The Changing of the Watch
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Enquanto este conselho se fazia No fundo aquoso, a leda lassa frota Com vento sossegado prosseguia, Pelo tranquilo mar, a longa rota. Era no tempo quando a luz do dia Do Eôo Hemisfério está remota; Os do quarto da prima se deitavam, Para o segundo os outros despertavam.
While this council was being held in the watery deep, the fleet, glad but weary, was pressing on through the tranquil sea with a calm wind, holding to its long course. It was the hour when the light of day lies far from the Eastern Hemisphere; the men of the first watch were lying down to sleep, and the others were waking for the second.
Beneath the waves, Bacchus has just finished persuading the sea-gods to wreck Gama's fleet. Camões cuts back to the surface, where the ships are sailing peacefully through the night, and the sailors are trading watches.
The stanza is a cut. Camões has spent the preceding stanzas underwater, where Bacchus works on the sea-gods to arrange the fleet's destruction, and now he lifts the camera to the surface: calm wind, smooth water, a ship keeping its course at night. The last two lines do nothing but change the watch — one shift goes to bed, the next gets up.
What a first reader misses is that the calm is the point. The reader knows what the sailors do not, and the ordinary business of the watch is what makes the coming storm land. Note also "leda lassa" — glad and weary at once, in two words that nearly rhyme: the fleet is happy because India is close, and worn out for the same reason.
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Os Lusíadas 6.38 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/6.38/