The Long Resolve of Our Kings
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Sabe que há muitos anos que os antigos Reis nossos firmemente propuseram De vencer os trabalhos e perigos, Que sempre às grandes coisas se opuseram; E, descobrindo os mares inimigos Do quieto descanso, pretenderam De saber que fim tinham, e onde estavam As derradeiras praias que lavavam.
Know that for many years our kings of old firmly resolved to overcome the toils and dangers that have always stood against great enterprises; and, discovering the seas hostile to quiet repose, they sought to learn what end those seas had, and where lay the farthest shores that they washed.
Still speaking through the interpreter to the Catual at Calicut, Gama explains why the Portuguese have come so far: for generations their kings deliberately set out to conquer the perils of the unknown sea and find where the world's last shores lie.
Gama is still answering, through the interpreter, the Catual's question about who the Portuguese are and why they came. Here he gives the official reason: not accident or greed, but a deliberate policy carried down through generations of kings, who chose hardship on purpose. The verbs are all in the plural past — propuseram, opuseram, pretenderam — piling resolve on resolve so the voyage sounds less like one man's daring than a national vocation.
The line a first reader skims past is "mares inimigos do quieto descanso": the seas are called enemies of rest. Camões quietly admits the cost of the enterprise even while praising it. To find the last shores of the world, these kings had to declare war on ease itself — and the phrase carries the whole poem's tension between glory and the peace it forfeits.
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