Love Musters His Armies
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Vê, enfim, que ninguém ama o que deve, Senão o que somente mal deseja; Não quer que tanto tempo se releve O castigo, que duro e justo seja. Seus ministros ajunta, por que leve Exércitos conformes à peleja, Que espera ter com a mal regida gente, Que lhe não for agora obediente.
He sees, at last, that no one loves what he ought, but only what he wrongly desires; and he does not want the punishment—harsh and just though it be—to be put off for so long a time. He gathers his ministers, so that he may lead armies fit for the battle he expects to wage with the ill-governed people, who will not now be obedient to him.
Cupid, surveying the world, sees that everyone loves wrongly and resolves to punish them without delay. He gathers his ministers and raises armies for the war he means to wage on the ill-governed, disobedient human race.
Cupid takes stock of the human race and passes sentence. Everyone, he sees, loves the wrong thing—not what they should, but what their appetite badly craves—and he refuses to let the just punishment for this be deferred any longer. So he does what an offended prince does: he calls up his officers and raises an army for a campaign against a world grown disobedient to him.
What a first reader misses is that this is a god of love talking like a general. Camões has cast desire as a state at war, complete with ministers and mustered troops, and the enemy is ordinary humanity—the "mal regida gente," the badly-governed people whose loves have slipped their proper rule. The martial machinery is not decoration: it sets up the campaign Venus and Cupid are about to wage to bend the sea-nymphs' hearts toward Gama's sailors on the Island of Love.
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