Your Daily Poem

This site exists for one purpose only: to help dispel the ugly and absolutely untrue myth that poetry is boring. Granted, a lot of poetry is boring, but you won't find it here. At Your Daily Poem, you'll find poetry that is touching, funny, provocative, inspiring, uplifting, and surprising. It may punch you in the gut, it may bring tears to your eyes, it may make you laugh out loud, but it most assuredly will not bore you!

Poetry on YDP—by poets living and long dead, famous to completely unknown--is specially selected for accessibility and appeal. Thanks so much for visiting—and remember: a poem a day keeps the doldrums away!

On the World's Chaos and Confusion
by
Luís Vaz de Camões

(excerpted)

Happy the man who never places
his small and humble fantasy
in anything greater than simply leading
his cattle to drink from the cold spring
and drawing their milk so that he can drink!
However Fortune may stir things up,
he’ll never feel any greater grief
than the weight of knowing his life is brief.

He’ll see the rising sun’s red face
and see the clear spring always flowing,
not wondering where the water comes from
nor who on the horizon hides the light.
Playing the flute where his cattle graze,
he’ll know the grass that covers the hill;
in God he’ll simply and calmly believe,
not pondering truths he can’t conceive.

This poem is in the public domain.

Luís Vaz de Camões (1524 - 1580) was a Portuguese poet whose penchant for romance and derring-do puts him right up there with Errol Flynn. An only child born to an aristocratic family and blessed with good looks, charm, education, and incessant joie de vivre, Luiz lacked one thing: restraint. Banished from Lisbon as a young man for a variety of infractions, he lost an eye in one early skirmish and went on to endure a lifelong maelstrom of royal favor, royal wrath, duels, debt, shipwrecks, imprisonment, love affairs and international intrigue--writing poetry all the while. Ultimately, he returned to Lisbon, where his poetry so pleased the king that Luiz was awarded a royal pension for the remainder of his life.

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Darrell Arnold:
Faron Young's 1959 song, "Life Fast, Love Hard, Die Young," popped into my head after reading about Luis. Luis died at age 56 and missed out on a possible 25 or more years of living. I hope it was worth it.
Posted 10/02/2025 08:27 AM

ems:
This poet ended up in the Portuguese colony of Macao, where I lived for a while, and built a lovely garden there that still exists.
Posted 10/02/2010 08:30 AM

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