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Translated by Charlotte Fiske Bates
REMAINS of giant old whose magnitude | |
| Can show the scale of Nîmes as once she stood, | |
| The stranger’s being thrills with feeling deep, | |
| When thy vast outlines stretch before his eyes; | |
| No stirring reveries in me arise, | 5 |
| For here did boyhood sleep. | |
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| I ’ve heard the thousand-voicéd wind at night | |
| Sweep through thy countless arches in its might, | |
| Till I death’s renegades no more can view, | |
| Still with their parting breath not satisfied; | 10 |
| Nor shades of those who in the arena died | |
| Brandish their blades anew. | |
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| So often at the public evening fêtes | |
| The brilliant flame has lighted up thy gates, | |
| That red reflections cast on every porch | 15 |
| Recall no more the nightly revelry | |
| When Rome debauched to gloomy energy | |
| Burnt Christians for a torch. | |
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| When here I bring the choice friend of my heart | |
| On pilgrimage of poesy or art, | 20 |
| I leave to him to seek where Cæsar swayed, | |
| Place of proconsuls and each noble line, | |
| And where the vestal’s finger gave the sign | |
| That plunged the fatal blade. | |
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| Dreaming of other days my mind is fain | 25 |
| To build from thought the Gothic wall again, | |
| Catholic cradle of our St. Castor. | |
| Creeping along thy steps as creeps the mould | |
| Along the dead oak’s bark, from houses old | |
| The humble people pour. | 30 |
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| Again I see the troop of merry girls | |
| Turning the wheel and singing while it whirls, | |
| On soil where bloodshed gave an ample yield, | |
| Just as the timid dove is sometimes seen | |
| To build where greedy vultures oft have been | 35 |
| Reddening the verdant field. | |
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| The wild-fig’s leaves o’erhang again to-day | |
| The doorway’s arch corroded by decay, | |
| As a dark brow o’erhangs an Afric eye; | |
| The ruins jut from Moorish turrets where | 40 |
| Before St. Martin did thy brave knights swear | |
| To conquer or to die. | |
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| And mail-clad soldiers here, whose sword and lance | |
| Were pledged to keep thee from the foe’s advance, | |
| Who braved for thee a thousand fierce assaults; | 45 |
| Guileless profaners of Rome’s wondrous art, | |
| The martial swarm made with all-simple heart | |
| Their cells of thy vast vaults. | |
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| For Rome was then abandoned so of all, | |
| In her memorials was seen her fall; | 50 |
| Grand monuments in which her pride was placed | |
| Were by the Goth put to an abject use; | |
| What held her sacred ashes found abuse, | |
| Into a trough debased. | |
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