I've lived beneath huge portals where marine

I can remember a country of long, high colonnades

Suns coloured, with a myriad fires, the waves;

Which mirrored in their pale marble the prismatic light

At eve majestic pillars made the scene

Cast from the bright sea billows in a thousand shades,

Resemble those of vast basaltic caves.

And which resembled a cave of fluted basalt by night.

The breakers, rolling the reflected skies,

The ocean, strewn with sliding images of the sky,

Mixed, in a solemn, enigmatic way,

Would mingle in a mysterious and solemn way,

The powerful symphonies they seem to play

Under the wild brief sunsets, its tremendous cry

With colours of the sunset in my eyes.

With the reflected colors of the ruined day.

There did I live in a voluptuous calm

There did I dwell in quiet luxury apart,

Where breezes, waves, and splendours roved as vagrants;

Amid the slowly changing hues of clouds and waves;

And naked slaves, impregnated with fragrance,

And there I was attended by two naked slaves

Would fan my forehead with their fronds of palm:

Who sometimes fanned me with great fronds on either side,

Their only charge was to increase the anguish

And whose sole task was to let sink into my heart

Of secret grief in which I loved to languish.

The dolorous and beautiful secret of which I died.