David and Goliath
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Qual o membrudo e bárbaro Gigante, Do rei Saul, com causa, tão temido, Vendo o pastor inerme estar diante, Só de pedras e esforço apercebido, Com palavras soberbas o arrogante Despreza o fraco moço mal vestido, Que, rodeando a funda, o desengana Quanto mais pode a Fé que a força humana:
Just as the huge, big-limbed barbarous Giant, so feared — and with good reason — by King Saul, seeing the unarmed shepherd standing before him, provided only with stones and courage, with haughty words the arrogant one scorns the weak, ill-clad boy — who, whirling his sling, teaches him how much more Faith can do than human strength:
The Twelve of England prepare to fight, and the poet reaches for the oldest of unequal duels: the giant Goliath against the shepherd boy David, armed only with stones and faith.
The stanza opens a long simile: as the Twelve of England march to their duel, Camões holds up Goliath and David. The giant is all body and boast — big-limbed, barbarous, loud with haughty words; the boy is small, unarmed, badly dressed, carrying only stones and nerve. The whole octave leans on the last line, where the sling turns the contest over and the moral lands: faith outweighs raw force.
What a first reader can miss is that this is only half a sentence. "Qual" ("just as") means the stanza is a suspended comparison whose other half — the actual English knights — arrives in the next stanza. Camões is doing what Virgil and Homer do: freezing the narrative to plant an epic simile drawn here not from myth but from Scripture, so that a Portuguese-backed champion abroad is quietly cast as David and his opponent as the doomed giant.
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