| |
Translated by Charlotte Fiske Bates
FOREVER misery and sure decay | |
| Succeed a haughty pride and mighty sway. | |
| Aigue-Morte, whose twenty towers still face the sea, | |
| Consumptive city, sinking wretchedly, | |
| Dies like an owl in hollow of her nest, | 5 |
| Like shrivelled knight still in full armor drest, | |
| As in the almshouse yard the beggar dies | |
| With naught to bless him but the summer skies. | |
| Bordered with huts of reeds is old Aigue-Morte, | |
| Some noble ships still anchor in its port. | 10 |
| Harassed by want the moody fisher bends, | |
| With wood as old some shuttered wherry mends. | |
| And yet this place of gasping want and pain | |
| Can count its golden links in time’s long chain. | |
| These walls still standing as of old they stood, | 15 |
| Whose dull-hued verdure paints the solitude, | |
| Once held the Orient’s most precious store, | |
| And turbaned Moslems, wave-like, pressed the shore. | |
| In holy anger, twice a pilgrim king | |
| Hence set his thousand galleys on the wing, | 20 |
| When full of zeal to work his high design | |
| And sweep the Crescent out of Palestine. | |
| Here haughty barons clad in coats of mail | |
| (Venice had linked and burnished every scale) | |
| Waved from their glittering helmets, floating wide | 25 |
| The ostrich plume or pheasant-crest of pride. | |
| O’er all the oriflamme here floated free, | |
| Brought from the gloomy shades of St. Denis, | |
| When France commanded, danger pressing nigh, | |
| That all her sons should conquer or should die. | 30 |
| Two peoples figured in their kings here met, | |
| And with a kiss the seal of peace was set. | |
| Gold, purple, azure, for the jousts were spread, | |
| Vying in splendor with the heavens o’erhead; | |
| Afar was borne the martial trumpet’s sound, | 35 |
| The charger’s hoofs impatient smote the ground, | |
| From splendid balconies there fluttered now | |
| Fair ladies’ gloves to greet the victor’s brow. | |
| Lo! all now sleeps,—vanished the splendid train, | |
| These silent shores alone to us remain. | 40 |
| In the dry marsh is heard the plaintive bird | |
| Whose heavy flight the tamarisk has stirred; | |
| The wave that rocks with solemn beat and slow | |
| Like an eternal pendule to and fro. | |
| |
