Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes,

I've lived beneath huge portals where marine

By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired,

Suns coloured, with a myriad fires, the waves;

Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows,

At eve majestic pillars made the scene

Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired.

Resemble those of vast basaltic caves.

The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies

The breakers, rolling the reflected skies,

Mingled its music, turbulent and rich,

Mixed, in a solemn, enigmatic way,

Solemn and mystic, with the colours which

The powerful symphonies they seem to play

The setting sun reflected in my eyes.

With colours of the sunset in my eyes.

And there I lived amid voluptuous calms,

There did I live in a voluptuous calm

In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave,

Where breezes, waves, and splendours roved as vagrants;

Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave,

And naked slaves, impregnated with fragrance,

Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms.

Would fan my forehead with their fronds of palm:

They were my slaves — the only care they had

Their only charge was to increase the anguish

To know what secret grief had made me sad.

Of secret grief in which I loved to languish.