Into the Water, Still Dressed
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Outra, como acudindo mais depressa A vergonha da Deusa caçadora, Esconde o corpo n'água; outra se apressa Por tomar os vestidos, que tem fora. Tal dos mancebos há, que se arremessa, Vestido assim e calçado ( que, coa mora De se despir, há medo que ainda tarde) A matar na água o fogo que nele arde.
Another, as if hurrying more quickly to spare the modesty of the huntress goddess, hides her body in the water; another rushes to snatch up the clothes she has left outside. And there is such a one among the young men that he flings himself in—dressed just so and still shod (for with the delay of undressing he is afraid he would arrive too late)—to quench in the water the fire that burns within him.
On the Isle of Love, the sea-nymphs scatter as Gama's sailors reach them. One young man, too impatient to undress, plunges in fully clothed to cool the fire burning in him.
The nymphs scatter as the sailors reach them. One sinks into the water to guard the huntress-goddess's modesty; another snatches at her scattered clothes; and one young sailor, too impatient to strip, throws himself in fully dressed and still in his shoes, sure that any pause would let his prize slip away.
The last line turns the whole scene on a physical joke: he jumps into water to put out a fire, but the fire is desire, and water will not touch it. The "Deusa caçadora" is Diana, whose bathing in Ovid was death to any man who glimpsed it (Actaeon); here that modesty is only a decorative fiction, since the island is a staged reward and the nymphs flee precisely so they can be caught.
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