The King Takes Leiria
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Passado já algum tempo que passada Era esta grão vitória, o Rei subido A tomar vai Leiria, que tomada Fora, mui pouco havia, do vencido. Com esta a forte Arronches sojugada Foi juntamente, e o sempre enobrecido Scalabicastro, cujo campo ameno, Tu, claro Tejo, regas tão sereno.
Some time had now passed since this great victory was won when the exalted King goes to take Leiria, which had itself been taken from the vanquished not long before. Together with it strong Arronches too was subjugated, and the ever-ennobled Scalabicastro, whose pleasant plain you, bright Tagus, water so serenely.
In Canto 3, Vasco da Gama recounts Portugal's founding wars to the king of Malindi. Here Afonso Henriques presses on with the Reconquista, seizing towns along the Tagus.
This stanza keeps the conquest-catalogue of Afonso Henriques' Reconquista moving. Gama, narrating Portugal's origins to the king of Malindi, ticks off towns the founder king wrests from the Moors: Leiria, Arronches, and Santarém, dignified by its Roman name Scalabicastro. The list is deliberately quick, one town per line, until the last two lines slow and swerve.
The swerve is the point a first reader can miss. After four lines of dry taking and re-taking, Camões drops the war entirely and turns to address the river itself: "Tu, claro Tejo." The town becomes a green field, and the field becomes something the Tagus tends. Notice too how he threads the same verbs across the rhymes, passado/passada, tomar/tomada, so that taking and being taken chime against each other, a small formal reminder that in this borderland the same ground changes hands more than once.
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