The Chase for Ephyre
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Quis aqui sua ventura, que corria Após Efire, exemplo de beleza, Que mais caro que as outras dar queria O que deu para dar-se a natureza. Já cansado correndo lhe dizia: " Ó formosura indigna de aspereza, Pois desta vida te concedo a palma, Espera um corpo de quem levas a alma.
Here his fortune willed that he should be running after Ephyre, a very model of beauty, who wished to give more dearly than the others what nature gave in giving herself. Already worn out with running, he said to her: "O beauty unworthy of such harshness, since I yield to you the palm of this life, at least wait for the body whose soul you are carrying away."
On the Island of Love, the nymphs flee and the Nereids pursue them. Here one sea-god, worn out from running, calls out to the most beautiful nymph, Ephyre, begging her to stop.
This is one stanza in the long, playful chase across the Island of Love: the sea-nymphs flee, the sailors (here spoken of through the gods) pursue, and the whole thing is erotic comedy dressed as pastoral. The pursuer is exhausted, the beloved is fleeing, and his speech is the old lover's plea to stop running — half compliment, half surrender. "I concede you the palm" means she has won the race; he admits defeat and only asks her to slow down.
The turn a first reader misses is the last line's conceit. He says his soul has already gone with her — so what runs on behind is only a body, and a body without its soul is a corpse. "Espera um corpo de quem levas a alma" is the Petrarchan commonplace that the lover's soul lives in the beloved; Camões makes it literal and slightly grim, so that even in this light chase the language of love keeps tipping toward the language of death.
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