The Faith, the Empire, and Undying Fame
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E também as memórias gloriosas Daqueles Reis, que foram dilatando A Fé, o Império, e as terras viciosas De África e de Ásia andaram devastando; E aqueles, que por obras valerosas Se vão da lei da morte libertando; Cantando espalharei por toda parte, Se a tanto me ajudar o engenho e arte.
And by singing I shall spread everywhere, too, the glorious memories of those Kings who went on extending the Faith and the Empire and laid waste the vice-ridden lands of Africa and Asia; and of those who, through deeds of valor, keep freeing themselves from the law of death — if genius and art will aid me that far.
Still within the proposition of the poem, Camões widens his subject beyond the seafarers of stanza 1 to the kings of Portugal who spread faith and empire, and to the heroes whose deeds outlast death.
The stanza extends the promise of the opening. Beyond the sea-captains of stanza 1, Camões vows to sing two more subjects: the kings of Portugal, who spread faith and empire and ravaged the lands of Africa and Asia, and the heroes whose valor wins them a life past death. Then he adds a plain condition — he can do all this only if his talent and craft hold out.
The last line is the part a first reader takes for a modesty formula but shouldn't. "Engenho e arte" is the standard Renaissance pairing of inborn genius and learned craft — Horace's ingenium and ars — the two things a poet needs, and Camões stakes the whole poem on their sufficiency. And "libertando da lei da morte" states the epic's real purpose in one phrase: fame is what frees a man from mortality, the reason the poem is being written at all.
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