Two Old Men Out of the Water
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Das águas se lhe antolha que saíam, Para ele os largos passos inclinando, Dois homens, que mui velhos pareciam, De aspecto, inda que agreste, venerando: Das pontas dos cabelos lhe caíam Gotas, que o corpo todo vão banhando; A cor da pele baça e denegrida, A barba hirsuta, intonsa, mas comprida.
It appears to him that out of the waters there came, bending their long strides toward him, two men who seemed very old, of an aspect rough yet worthy of reverence. From the tips of their hair drops kept falling, bathing their whole bodies; the color of their skin was dull and blackened, their beards shaggy and unshorn, but long.
In Canto IV, on the eve of the voyage, Vasco da Gama dreams. Out of the waters two ancient river-men walk toward him; they will speak as the Ganges and the Indus, the rivers of the India he has not yet seen.
This is a dream. Gama is asleep, and the stanza is careful to say so: antolha-se, it presents itself to him, the verb for what the mind puts before the eyes rather than what the eyes find. Camões then spends the whole stanza on the two figures' bodies — the wet hair, the drops running down, the dark skin, the uncut beard. They are river gods, and everything about them is water and age.
What a first reader misses is the tension in line 4: agreste but venerando. Rough, yet to be revered. Camões is telling Gama, and the reader, how to receive what is about to be said. These men will announce themselves as the Ganges and the Indus and invite Portugal in. The invitation is coming from the land being invited into — which is convenient, and the poem does not pause to say so.
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