At the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute at Fresno State, we commemorate the 500th birthday of the great poet Luís Vaz de Camões by sharing some of his works in English.

From The Lusiads
By Luís Vaz de Camões
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

1
These are the tales of arms and matchless men
Who put to sea from Portugal’s west shore
And trekked to Taprobana and beyond
By oceans nobody had braved before,
The men who stood in combat, cut through crisis 
With more than human strength, who went to war
Among a distant folk to bring the name

Of a New Kingdom, and earn deathless fame;
2
And glorious memory of that line of kings
Who through the ages magnified the expanse
Of the Faith and Empire, and kept havocking
Asia and Africa’s degenerate lands; 
I’ll hymn men’s fame who did immortal things,
Whose names are now immune to death’s commands. 
I’ll spread their song wherever there are men
So long as Art and Wit can helm my pen. 
3  
Tell no more tales about the subtle Greek,
The Trojan refugee on epic seas,
The Roman Trajan or grand Alexander
With all their Asiatic victories. 
Look to the men who made Neptune and Mars
Obey: I sing the daring Portuguese.
Enough of what the Ancient Muses prize.
A higher code of honor’s on the rise.
4  
And you, nymphs of the Tagus, since you have
Birthed the new burning genius in me,
If ever I have paid your kindly river
The homage of my rustic poetry,
Return to me the tones of the sublime,
A style both grand-tongued and contemporary. 
Apollo: bless their stream as my lines run.
Make Portugal a Modern Helicon.
5  
Fill me with all your firing cadences. 
Not with a piping goatherd’s crude flute bars,
But shouts of battle horns that flame the cheek
And stir the breast and steel the skin for wars.
Give me a new song equal to the feats
Of your own people served by ruddy Mars,
To sing and spread their praise in space and time,
If verse can compass something so sublime. 
6 
And you, Boy King, scion and guarantor
Of Lusitania’s ancient liberty,  
No less a certain hope of increase for
Christendom’s little empire on the sea, 
You who have put new terror in the Moor,
The marvel of our age, our destiny, 
Given the world by God’s all-willing reign
To win much of that world for God’s own name. 
7 
You, green and tender sapling from the tree
More precious in the heart of Christ than all
The other lineages of the West, 
Be it the Kaisers’ or the Kings of Gaul, 
(Witness your coat of arms that bears the sign
Of victory against the Infidel
When Christ bestowed, as emblem to emboss,
The five wounds that he suffered on the cross.) 
8 
You, mighty king, whose global realm the sun
Sees as it first comes up an Indian hill,
Then shines — mid-hemisphere — above your throne
Until it casts a last beam at Brazil,
You whom we look upon to yoke and humble 
The scurvy horsemen spawned of Ishmael, 
The heathen Turk, and the Hindu believer
Drinking the waters of his hallowed river. 
9 
Come set that majesty aside awhile
That in your youthful countenance I see
Already, and which will in years to come
Enter the temple of eternity;
Bend your magnanimous and kingly eyes
Earthward. Behold a loving eulogy
For my land’s steel-willed feats in modern times
Given the world in good and balanced rhymes. 
10 
Here you will see a love of country, driven
Not by base greed, but everlasting worth.
It is no base reward to be renowned
For how I sing the pround land of my birth.
Now listen. You will note the names extolled
Of men who look to you as lord on earth.
Judge for yourself: would it be greater, then,  
To be king of the world, or of such men? 
11 
Listen. You will not hear of counterfeit
Exploits. We do not need the fantasies
That other nations’ Muses fabulate
To glorify themselves in lies. For these 
Historic deeds I sing to you transcend
Fables, and would outstrip the vagaries
Of France’s Roland, Ariosto’s too, 
Even if every word of them were true. 
12 
Instead I give you Nuno Álvarez
Grand servant of his kingdom and his king,
I give you Egas Moniz, Fuas Roupinho
Whose praises only Homer’s lyre could sing.
Arthur’s knights yield to the twelve Portuguese
Of England, and Magriço’s traveling.
And I will give you Lord da Gama’s genius
Wresting the fame from blundering Aeneas.

13 
My liege, if what you want is equal stature
To Julius Caesar or to Charlemagne
Look to Afonso the first whose lance eclipsed
All foreign reputations in his reign;
To João the first who kept this kingdom free
In victory against the steel of Spain;
To João the second, conquered by no sword,
Or to Afonso the fifth, fourth or third.
14 
Nor shall my verses fail to monument
Those heroes who in Kingdoms of the Dawn
By dint of arms rose to such excellence
Your banner always triumphed in that sun: 
Peerless Pacheco and the fierce Francisco
Mourned by the Tagus as it mourns his son,   
Bold Albuquerque with Castro the brave,
And other men whose feats defeat the grave. 
15 
And while I sing to you of these, of you,
My liege, I would not dare presume a thing. 
Go, king, take up the reins of your own reign, 
And give me even greater stuff to sing. 
Let the world groan and gape already, sensing
The weight of your own feats and forces, King
Of Africa and Oriental seas,
Where you fulfill your destined victories. 
16 
On you the frightened Moor has fixed his eyes,
And sees his doom foretold in all you do. 
Fearing your flash, the rugged Indian
Will offer his cowed neck to yoke. For you
Lord Neptune’s Thetys has prepared already
A dowry of her whole domain of blue. 
Your worth and beauty hold her in such awe
She wants to win you for a son-in-law.  
17 
Today your two grandfathers gaze down here
From Mount Olympus. Such renown they bore:
One for a golden angel-cherished Peace
The other for red works of bleeding War.
In you they hope to witness resurrection
Of their heroic deeds and days once more,
Keeping a place, when all must cease to be
For you, in the temple of eternity. 
18 
But as your long reign slowly rolls on over
Your people, as they dearly wish it to, 
Look charitably on my boldness so 
My epic can become your epic too. 
You will see the salt sliver ocean cut 
By Portuguese Argonauts who will see you 
Are watching over them on wrath-green sea. 
Prepare to be invoked in jeopardy. 
Notes:
S1: Taprobana – the Greek, and later Latin, name for the island of Sri Lanka.

S3: The Greek is Odysseus, and the Trojan Aeneas.

S6: I.e. King Sebastião who had ascended to the throne at the age of 14.

S7: The victory is that won at the Battle of Ourique, south of the Tagus, where Afonso Henriques defeated the Almoravids. Legend had it that Christ appeared on the field promising the deliverance of Portugal. The five shields in the Portuguese coat of arms are said to represent the wounds of Christ.

S11: The final couplet in the original refers to different characters from Orlando Furioso and Orlando Inamorato.

S12: Egas Moniz and Fuas Roupinho were allies of Afonso I. Nuno Álvarez was a hero of the battle of Aljubarrota. The original references the myth of the Twelve Peers of France, and not Arthur’s knights. But I felt that the Twelve Knights of the Roundtable did more in English with little consequence for the poem beyond.

S14: Description of renowned men from Portuguese India. Duarte Pacheco Pereira conquered the Malabar coast. Francisco and his son Lourenço de Almeida established a line of fortresses from Sofala to Cochin. Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa.

in https://poemsintranslation.blogspot.com/2018/06/camoes-opening-of-lusiadas-from.html