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2000-2016 A.
Du Bellay - The Ruins of Rome
Living Rome, the ornament of the world,
Now dead, remains the world's monument.
XXX
As the sown field its fresh greenness shows,
From that greenness the green shoot is born,
From the shoot there flowers an ear of corn,
From the ear, yellow grain, sun-ripened glows:
And as, in due season, the farmer mows
The waving locks, from the gold furrow shorn
Lays them in lines, and to the light of dawn
On the bare field, a thousand sheaves he shows:
So the Roman Empire grew by degrees,
Till barbarous power brought it to its knees,
Leaving only these ancient ruins behind,
That all and sundry pillage: as those who glean,
Following step by step, the leavings find,
That after the farmer's passage may be seen.
XXXI
That we see nothing but an empty waste
Where one was seen the pride of all the earth,
Is no fault of yours, you men of other birth,
Who Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Ganges taste.
Africa, Spain, neither are you disgraced,
Nor that race that holds the English firth,
Nor, by the French Rhine, soldiers of worth,
Nor Germany with other warriors graced.
O, Civil Fury, you alone are the cause,
In Macedonian fields sowing new wars,
Arming Pompey against Caesar there,
So that achieving the rich crown of all,
Roman grandeur, prospering everywhere,
Might tumble down in more disastrous fall.
XXIX
Do you have hopes that posterity
Will read you, my Verse, for evermore?
Do you have hopes the lyre can soar
So high as to win immortality?
If what's beneath the sky knew eternity,
The monuments, whose form I had you draw,
Not on paper but in marble, porphyry,
Would yet preserve their live antiquity.
Yet may you never cease to echo sweetly,
Lyre, that great Apollo deigned to grant me:
For if Time fails to topple you from place,
You may boast, however slight a thing
You are, you were first, in French, to sing
The ancient glory of the toga'd race.
FINIS
Joachim du Bellay
'Joachim du Bellay'
Science and literature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance - P. L. Jacob (p495, 1878)
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