The Bridal Chambers of the Sun
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As ondas navegavam do Oriente Já nos mares da Índia, e enxergavam Os tálamos do Sol, que nasce ardente; Já quase seus desejos se acabavam. Mas o mau de Tioneu, que na alma sente As venturas, que então se aparelhavam A gente Lusitana, delas dina, Arde, morre, blasfema e desatina.
They were sailing the waves eastward, already on the seas of India, and they could make out the bridal chambers of the Sun, where it is born burning; already their desires were nearly fulfilled. But that wicked Thyoneus, who feels in his soul the good fortunes then being made ready for the Lusitanian people — a people worthy of them — burns, dies, blasphemes, and goes out of his mind.
The fleet has left Melinde and is crossing the last stretch of open water toward India. Bacchus, watching from a distance, sees that the voyage is about to succeed.
The stanza turns on a hinge. The first four lines close the voyage: the fleet is already in Indian water, the desires that have carried six cantos are almost spent, and the East is described not as a coast but as the Sun's bedroom. The last four lines hand the poem to Bacchus, who has been the fleet's enemy since Canto 1 and who now has to watch the thing he has fought against arrive.
What a first reader skips past is the last line. A god burns, dies, blasphemes, and loses his reason — four verbs that belong to a human body under stress, hung on an immortal. Bacchus cannot be hurt and cannot stop the ships, so his opposition curdles into symptoms. Camões is doing what Virgil does with Juno at the opening of the Aeneid: the divine antagonist's rage is real, and also the surest sign the voyage will succeed.
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Os Lusíadas 6.6 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/6.6/