The Sun Enters the Bull
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Era no tempo alegre, quando entrava No roubador de Europa a luz Febeia, Quando um e outro corno lhe aquentava, E Flora derramava o de Amalteia: A memória do dia renovava O pressuroso Sol, que o Céu rodeia, Em que Aquele, a quem tudo está sujeito, O selo pôs a quanto tinha feito;
It was in the glad season, when the Phoeban light was entering the ravisher of Europa, when it warmed one horn and the other, and Flora poured out the horn of Amalthea: the hastening Sun, which circles the Heaven, was renewing the memory of the day on which He, to whom all things are subject, set the seal on all that He had made.
The narrator dates Gama's arrival at Melinde by an ornate calendar of stars and myth: it is spring, the season commemorating the day God finished creation.
The stanza does one plain thing dressed in three costumes: it tells us the season. It is spring, because the sun is entering Taurus, the bull that Jupiter became to carry off Europa, and its light gilds "one horn and the other" of the constellation. Flora, goddess of blossom, tips out the horn of Amalthea, the cornucopia, and flowers spill everywhere. This is Camoes tuning the reader's ear before the king of Melinde arrives to hear Gama's tale.
What a first reader misses is the last swerve. The astrology and the Ovidian myth are only scaffolding for a Christian date: this same season marks the anniversary of creation, when "He, to whom all is subject" finished and sealed His work. The pagan zodiac and the God of Genesis are stacked in one sentence without apology, and the seal (selo) is the quiet hinge, God signing off on the world the way a maker closes a finished thing.
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