XVI

 
As we gaze from afar on the waves roar
Mountains of water now set in motion,
A thousand breakers of cliff-jarring ocean,
Striking the reef, driven in the wind’s maw:

View now a fierce northerly, with emotion,
Stirring the storm to its loud-whistling core,
Then folding in air its vaster wing once more
Suddenly weary, as if at some new notion:

As we see a flame, spread in a hundred places,
Gather, in one flare, towards heaven’s spaces,
Then powerless fade and die: so, in its day,

This Empire passed, and overwhelming all
Like wave, or wind, or flame, along its way,
Halted at last by Fate, sank here, in fall.