The Stomach of That People
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Assim dizia; e todos juntamente, Uns com outros em prática falando, Louvavam muito o estâmago da gente, Que tantos céus e mares vai passando. E o Rei ilustre, o peito obediente Dos Portugueses na alma imaginando, Tinha por valor grande e mui subido O do Rei que é tão longe obedecido.
Thus he spoke; and all of them together, talking one with another, greatly praised the spirit of a people who go crossing so many skies and seas. And the illustrious King, imagining in his soul the obedient hearts of the Portuguese, reckoned it a great and very lofty worth, that of a King obeyed from so far away.
The captains, having heard Gama, fall to talking among themselves, marvelling at the daring of a nation that crosses so many seas; and the King of Melinde privately measures the greatness of a distant king so faithfully obeyed.
The stanza is a reaction shot. Gama has finished speaking, and Camões turns from the tale to the listeners: the court of Melinde buzzing among itself, then the King alone, weighing what he has heard. The praised thing is the estâmago "stomach" of the Portuguese, an old word for guts, nerve, the seat of daring, applied to men who keep crossing sea after sea.
What a first reader misses is the shift in the King's mind at the close. He is not admiring the sailors in front of him but the far-off king they obey without ever seeing him. Loyalty stretched across half the world, obedience owed to a crown thousands of miles away, is the real marvel here, and it flatters Camões' own distant sovereign as much as it praises the crew.
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