Luís de Camões

Luís de Camões (c. 1524–1580) is the national poet of Portugal. Of minor noble birth, he lost an eye fighting in North Africa, was imprisoned after a brawl in Lisbon, and spent some seventeen years in India and the Far East as a soldier and official, surviving shipwreck off Indochina. He returned to Lisbon in 1570 and published The Lusiads two years later, an epic in ten cantos on Vasco da Gama's voyage to India and the history of Portugal, for which the king granted him a small pension. His sonnets and other lyrics are also among the finest in the language. He died in poverty.