A Dressed Fleet at Dawn
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Mas assim como a Aurora marchetada Os formosos cabelos espalhou No Céu sereno, abrindo a roxa entrada Ao claro Hiperiónio, que acordou, Começa a embandeirar-se toda a armada, E de toldos alegres se adornou, Por receber com festas e alegria O Regedor das ilhas, que partia.
But just as the speckled Dawn spread her lovely hair across the serene sky, opening the purple gateway for bright Hyperion, who awoke, the whole fleet begins to deck itself with flags, and adorned itself with cheerful awnings, to receive with festivity and joy the Ruler of the islands, who was departing.
At the Mozambique coast, morning breaks and Gama's ships deck themselves in flags and awnings to welcome the island's Muslim governor aboard. Camões wraps the small courtesy in a grand mythological sunrise.
Camões opens the morning with a full epic sunrise: Dawn scatters her hair across the sky and swings open a purple door for the sun, and only then does the Portuguese fleet stir, hanging out its flags and awnings to receive the local ruler with festivity. The grand cosmic image exists to dress up an ordinary act, a fleet tidying itself for a visitor.
The name a first reader trips on, Hiperiónio, is the sun itself, Hyperion, the Titan father of the sun-god who here simply awoke. This is the inherited dawn-formula of Homer and Virgil, borrowed to make a coastal sunrise sound like the start of the Aeneid. And the festive welcome is not innocent: the Regedor das ilhas is the Muslim governor of Mozambique whose courtesy, in the cantos just ahead, hides a plan to trap Gama's men.
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