the Cape.[546]
'Thou southmost point,' the joyful king exclaim'd,
'Cape of Good Hope, be thou for ever nam'd!
Onward my fleets shall dare the dreadful way,