Since You Call It Courage
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--" Já que nesta gostosa vaidade Tanto enlevas a leve fantasia, Já que à bruta crueza e feridade Puseste nome esforço e valentia, Já que prezas em tanta quantidade O desprezo da vida, que devia De ser sempre estimada, pois que já Temeu tanto perdê-la quem a dá:
Since in this pleasing vanity you so exalt the frivolous imagination; since to brute cruelty and savagery you have given the name of courage and valor; since you prize so highly the contempt of life, which ought always to be held dear, seeing that the one who gives life once feared so much to lose it:
The Old Man of Restelo, speaking from the shore as Gama's fleet prepares to sail, is still addressing Fame and the lust for glory. This stanza is the long wind-up of his indictment: three 'since' clauses stacked one on another, all waiting for the demand that lands in the next stanza.
This is one long sentence with no main clause yet. The old man on the shore piles up three concessions to Fame — since you flatter the imagination, since you rename butchery as bravery, since you make throwing life away look noble — and then stops, holding the sentence open. The demand it is building toward arrives in the next stanza: if you want war, there is a war close at hand in North Africa. Everything here is preparation for that turn.
The line a first reader passes over is the last one. "Quem a dá" is Christ: the one who gives life is the same one who, in Gethsemane, was afraid to lose it. Camões is not making a pious flourish. He is using the fear of death in the Gospel to argue that fear is not cowardice, and that a culture which has taught itself to despise life has misnamed something at the root.
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