Gonçalves Dias
Meet the poet
Gonçalves Dias
There was no man more in love with his country Brazil than Gonçalves (1823-1864), but it is not the reason he wrote this ode to his homeland. At 15, after studying French, Latin and philosophy, he left Brazil to study law in Portugal. He got so homesick that he started writing poems in 1843 at twenty years old about his country on the other side of the ocean.
The result is this Canção do Exílio, Song of Exile. Even though this ode to Brazil is over 150 years old, his words are still resonating in the collective soul of the Brasilian people. Some of its sentences are even in the National Anthem of this ridicilously diversified and overly gorgeous country.
Brazilian poet Gonçalves Dias around 1855
My land has palm trees
Where the thrush sings.
The birds that sing here
Do not sing as they do there.
Our skies have more stars,
Our valleys have more flowers.
Our forests have more life,
Our lives have more love.
In dreaming, alone, at night,
I find more pleasure there.
My land has palm trees
Where the thrush sings.
My land has beauties
That cannot be found here;
In dreaming – alone, at night –
I find more pleasure there.
My land has palm trees
Where the thrush sings.
May God never allow
That I die before I return;
Without seeing the beauties
That I cannot find here;
Without seeing the palm trees
Where the thrush sings.
