A Forest Sacred to Goddesses
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Dá Veloso espantado um grande grito: Senhores, caça estranha, disse, é esta! Se ainda dura o Gentio antigo rito, A Deusas é sagrada esta floresta. Mais descobrimos do que humano espírito Desejou nunca; e bem se manifesta Que são grandes as coisas e excelentes, Que o mundo encobre aos homens imprudentes.
Veloso, astonished, lets out a great shout: "Gentlemen, this is a strange hunt! If the ancient heathen rite still holds, this forest is sacred to goddesses. We have discovered more than human spirit ever wished for; and it is plainly shown that great and excellent are the things the world hides from imprudent men."
On the Isle of Love, the sailor Veloso stumbles on the nymphs among the trees and shouts a warning to his companions. He reads the enchanted island as holy ground, and Camoes turns his cry into a maxim about the great things the world keeps hidden.
The stanza catches a single reaction and lets it swell into a lesson. Veloso, first to glimpse the nymphs among the trees, cries out to his shipmates. His guess is that the island is a pagan sanctuary, ground consecrated to goddesses, and Camoes lets that startled reading stand: the sailors have found something older and larger than they were looking for.
What a first reader can miss is that the closing couplet quietly changes speaker. The last two lines stop being Veloso's shout and become the poet's own maxim: the world encobre, keeps covered, its great things from imprudent men. Camoes is telling his reader how to read the whole Isle of Love that follows: the nymphs are not a reward for lust but an allegory of glory that only the deserving perceive.
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Os Lusíadas 9.69 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/lusiadas/9.69/