Mar Português

Original Mar Portuguez publication (Contemporânea magazine, 1922)

Mar Português (also written as Mar Portuguez) is one of the most well-known poems of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

Originally published in the Contemporânea magazine in 1922 and later integrated to the book Mensagem (1934), Mar Português is of a notably nationalistic tone, along the rest of Mensagem. The poetry collection is divided between three themes — Brasão, Mar Português and O Encoberto — and concerns itself to the Portuguese explorations of the Age of Discovery by the characters of Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan and Prince Henry the Navigator.

Analysis

The poem is composed by two stanzas of six verses each. The verses are composed in an alternating fashion of ten and eight syllables.

Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal
São lágrimas de Portugal!
Por te cruzarmos, quantas mães choraram,
Quantos filhos em vão rezaram!
Quantas noivas ficaram por casar
Para que fosses nosso, ó mar!

Valeu a pena? Tudo vale a pena
Se a alma não é pequena.
Quem quer passar além do Bojador
Tem que passar além da dor.
Deus ao mar o perigo e o abismo deu,
Mas nele é que espelhou o céu.

Mar Português was also analyzed from a contemporary perspective relating the poem to the Syrian civil war refugees.