The Impregnable Diu
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Vereis a inexpugnábil Dio forte, Que dous cercos terá, dos vossos sendo. Ali se mostrará seu preço e sorte, Feitos de armas grandíssimos fazendo. Invejoso vereis o grão Mavorte Do peito Lusitano fero e horrendo: Do Mouro ali verão que a voz extrema Do falso Mahamede ao Céu blasfema.
You will see impregnable Diu, mighty, which will endure two sieges while it is your own. There its worth and fortune will be shown, as it performs the greatest feats of arms. You will see the great Mars grow envious of the Lusitanian breast, fierce and horrendous: there the Moor will see that the last cry of false Muhammad blasphemes against Heaven.
Still forecasting Portugal's future in India, the prophecy names Diu, the island fortress that will withstand two sieges. It rises to the war-god Mars in the Lusitanian breast and ends on the Moor hearing his own faith cursed to Heaven.
The prophecy keeps its ledger of the future in India. It names Diu, the island fortress the Portuguese will hold through two sieges, and turns its defense into a display case for worth and fortune won by force of arms. Even Mars, the god of war himself, is made to envy the fighting spirit in the Portuguese chest.
The sting is in the last two lines. The whole stanza has praised military valor, but it closes by framing the enemy's faith as the real target: the Moor hears his own religion, "false Mahamede," cursing Heaven. Camões writes for a crusading Catholic empire, and the heroism he celebrates is inseparable from that hostility to Islam. Diu was a real Ottoman-backed struggle of the 1530s and 1540s, so a first reader should notice that the poem's "glory" is also propaganda for a specific holy war.
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