If Pity Moves You
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E se te move tanto a piedade Desta mísera gente peregrina, Que só por tua altíssima bondade, Da gente a salvas pérfida e malina, Nalgum porto seguro de verdade Conduzir-nos já agora determina, Ou nos amostra a terra que buscamos, Pois só por teu serviço navegamos.
And if pity moves you so much for this wretched wandering people, that only by your most high goodness you save them from the perfidious and malign folk, then resolve now to lead us to some truly safe harbor, or show us the land we are seeking, since we sail only in your service.
The close of Venus's plea to Jupiter in Canto 2: she begs him to protect the Portuguese fleet from the treacherous Moors of the East African coast and to grant them a safe harbor or the sight of India.
This is the last turn of Venus's appeal to Jupiter, built as a single conditional: if compassion truly moves you, then do one of two things for the fleet. She asks either for a safe harbor or for the first sight of India, and she closes the whole plea by reframing the voyage as Jupiter's own errand, not a merely human ambition.
What a first reader misses is how far Venus folds herself into the crew. The verbs turn plural and first-person, conduzir-nos and navegamos, so the goddess pleads as though she too were aboard, and peregrina quietly gives the sailors a pilgrim's coloring rather than a soldier's. The whole move is lifted from Aeneid 1, where Venus intercedes with Jupiter for Aeneas; Camões is deliberately dressing his Portuguese as the new wandering people under divine protection.
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Os Lusíadas 2.32 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/2.32/