Albert Mérat Venice

The Horses of St. Mark

The horses of St. Mark

“We took this treasure, unable to do better
Or worse: strong peoples strike old peoples
Right rarely triumphs over force.

The earth should have kept Venus with her beautiful torso,
Or rather, it should have been left under this gentle sky
The marble goddesses to their eternal dream.
Glory would not be erased by anyone else
Who respects art, the flower of thought.

One must not steal Rome's Venus,
The churches' Christs, their naked little children
Who form a mystical alliance in the paintings;
Nor, by right of the ships that close the Adriatic,
From Venice, which suffers and still breathes,
Its four Greek horses, with flanks of bronze and gold.

After having, under our monotonous skies,
Endured fifteen years of autumnal shame,
They returned. St. Mark, with his white capitals,
Finally rebuilt pedestals for his horses,
Proud to restore to their ancient splendour
Their warm beauty, a setting as grand as a portico.

Now, the epic quadriga with feet of bronze,
Breathing heavily, has nothing in the serene air
But the peace of the rising or setting sun,
In the smiling azure sky, never fierce,
Which makes the old walls pink like flesh.

The beautiful days of the East, balmy and clear,
Are upon them; and the wind, leaving the waves smooth,
Sings to them of things in Ionia,
In the days when Aspasia encouraged the arts
And they struck the ground harnessed to chariots.”
Albert Mérat - Les Villes de Marbre 1869