Hymn to Beauty Did you fall from high heaven or surge from the abyss, O Beauty? Your bright gaze, infernal and divine, Confusedly pours out courage and cowardice, Or love and crime. Therefore men liken you to wine. Your eyes hold all the sunset and the dawn, you are As rich in fragrances as a tempestuous night, Your kisses are a philtre and your mouth a jar Filling the child with valor and the man with fright. Did the stars mould you or the pits obscurity? You bring at random Paradise or Juggernaut. Fate sniffs your skirts with a charmed dogs servility, You govern all and yet are answerable for naught. Beauty, you walk on corpses of dead men you mock. Among your store of gems, Horror is not the least; Murder, amid the dearest trinkets of your stock, Dances on your proud belly like a ruttish beast. Candle, the transient moth flies dazzled to your light, Crackles and flames and says: Blessèd this fiery doom! The panting lover with his mistress in the night Looks like a dying man caressing his own tomb. Are you from heaven or hell, Beauty that we adore? Who cares? A dreadful, huge, ingenuous monster, you! So but your glance, your smile, your foot open a door Upon an Infinite I love but never knew. From Satan or from God? Who cares? Fierce or serene, Who cares? Sister to sirens or to seraphim? So but, dark fey, you shed your perfume, rhythm and sheen To make the world less hideous and Time less grim. Charles Baudelaire — Translated by Jacques LeClercq
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 05:40:25 +0000
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