I've lived beneath huge portals where marine

Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes,

Suns coloured, with a myriad fires, the waves;

By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired,

At eve majestic pillars made the scene

Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows,

Resemble those of vast basaltic caves.

Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired.

The breakers, rolling the reflected skies,

The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies

Mixed, in a solemn, enigmatic way,

Mingled its music, turbulent and rich,

The powerful symphonies they seem to play

Solemn and mystic, with the colours which

With colours of the sunset in my eyes.

The setting sun reflected in my eyes.

There did I live in a voluptuous calm

And there I lived amid voluptuous calms,

Where breezes, waves, and splendours roved as vagrants;

In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave,

And naked slaves, impregnated with fragrance,

Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave,

Would fan my forehead with their fronds of palm:

Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms.

Their only charge was to increase the anguish

They were my slaves — the only care they had

Of secret grief in which I loved to languish.

To know what secret grief had made me sad.