Between the Ear and the Hand
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Não canses, que me cansas: e se queres Fugir-me, por que não possa tocar-te, Minha ventura é tal que, ainda que esperes, Ela fará que não possa alcançar-te. Espera; quero ver, se tu quiseres, Que subtil modo busca de escapar-te, E notarás, no fim deste sucesso, Tra la spica e la man, qual muro è messo.
Do not tire yourself, for you only weary me; and if you flee from me so that I cannot touch you, my fortune is such that, even if you were to wait, it would still keep me from reaching you. Wait; I want to see, if you're willing, what subtle means you seek to make your escape — and you will notice, when this all plays out, what a wall stands between the ear of grain and the hand.
On the Island of Love, a sailor pursues a fleeing nymph and calls out to her, half in mockery of his own bad luck. The stanza ends with a line of Italian lifted straight from Petrarch.
A sailor calls after a nymph who will not stop running, and turns his own bad luck into the joke: stop wearing yourself out, because even if you stood still I still wouldn't catch you. It is flirtation dressed as self-mockery, the pursuer conceding defeat in the middle of the chase.
The last line drops the reader out of Portuguese entirely: it is a verbatim verse of Petrarch (Canzoniere 56), "tra la spiga e la man qual muro è messo" — between the ripe grain and the reaping hand, a wall stands. It is the Italian version of the proverb about the slip between cup and lip: the harvest is right there, and still something comes between wanting and having. Camões trusts his cultured reader to catch the borrowed line and feel the sailor's rueful point without a word of translation.
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