13 Best Poems by Olavo Bilac

who never heard of olavo bilac? One of the essential names of Brazilian poetry, Bilac, who received the epithet of “prince of poets”, was the main representative of Parnassianism, a literary school that broke through the 19th century and lasted until the mid-1920s, when the Modernism. His extensive and peculiar work is still today an object of study and admiration, being constantly cited in tests of various competitions and entrance exams.

About Olavo Bilac

Olavo Bilac (Olavo Braz Martins dos Guimarães Bilac) was born on December 16, 1865, in Rio de Janeiro, then the federal capital. He was a journalist, poet, educational inspector and maximum representative of Parnassianism, a literary school that emerged in Brazil in the 19th century, 1980s. He studied up to the fourth year of the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro and, already in São Paulo, started the Law course, also abandoned before the end. He then decided to devote himself to journalism and literature, also participating in civic campaigns. The lyrics of the Anthem to the Flag are his:

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ANTHEM TO THE FLAG

Save beautiful banner of hope!
Save august symbol of peace!
Your noble presence to remembrance
The greatness of the Motherland brings us. Receive the affection that ends
in our youthful chest,
dear symbol of the earth,
From the beloved land of Brazil!

In your beautiful bosom you portray
This pure blue sky,
The unparalleled greenery of these forests,
And the splendor of Cruzeiro do Sul. Receive the affection that ends
In our youthful chest,
dear symbol of the earth,
From the beloved land of Brazil!

Contemplating your sacred figure,
We understand our duty,
And Brazil for its beloved children,
powerful and happy it must be! Receive the affection that ends
In our youthful chest,
dear symbol of the earth,
From the beloved land of Brazil!

About the immense Brazilian Nation,
In times of celebration or pain,
The sacred flag always hangs
Pavilion of justice and love!
Receive the affection that ends
In our youthful chest,
dear symbol of the earth,
From the beloved land of Brazil!

In addition to civic campaigns, he also engaged in politics, having even collected several enemies, among them President Marshal Floriano Peixoto, whom he opposed. At that time he hid in Minas Gerais and, upon returning to Rio de Janeiro, then the federal capital, was arrested. After the period of turmoil, in 1891 he was appointed officer of the Secretary of the Interior of the State of Rio de Janeiro. He was also one of the founders of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and, in 1898, he assumed the position of Federal District school inspector, from which he retired shortly before his death, on December 28 of 1918.

Olavo Bilac is the main representative of Brazilian Parnassianism. Alongside names like Alberto de Oliveira and Raimundo Correia, Bilac vehemently defended the Parnassian aesthetic, whose main concern was the formalism and the cult of style, using an elaborate language, consisting of a hermetic vocabulary and full of references to culture Greco-Roman. The poet preferred fixed forms, especially the sonnet, and when we analyze his work we can observe the evolution of objectivity Parnassian for a more intimate and subjective poetry, characteristics found in poems such as Milky Way, one of his most acclaimed.

For you to know the verses of the most read Parnassian poet of his time, the website school education selected fifteen poems by Olavo Bilac that will certainly arouse your interest in the work of the writer, the greatest representative of Parnassian aesthetics. We hope you enjoy your reading!

Best Poems by Olavo Bilac

Index
- Poem: Nel mezzo del camin… – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: XXX - Olavo Bilac
- Poem: Sleeps… – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: Now (you shall say) to hear stars! – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: To a poet – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: To the suffering heart – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: Old age – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: “Benedicite” – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: In me too – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: Leave the eyes of the world – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: Portuguese language – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: Wildfire – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: The Dawn of Love – Olavo Bilac
- Poem: Words – Olavo Bilac
- Construction:
Poem: Nel mezzo del camin… – Olavo Bilac

In the mezzo del camin…

I arrived. You've arrived. tired vines
And sad, and sad and tired I came.
You had the soul of dreams populated,
And I had a populated dream soul…
And we stopped suddenly on the road
Of life: long years, stuck to mine
Your hand, the dazzled view
I had the light that your gaze contained.
Today you go again… In the match
Not even the tears moisten your eyes,
Nor does the pain of parting move you.
And I, lonely, turn my face, and shiver,
Seeing your disappearing figure
At the extreme bend of the extreme path.

Poem: XXX - Olavo Bilac

XXX

To the suffering heart, separated
From yours, in exile where I see myself crying,
Simple and sacred affection is not enough
With which misadventures I protect myself.
It's not enough for me to know that I'm loved,
I don't just want your love: I want
Have your delicate body in your arms,
Have the sweetness of your kiss in your mouth.
And the just ambitions that consume me
Don't embarrass me: because more baseness
There is no need for earth to exchange for heaven;
And more lifts a man's heart
Being a man always and, in the greatest purity,
Stay on earth and humanly love.

Poem: Sleeps… – Olavo Bilac

Sleeps...

You sleep… But what a whisper the moistened one
Earth awakens? what a rumor
The stars, which the Night carries on high
Caught, gleaming, in the outstretched tunic?
These are my verses! beat my life
In them, talks that nostalgia elevates
From my breast, and that go, breaking the darkness,
Fill your dreams, sleeping dove!
You sleep, with bare breasts, on the pillow
I loosen my black hair... and there they are, running,
Enthusiastic, subtle, your whole body
They kiss your warm and soft mouth,
Up, down, your breath sucking
Why does daylight appear so early?!

Poem: Now (you shall say) to hear stars! – Olavo Bilac

Why (you will say) hear stars!

XIII

“Now (you shall say) to hear stars! Right
You've lost your mind!" And I will tell you, however,
That, to hear them, I often wake up
And I open the windows, pale with astonishment...

And we talked all night while
The Milky Way, like an open canopy,
Sparkles. And, when the sun came, homesick and in tears,
I still look for them in the desert sky.

You will now say: “Mad friend!
What conversations with them? what a sense
Do you have what they say, when they're with you?"

And I will tell you: “Love to understand them!
Because only those who love can have heard
Able to hear and understand stars.”

As I wanted to be free, letting
Christmas breaks, outside space,
The bird, in the warm breath of dawn,
She spread her wings and left singing.
Strange weather, far away skies, cutting
Clouds and clouds, ran: and, now
That the sun dies, suspends its flight, and cries,
And cries, the old life remembering …
And soon, the look returning with pity
Back, missing the affection,
From the heat of the first dwelling…
So for a long time I was lost:
- There! what a joy to see the nest again,
See you, and kiss your little hand!

Poem: To a poet – Olavo Bilac

to a poet

Away from the sterile maelstrom of the street,
Benedict writes! in the coziness
From the cloister, in patience and quiet,
Work and persist, and file, and suffer, and sweat!

But that in the form the job is disguised
From the effort: and a live plot is built
In such a way that the image is bare
Rich but sober, like a Greek temple

Do not show the ordeal at the factory
From the master. And natural, the effect pleases
Without remembering the scaffolding in the building:

Because Beauty, twin of Truth
Pure art, enemy of artifice,
It is strength and grace in simplicity.

Poem: To the suffering heart – Olavo Bilac

to the heart that suffers

To the suffering heart, separated
From yours, in exile where I see myself crying,
Simple and sacred affection is not enough
With which misadventures I protect myself.

It's not enough for me to know that I'm loved,
I don't just want your love: I want
Have your delicate body in your arms,
Have the sweetness of your kiss in your mouth.

And the just ambitions that consume me
Don't embarrass me: because more baseness
There is no need for earth to exchange for heaven;

And more lifts a man's heart
Being a man always and, in the greatest purity,
Stay on earth and humanly love.

Poem: Old age – Olavo Bilac

old age

The grandson:
Grandma, why don't you have teeth?
Why are you praying alone.
And trembles like the sick
When do you have a fever, grandma?
Why is your hair white?
Why do you lean on a staff?
Grandma, because, like ice,
Is your hand so cold?
Why is your face so sad?
So shaky is your voice?
Grandma, what's your disgust?
Why don't you laugh like us?

The grandma:
My grandson, who are my charm,
You were just born...
And I have lived so long
That I'm sick of living!
The years, that go by,
They're killing us mercilessly:
Only you can, speaking,
Give me joy, you alone!
your smile, child,
Fall on my martyrdoms,
Like a glimmer of hope,
How a blessing from God!

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Poem: “Benedicite” – Olavo Bilac

"Benedict"

Blessed is he that on earth fire did, and the roof
And what united the patient and friendly ox to the plow;
And what found the hoe; and what of the abject floor,
He made the kisses of the sun, the gold sprout, of the wheat;

And what iron wrought; and the pious architect
Who conceived, after the cradle and the home, the tomb;
And what the threads wove and what the alphabet found;
And the one who gave alms to the first beggar;

And the one that released the keel to the sea, and the cloth to the wind,
And what invented singing and what created the lyre,
And what tamed the lightning and what raised the airplane…

But blessed among the most who in deep do,
Discovered Hope, the divine lie,
Giving man the gift of enduring the world!

Poem: In me too – Olavo Bilac

in me too

SAW

In me too, how careless you saw,
Enchanted and increasing its own charm,
You will have noticed that other things I sing
Very different from what you once heard.

But you loved without a doubt… Therefore,
Meditate on the sorrows you felt:
That I, for myself, do not know sad things,
That most afflict, that torture so much.

Whoever loves invents the pains in which he lives;
And, instead of calming the pains, before
Search for a new grief with which to revive them.

Well know that's why I walk like this:
Which is only for madmen and lovers
In the greatest joy to walk crying.

Poem: Leave the eyes of the world – Olavo Bilac

let the world look

Let the world's gaze finally wander
Your great love that is your biggest secret!
What would you have lost if, earlier,
All the affection you feel show itself?

Enough of mistakes! show me without fear
To men, confronting them face to face:
I want all men, when I pass,
Envious, point your finger at me.

Look: I can't do it anymore! I've been so full
Of this love, that my soul consumes
To exalt you in the eyes of the universe…

I hear your name in everything, I read it in everything:
And, tired of silencing your name,
I almost reveal it at the end of a verse.

Poem: Portuguese language – Olavo Bilac

Portuguese language

Last flower of Lazio, uncultivated and beautiful,
You are, at the same time, splendor and grave:
Native gold, which in impure denim
The rough mine among the gravels sails…

I love you like this, unknown and obscure,
Loud clang tuba, simple lyre,
That you have the trumpet and the hiss of the storm
And the list of nostalgia and tenderness!

I love your wild freshness and your aroma
Of virgin jungles and the wide ocean!
I love thee, O rude and painful language,

In which from the maternal voice I heard: "my son!"
And when Camões wept, in bitter exile,
The blissless genius and the lackluster love!

Poem: Wildfire – Olavo Bilac

Wildfire

White hair! finally give me calm
To this torture of man and artist:
Disdain for what closes my palm,
And ambition for the more that doesn't exist;

This fever, that the spirit calms me
And then it chills me; this achievement
Of ideas, at birth, dying in the soul,
Of worlds, at dawn, withering in sight:

This hopeless melancholy,
longing for no reason, crazy hope
Burning with tears and ending with boredom;

This absurd anxiety, this race
To escape what my dream achieves,
To want what is not in life!

Poem: The Dawn of Love – Olavo Bilac

the dawn of love

A horror, big and mute, a deep silence
On the Day of Sin he shrouded the world.
And Adam, seeing the door of Eden close, seeing
That Eve looked at the desert and hesitated trembling,
She said:
Come to me! enter my love,
And to my flesh, give your flesh in bloom!
Press your agitated breast against my chest,
And learn to love Love, renewing sin!
I bless your crime, I welcome your displeasure,
I drink the tears from your face one by one!
See everything repels us! to all creation
Shakes the same horror and the same indignation...
The wrath of God twists the trees, blights
Like a typhoon of fire in the heart of the forest,
It opens the earth in volcanoes, ripples the water in rivers;
The stars are full of chills;
The sea roars darkly; the sky clouds hideously...
Let's go! what does God matter? Untie, like a veil,
On your nakedness the hair! Let's go!
Burn the ground in flames; let your skin tear your branches;
Bite your body the sun; the nests revile you;
Beasts appear howling from all paths;
And seeing you bleeding from the heather through,
If the snakes at your feet get entangled in the ground...
What does it matter? the Love, button just ajar,
Illuminate the exile and perfume the desert!
I love you! I'm happy! because, from the lost Eden,
I take everything, taking your dear body!
May, around you, all be annihilated:
Everything will be reborn singing in your eyes,
Everything, seas and skies, trees and mountains,
Because perpetual Life burns in your bowels!
Roses will sprout from your mouth if you sing!
Rivers will flow from your eyes if you cry!
What if, around your lovely naked body,
Everything die, what does it matter? Nature is you,
Now that you are a woman, now that you have sinned!
Ah! blessed the moment you revealed to me
Love with your sin, and life with your crime!
Because, free from God, redeemed and sublime,
Man I stay on earth, light from your eyes,
Earth better than Heaven! man greater than God!

Poem: Words – Olavo Bilac

Words

The words of love expire like the verses,
With which I sweeten the bitterness and lull the thought:
Vague flashes, vapor of dispersed perfumes,
Lives that have no life, existences that I invent;

Early dead splendor, brief yearning, universes
Of dust, which the blow spreads to the vortex of the wind,
Sunbeams, in the ocean between immersed waters
-The words of faith live in a single moment...

But the bad words, those of hate and spite,
The "no!" what a disappointment, the "never!" what hallucinates,
And those of aleive, in buckets, and those of mockery, in laughter,

They burn our ears and enter our chests:
They stay in the heart, in a murderous inertia,
Immovable and immortal, like icy stones.