Page:Nostradamus (1961).djvu/141

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
Century I
137
15. Mars menaces us with his warlike force,
Seventy times will he cause blood to flow:
Rise and fall for the clergy
And more for those who will want to hear nothing from them.

16. The scythe joined with the pond[1] towards Sagittarius
At the high point of its ascendant,
Plague, famine, death by military hand,
The century approaches its renewal.

17. For forty years the rainbow will not appear,
For forty years it will be seen every day:
The parched earth will wax more dry,
And great floods will accompany its appearance.

18. Because of the Gallic discord and negligence
A passage will be opened to Mahomet:
The land and sea of Siena[2] soaked in blood,
The Phocaean port[3] covered with sails and ships.

19. When the serpents will come to encompass the altar,
The Trojan blood will be vexed by the Spaniards:
Because of them a great number will be made to suffer for it,
The chief flees, hidden in the marshes.[4]

20. Tours, Orléans, Blois, Angers, Reims and Nantes,
Cities vexed through sudden change:
Tents will be pitched by those of foreign tongues,
Rivers, darts at Rennes trembling of land and sea.

21. Deep white clay nourishes the rock,
Which from an abyss will go forth milky,
Needlessly troubled they will not dare touch it,
Unaware that the earth at the bottom is clayish.

  1. Or “Saturn in Aquarius.”
  2. A probable but not certain translation of Senoise.
  3. Always Marseilles, founded by the Phocaeans from Greece.
  4. “in the marshes in the marshes.”