Not Feet, But Wings
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O campo vai deixando ao vencedor, Contente de lhe não deixar a vida. Seguem-no os que ficaram, e o temor Lhe dá, não pés, mas asas à fugida. Encobrem no profundo peito a dor Da morte, da fazenda despendida, Da mágoa, da desonra, e triste nojo De ver outrem triunfar de seu despojo.
He goes leaving the field to the victor, content not to leave him his life as well. Those who survived follow him, and fear gives him not feet but wings for the flight. Deep in the breast they hide the grief of death, of the fortune spent, of the anguish, of the dishonor, and the bitter loathing of seeing another triumph over their spoils.
The Castilian king abandons the field at Aljubarrota (1385). Camões follows the losers off the battlefield and stays with them as they ride away.
This is the end of Aljubarrota, told from the losing side. The Castilian king rides off, and the stanza follows him instead of staying with the winners. The last four lines are one long list of everything the defeated carry away with them and say nothing about: death, money, pain, shame, and finally the sight of somebody else owning their gear.
The hinge is "encobrem" — they hide it. Camões does not give the losers a speech; he gives them silence and then reads what is under it. That silence is the point of the stanza, and it is why the catalogue of griefs is so flat and unstopping: it is what a man goes over in his head while riding away, not what he says. The joke in line four is old (fear lends wings, going back through Virgil), but Camões makes it precise by having the king be content with the smaller thing he did keep.
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