Collected Works (Vol. II)

TRANSLATIONS FROM BAUDELAIRE 17 CARRION. Recall, my soul, the sight we twain have looked upon This summer morning soft and sweet, Beside the path, an infamous foul carrion, Stones for its couch a fitting sheet. Its legs stretched in the air, like wanton whores Burning with lust, and reeking venom sweated, Laid open, carelessly and cynically, the doors Of belly rank with exhalations foetid. Upon this rottenness the sun shone deadly straight As if to cook it to a turn, And give back to great Nature hundredfold the debt That, joining it together, she did earn. The sky beheld this carcase most superb out- spread As spreads a flower, itself, whose taint Stank so supremely strong, that on the grass your head You thought to lay, in sudden faint. The flies swarmed numberless on this putres- cent belly, Whence issued a battalion Of larve, black, that flowed, a sluggish liquid jelly, Along this living carrion. All this was falling, rising as the eager seas, Or heaving with strange crepitation— Was't that the corpse, swollen out with a lascivious breeze, Was yet alive by copulation? And all the carcase now sounded strange symphonies Like wind, or running water wan, Or grain that winnower shakes and turns, whene’er he plies With motion rhythmical his fan. VOL. Il. The shapes effaced themselves; no more their images Were aught but dreams, a sketch too slow To tint the canvas, that the artist finishes By memory that does not go. Behind the rocks a bitch unquietly gazed on Ourselves with eye of wrathful woe, Watching her time to return unto the skeleton For tit-bits that she had let go. Yet you are like to it, this dung, this carrion, To this infection doubly dire, Star of my eyes that are, and still my nature’s sun, You, O my angel! You, my own desire! Yes! such will you be, queen, in graces that surpass, Once the last sacraments are said; When you depart beneath wide-spreading blooms and grass To rot amid the bones of many dead. Then, O my beauty! tell the worms, who will devour With kisses all of you to dust ; That I have kept the form and the essential power Divine of my distorted lust. THE DENIAL OF Sr. PETER. I. WnaratT makes God then of all the curses deep That daily reach his Seraphim divine? Like to a tyrant gorged with meat and wine, Our blasphemous music lulleth him to sleep. II. Tears of the martyrs, and saints torturéd, Must prove intoxicating symphonies, Since, spite of blood-price paid to gain them ease, The heavens therewith are not yet satiated. B