This literary phase is initiated with the publication in 1893, of Missal Shields, of the poet Joo de a Cruz and Souza. The simbolista language if characterized as abstract and suggestive, attributing to a certain misticismo and religiosidade the workmanships. The poets of this time very valued the mysteries of the death and the dreams, loading the subjetivismo texts. The death is seen as a species of release. The main representatives of the Symbolism had been: Cruz and Souza and Alphonsus de Guimares.

According to dictionary of the Portuguese Language for Evanildo Bechara, the meaning of the word antiphon is indicated as: Antiphon. sf. Liturgy. Recited versicle at the beginning and end of one salmo, and that the choir repeats. The antiphons if sing the two voices, one answers to the other, and can have citations of the Christian Holy Writs. The reading of the poem, then, must have the solemnity of the religious ritual, and the sacred rhythm of sacred music. Of beginning it will be boarded a little on the structure of the poem, where if it grammatical based Cruz and Souza and its main characteristics on the thematic plan and the formal plan.

The poem is distributed in eleven estrofes, each estrofe with four verses, that is, in you square. It presents figures of language, such as: sinestesias (' ' Everything! Living creature and hot sinewy and forte' '), aliteraes (2 estrofe) and metaphors (' ' of the soul of the Verse, for verses cantem.' '), a certain obsession for brightness? metaphor of the incompreenso and for the white color? metaphor of the peace and the pureness. We can notice nocturnal aspects of the Symbolism, inherited of the Romantismo: the cult of the night, the pessimism, the death and etc. the formal concern approaches that it to the parnasianos, as the form to stone, the taste for soneto, the requintado verbalismo, the force of the images.