The Golden Pheasant

Poem by Auguste Angellier Period 19th century

When the Golden Pheasant courts his mate,
And, to dazzle her, fans his wheel, he sparkles
With fires more shimmering than a stained-glass bird.
Raising his golden crest, bristling his camail
The color of dawn and striped with ebony bars,
Swellin his ardent red breastplate, he struts,
Each wing lifted, in haughty bearing;
His plumage fills with gleams, the marblings
Of his bronze-green neck, the golden hem of his quills,
The incarnadine of his back, the uncertain splendors
Of his tail where tight grains of vermilion
Alternate with black lines on a ground
Of rich, sumptuous and lucid amethyst,
All lights up, all shines…

… And, over those shifting eyes of clear gems
Uniting, breaking into jewels
Set by bronze and steel and silver,
Still runs a shiver of mobile and changing gold,
That is born, spreads, flees, shrinks, quivers,
Bursts, glides, dies, flows, undulates, scales,
Opens into a network of gold, unfolds into plates of gold,
Throbs, languishes, disperses, turns to dust,
And with an elusive and fairy-like web
Envelops the bird’s flaming body.

Auguste Angellier

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

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