1. What fortress is it that in its loftiness
Is built upon the shoulder of the sky?

2. Each month the crescent moon appears on it
As the horizon crowns it where clouds are cold.

3. As if the Gemini wrapped it with a belt,
And for the Pleiades it has necklaces.

4. The tongues of fire have insulted them
With what would make even skins shudder.

5. And the trebuchets signaled at my side
With comets whose like has no remainder.

6. They felt it not while fire was kindled
In each tower, so deep was its hollow.

7. So its towers collapsed from the heat of the fire
When all upon it sat confined.