The Arcades Project - Operi

III
Silent it will be nonetheless!-Mter so many dawns,
So many months and years, so many played-out centuries,
When this bank, where the stream breaks against the echoing bridges,
Is returned to the modest and murmuring reeds;
When the Seine shall flee the obstructing stones,
Consuming some old dome collapsed into its depths,
Heedful of the gentle breeze that carries to the clouds
The rustling of the leaves and the song of birds;
When it shall flow, at night, pale in the darkness,
Happy, in the drowsing of its long-troubled course,
To listen at last to the countless voices
Passing indistinctly beneath the starry sky;
When this city, mad and churlish ouvri€re,
That That hastens the fate reserved reserved for its walls,
And, And, turning to dust under under the blows of its hanuner,
Converts Converts bronze bronze to to coins coins and and marble to to flagstones;
When the roofs, the bells, the tortuous hives,
Porches, pediments, arches full of pride
That That make up this city, many-voiced many-voiced and and tumultuous,
Stifling, inextricable, and teeming to the eye,
'Vhen from the wide plain all all these things have passed,
And nothing remains of pyramid and pantheon
But two granite towers built by Charlemagne
And And a bronze column raised by Napoleon,
You, then, will complete the sublime triangle!
IV
Thus, Thus, arch, you will loom eternal and intact
When all that the Seine now mirrors in its surface
Will have vanished forever,
When When of that that city-the equal, yes, of Rome­
Nothing will be left except except an angel, an eagle, eagle, a man
Surmounting three summits!
V
No, No, time takes nothing away from things.
More than one portico wrongly vaunted
In its protracted metamorphoses
Comes to beauty in the end.
On On the monuments we revere
Time casts a somber spell,
Stretching from fa.;ade to apse.
Never, though it cracks and and rusts,