The Third King, and Alcácere Regained
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Mas entre tantas palmas salteado Da temerosa morte, fica herdeiro Um filho seu de todos estimado, Que foi segundo Afonso, e Rei terceiro. No tempo deste, aos Mouros foi tomado Alcácere-do-Sal por derradeiro; Porque dantes os Mouros o tomaram, Mas agora estruídos o pagaram.
But amid so many palms of victory, surprised by dread death, there remains as heir a son of his, esteemed by all, who was the second Afonso, and the third King. In his time, Alcácere-do-Sal was at last taken from the Moors; for the Moors had taken it before, but now, destroyed, they paid for it.
Gama, recounting Portugal's kings to the ruler of Malindi, closes the reign of Sancho I: death takes him amid his victories, and his son Afonso II inherits, under whom Alcácere-do-Sal is retaken from the Moors.
The stanza closes one reign and opens another. The king who died amid his "palms" is Sancho I; his heir is the son the whole realm esteems, and Camões pins him with a neat title, "second Afonso, and third King." Under this Afonso II the fortress-town of Alcácere-do-Sal is finally wrested back from the Moors (1217), and the closing couplet turns on a debt: the Moors once took the town, now, ruined, they pay for it.
The line a first reader skims is the counting. Afonso II is the "second Afonso" but the "third King" because the founder, Afonso Henriques, was both first Afonso and first king, with Sancho I between. It is a small dynastic bookkeeping that lets Camões keep the whole line audible in one breath. The last couplet's "tomaram / pagaram" is deliberate symmetry, a taking answered by a paying, the reconquest framed less as conquest than as a ledger balanced.
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