Oracles

TRANSLATIONS FROM BAUDELAIRE 59 Coldly they set themselves to gaze on me, Like passers-by a madman that they see— I heard them laugh and chuckle, as I think, Now interchange a signal, now a wink. “ Let us at leisure view this caricature, This shade of Hamlet mimicking his posture, The doubting look and hair flung wide to wind ! A pity, eh ? to see this merry hind, This beggar, actor out of work, this droll, Because he plays artistically his rôle, Wishing to interest in his chanted woes Brooks, eagles, crickets, every flower that blows, And even to us the rubric old who made To howl out publicly his wild tirad ? ” I could have (for my pride is mountains high, And dominates cloud tops or demon’s cry)— I could have simply turned my sovereign head, Had I not seen, ’mid their obscene herd led, Crime, that the sun has not yet brought to book, Queen of my spirit with the peerless look. And she laughed with them at my dark distress, And turned them oft some dirtiest caress. LE VIN DU SOLITAIRE THE strange look of a woman of the town, Who glides toward us like the rays that slake The wave-wrought moon within the trembling lake, Where she would dip her careless beauty down ;