The Ruins Of Rome/XXXII

XXXI

The Ruins Of Rome ~ XXXII written by Joachim Du Bellay translated by A. S. Kline

Les Antiquités de Rome - XXXII.

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XXXII
Do you have hopes that posterity
Will read you, my Verse, for evermore?
Do you have hopes the lyre can soar
So high as to win immortality?

If what’s beneath the sky knew eternity,
The monuments, whose form I had you draw,
Not on paper but in marble, porphyry,
Would yet preserve their live antiquity.

Yet may you never cease to echo sweetly,
Lyre, that great Apollo deigned to grant me:
For if Time fails to topple you from place,

You may boast, however slight a thing
You are, you were first, in French, to sing
The ancient glory of the toga’d race.