I've lived beneath huge portals where marine

For a long time I dwelt under vast porticos

Suns coloured, with a myriad fires, the waves;

Which the ocean suns lit with a thousand colors,

At eve majestic pillars made the scene

The pillars of which, tall, straight, and majestic,

Resemble those of vast basaltic caves.

Made them, in the evening, like basaltic grottos.

The breakers, rolling the reflected skies,

The billows which cradled the image of the sky

Mixed, in a solemn, enigmatic way,

Mingled, in a solemn, mystical way,

The powerful symphonies they seem to play

The omnipotent chords of their rich harmonies

With colours of the sunset in my eyes.

With the sunsets' colors reflected in my eyes;

There did I live in a voluptuous calm

It was there that I lived in voluptuous calm,

Where breezes, waves, and splendours roved as vagrants;

In splendor, between the azure and the sea,

And naked slaves, impregnated with fragrance,

And I was attended by slaves, naked, perfumed,

Would fan my forehead with their fronds of palm:

Who fanned my brow with fronds of palms

Their only charge was to increase the anguish

And whose sole task it was to fathom

Of secret grief in which I loved to languish.

The dolorous secret that made me pine away.