The Swans Set Down Venus
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Mas já no verde prado o carro leve Punham os brancos cisnes mansamente, E Dione, que as rosas entre a neve No rosto traz, descia diligente. O frecheiro, que contra o céu se atreve, A recebê-la vem, ledo e contente; Vêm todos os Cupidos servidores Beijar a mão à Deusa dos amores.
But now the white swans were gently setting down the light chariot upon the green meadow, and Dione, who carries roses amid snow in her face, descended eagerly. The archer, who dares against heaven itself, comes to receive her, glad and content; all the attendant Cupids come to kiss the hand of the Goddess of loves.
Venus's dove-drawn car has become a swan-car here; she alights on a green meadow and Cupid with his lesser loves rush to greet the goddess of love as she comes down to the mortal shore.
The stanza lands Venus. Her swans lower the car onto grass, she steps down with her red-and-white beauty (roses in snow, the face a garden), and her son the archer runs up with his little train of Cupids to kiss her hand. It reads like a court reception staged in a pastoral, all softness and welcome.
What a first reader misses is the phrase "que contra o céu se atreve" — Cupid, who dares against heaven. The tender greeting is done by the one power in the poem that has bent gods and kings; Camões keeps him small and dutiful here, kissing his mother's hand, but the line quietly names the force about to be turned loose on the Island of Love. The sweetness is a loaded weapon at rest.
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Os Lusíadas 9.36 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/9.36/