The return home is safely effected, and our bold sailors are welcomed in Lisbon with delirious joy, for their journey has crowned Portugal with glory.

The poem concludes, as it began, with an apostrophe from the poet to the king.
The Lusiad is so smoothly written, so harmonious, and so full of similes that ever since Camoens' day it has served as a model for Portuguese poetry and is even yet an accepted and highly prized classic in Portuguese Literature.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 14: See the author's "Story of the Thirteen Colonies."] [Footnote 15: All the quotations in this chapter are from Mickle's translation of the "Lusiad."] ITALIAN EPICS The fact that Latin remained so long the chief literary language of Europe prevented an early development of literature in the Italian language.

Not only were all the popular European epics and romances current in Italy in Latin, but many of them were also known in Provencal in the northern part of the peninsula.

It was, therefore, chiefly imitations of the Provencal bards' work which first appeared in Italian, in the thirteenth century, one of the best poets of that time being the Sordello with whom Dante converses in Purgatory.
Stories relating to the Charlemagne cycle found particular favor in Northern Italy, and especially at Venice.

In consequence there were many Italian versions of these old epics, as well as of the allegorical Roman de la Rose.
It was at the court of Frederick II, in Sicily, that the first real school of Italian poetry developed, and from there the custom of composing exclusively in the vernacular spread over the remainder of the country.