Malacca Will Bow to the Portuguese
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Nem tu menos fugir poderás deste, Posto que rica e posto que assentada Lá no grémio da Aurora, onde naceste, Opulenta Malaca nomeada. As setas venenosas que fizeste, Os crises com que já te vejo armada, Malaios namorados, Jaus valentes, Todos farás ao Luso obedientes.
Nor will you be able to escape this fate either, though rich and though settled there in the lap of the Dawn, named opulent Malacca, where you were born. The poisoned arrows you have forged, the krises with which I already see you armed, your love-struck Malays and valiant Javanese — all of them you will make obedient to the Portuguese.
The sea-nymph's prophecy of empire continues: the goddess names Malacca, rich entrepôt of the eastern spice trade, and foretells that its Malays and Javanese, for all their poisoned arrows and daggers, will fall under Portuguese rule.
The prophetic nymph turns from India to the far east and names Malacca, the great strait-city that funneled the spice and porcelain trade of the archipelago. She grants it every advantage — wealth, a cradle in the sunrise, its own fierce weapons — only to strip them all away in the last line: none of it will keep the city from bowing to the Portuguese.
What a first reader misses is that the whole grammar of the stanza is a concession that collapses. Every "posto que" (though rich, though settled), every catalogue of arms, is set up only to be overruled by "todos farás obedientes." The poisoned arrows and the wavy Malay krises are named not as threats but as trophies-in-advance. Camões writes conquest as something already accomplished in the future tense, the city's own strength recited back to it as the measure of its defeat — the flattery of an empire cataloguing what it means to take.
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