1. O Baalbek I wander in you as if I were
A ghost wandering the tombs of generations

2. And I look out from you at existence and see
In the East nothing but ruins and relics

3. What was splendid is gone and nothing refined remains
Everything new is in ruin and decay

4. For their descendants the ancestors left
Only outlines of citadels and high places

5. Great resolutions that did not give birth to the like
And peers that rose without equals

6. And a reality that passed leaving us
Only scope for fancy and imagination

7. The early ones in Baalbek competed
To worship idols and pagan gods

8. They exceeded in ignorant religion beyond
What the early ones reached, worshipping the Highest God

9. If the religion of the East were one religion
I would stand without eulogizing the empty times