The Halcyons and the Dolphins
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As Alcióneas aves triste canto Junto da costa brava levantaram, Lembrando-se do seu passado pranto, Que as furiosas águas lhe causaram. Os delfins namorados entretanto Lá nas covas marítimas entraram, Fugindo à tempestade e ventos duros, Que nem no fundo os deixa estar seguros.
The halcyon birds raised their sad song near the wild coast, remembering the weeping of long ago that the furious waters had caused them. The dolphins, meanwhile, went into the caves of the sea, fleeing the storm and the hard winds, which will not let them be safe even on the bottom.
The storm Bacchus and Aeolus raised against Gama's fleet is at its height. Camões turns away from the ships for one stanza and shows what the sea's own creatures are doing.
The storm has been running for many stanzas, and here Camões stops describing the ships and looks at the animals instead. Two things that live in the sea and know it well are frightened: the halcyons cry on the shore, the dolphins hide in the seabed caves. The last line takes the hiding place away — even down there the winds reach them.
A first reader hears "halcyon" as pretty decoration. It is the opposite. The bird is Alcyone from Ovid, who threw herself into the sea when she learned her husband had drowned, and the birds' song is her grief still going. So the coast is lined with a creature made by exactly the death Gama's men are facing right now, singing about it, while the dolphins — the affectionate ones, the animal sailors count as a friend — run and fail to get away. Camões builds the danger to the fleet out of the sea's own inhabitants failing to survive it.
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