I can remember a country of long, high colonnades

I've lived beneath huge portals where marine

Which mirrored in their pale marble the prismatic light

Suns coloured, with a myriad fires, the waves;

Cast from the bright sea billows in a thousand shades,

At eve majestic pillars made the scene

And which resembled a cave of fluted basalt by night.

Resemble those of vast basaltic caves.

The ocean, strewn with sliding images of the sky,

The breakers, rolling the reflected skies,

Would mingle in a mysterious and solemn way,

Mixed, in a solemn, enigmatic way,

Under the wild brief sunsets, its tremendous cry

The powerful symphonies they seem to play

With the reflected colors of the ruined day.

With colours of the sunset in my eyes.

There did I dwell in quiet luxury apart,

There did I live in a voluptuous calm

Amid the slowly changing hues of clouds and waves;

Where breezes, waves, and splendours roved as vagrants;

And there I was attended by two naked slaves

And naked slaves, impregnated with fragrance,

Who sometimes fanned me with great fronds on either side,

Would fan my forehead with their fronds of palm:

And whose sole task was to let sink into my heart

Their only charge was to increase the anguish

The dolorous and beautiful secret of which I died.

Of secret grief in which I loved to languish.