The Lizard, Poem by Alphonse De Lamartine

(The lizard on the ruins of Rome.)

One day, alone in the Colosseum,
Ruin of Roman pride,
On the grass watered with blood
I sat down, Tacitus in hand.

I was reading the crimes of Rome,
And the empire sold at auction,
And, to elevate a single man,
The universe brought so low.

I saw the idolatrous plebs,
Saluting the triumphant,
Bathing their eyes on the stage
In the blood of gladiators.

On the wall that embeds it,
I was slowly piecing together
The letters of the name of the Augustus
Who dedicated the monument.

I was spelling out its first sign:
But, confounding my gaze,
A lizard was sleeping on the line
Where the name of the Caesars shone.

Sole heir of the seven hills,
Sole inhabitant of these debris,
It replaced beneath these ruins
The great flood of peoples drained away.

Come out from the cracks in the walls,
It came, numb with cold,
To warm its green scales
At the touch of the cooled bronze.

Consul, Caesar, master of the world,
Pontiff, Augustus, equal to the gods,
The shadow of this filthy reptile
Eclipsed your glory in my eyes!

Nature has its irony.
The book slipped from my hand.
O Tacitus, all your genius
Mocks human pride less forcefully!

Alphonse de Lamartine

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

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-the-lizard-alphonse-de-lamartine/