The Ancient Glory, Poem by Emile Verhaeren

Poem by Emile Verhaeren Period 19th century

In the silence and the grandeur of the cathedrals,
The city, once rich, had raised toward God
Wondrous altars, twisted like fires
Coppers, bronzes, silvers, brackets, scrollwork, spirals.

The victorious chiefs and their soldiers
Hung there the old banners of war;
And the altars adorned with gold,
In the eyes of those returning from combat,
Appeared then
Like an immense stern of a galley.
From among the tall pillars, trumpets burst forth;
Fierce archangels
Rested their mouths there
And in a swelling of throat and breasts
Sounded toward the winds of Glory
The ardent life and the victory.

On the marbles of the staircases,
The giant arms of the candelabras
Raised their flaming tapers.
The censers flew in the smoke;

The ex-votos shone like a swarming
Of eyes and hearts, in the shadow;
The organ, like a tide, immensely
Rumbled; gusts of countless voices
Came out of the temple and resounded to the belfry
And the priest clothed in gold embroidery
Amid the brandished pennons and the bombards,
Lifted his sword and slowly traced with the guard
On the brows of the heroes, the sign of the cross.

Oh! those altars like sculpted braziers,
With their enormous flora and their tormented fires;
Massive and violent, extravagant and mad,
They remain still, among the dead cities.
Standing
When one no longer hears the chiefs and their escorts
Sabers, bugles, suns, lances, flags, drums,
Return through the ramparts and pass the suburbs
And come back, as in former times, to the heart of the squares,
To plant their standard whose glory exalted space.

Glory is far away and so is its miracle:
The Archangels that crown the tabernacle,
Like so many enormous Fames,
No longer sound for the armies.
With prudence, they have sheltered
The emblematic and colossal lion,
In the city’s coat of arms;
And, toward noon, the carillon,
With its weary notes
No longer lets anything dance
On the main square
And exhaust itself,
But a little crippled tune.

Emile Verhaeren

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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