- Often, for their amusement, bored sailors
- take albatrosses, vast sea-birds, that sleep
- in the air, indolent fellow travellers,
- following the ship skimming the deep.
- No sooner are they set down on the boards,
- than those kings of the azure, maladroit, shamefully
- let their vast white wings, like oars,
- trail along their sides, piteously.
- Winged traveller, gauche, gross, useless, laughable,
- now, one of them, with a pipe stem, prods you,
- who, a moment ago, were beautiful:
- another, limping, mimics the cripple who flew.
- The Poet bears a likeness to that prince of the air,
- who mocks at slingshots, and haunts the winds:
- on earth, an exile among the scornful, where
- he is hampered, in walking, by his giant wings.