The Captain Trusts the Dream
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Louvam do Rei os Mouros a bondade, Condição liberal, sincero peito, Magnificência grande e humanidade, Com partes de grandíssimo respeito. O Capitão o assela por verdade, Porque já lhe dissera, deste jeito, Cileneu em sonhos; e partia Para onde o sonho e o Mouro lhe dizia.
The Moors praise the King's goodness, his generous nature, his sincere heart, his great magnificence and humanity, along with qualities deserving the highest respect. The Captain holds all this for truth, because the Cyllenian god had already told him as much, in just this way, in his dreams; and he set out for the place to which both the dream and the Moor were directing him.
At Melinde, Gama's men praise the local King's goodness. The Captain believes it, because Mercury had already foretold this friendly welcome to him in a dream.
The stanza is almost entirely a list: goodness, generosity, sincerity, magnificence, humanity, respect. Gama's men are praising the King of Melinde, the friendly harbor Gama has reached after the treachery of Mombasa. The catalogue of virtues is warm but abstract; what matters is the turn in the fifth line, where the Captain "seals it for truth." He does not merely hope the praise is accurate — he accepts it as certain.
The reason a first reader can miss is buried in the last three lines. Gama believes the report because it matches a dream: Mercury (here "Cileneu," the Cyllenian, after the mountain of his birth) had already appeared to him and told him to sail to exactly this welcome. So the human praise and the divine warning line up, and Gama steers by both at once. Camões quietly makes the point that the voyage runs on two rails — men's words and the gods' — and the hero trusts the second even more than the first.
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