Venus's Bitter Prayer
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Este povo que é meu, por quem derramo As lágrimas que em vão caídas vejo, Que assaz de mal lhe quero, pois que o amo, Sendo tu tanto contra meu desejo! Por ele a ti rogando choro e bramo, E contra minha dita enfim pelejo. Ora pois, porque o amo é mal tratado, Quero-lhe querer mal, será guardado.
This people that is mine — for whom I shed the tears I see falling in vain, since by loving it I wish it so much sorrow, while you stand so against my desire! For its sake, entreating you, I weep and cry out, and against my own fortune I fight to the end. Now then: since the one I love is ill-treated, I will choose to wish it harm instead — and so it will be kept safe.
Still in the divine council, Venus pleads with Jupiter for Gama's Portuguese, arguing that her very love has become their misfortune.
Venus keeps pleading with Jupiter for her Portuguese sailors, and the whole stanza turns on a painful admission: her love is exactly what endangers them. The lines pile up verbs of grief — I shed, I see, I wish, I weep, I cry out, I fight — until loving and harming seem to collapse into a single act.
The turn a first reader misses is the closing logic. Because Venus's favor only provokes the gods ranged against her, she reasons by contraries: if wishing them well brings ruin, she will wish them ill, so that fate, reversing her, keeps them safe. It is a lover's despairing joke, and it stands in the line of Virgil's Venus in Aeneid 1, who works on Jupiter through tears rather than force.
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