A Voyage to Cythera

  My heart like a bird was fluttering joyously
  And soaring freely around the rigging;
  Beneath a cloudless sky the ship was rolling
  Like an angel drunken with the radiant sun.

  What is this black, gloomy island? — It's Cythera,
  They tell us, a country celebrated in song,
  The banal Eldorado of old bachelors.
  Look at it; after all, it is a wretched land.

  The beautiful shade of ancient Venus
  Hovers above your seas like a perfume
  And fills all minds with love and languidness.

  Fair isle of green myrtle filled with full-blown flowers
  Ever venerated by all nations,
  Where the sighs of hearts in adoration
  Roll like incense over a garden of roses

  Or like the eternal cooing of wood-pigeons!
  A rocky desert disturbed by shrill cries.
  But I caught a glimpse of a singular object!

  It was not a temple in the shade of a grove
  Where the youthful priestess, amorous of flowers,
  Was walking, her body hot with hidden passion,
  Half-opening her robe to the passing breezes;

  But behold! as we passed, hugging the shore
  So that we disturbed the sea-birds with our white sails,
  We saw it was a gallows with three arms
  Outlined in black like a cypress against the sky.

  Ferocious birds perched on their feast were savagely
  Destroying the ripe corpse of a hanged man;
  Each plunged his filthy beak as though it were a tool
  Into every corner of that bloody putrescence;

  The eyes were two holes and from the gutted belly
  The heavy intestines hung down along his thighs
  And his torturers, gorged with hideous delights,
  Had completely castrated him with their sharp beaks.

  Below his feet a pack of jealous quadrupeds
  Prowled with upraised muzzles and circled round and round;
  One beast, larger than the others, moved in their midst
  Like a hangman surrounded by his aides.

  Cytherean, child of a sky so beautiful,
  You endured those insults in silence
  To expiate your infamous adorations
  And the sins which denied to you a grave.

  Ridiculous hanged man, your sufferings are mine!
  I felt at the sight of your dangling limbs
  The long, bitter river of my ancient sorrows
  Rise up once more like vomit to my teeth;

  Before you, poor devil of such dear memory
  I felt all the stabbing beaks of the crows
  And the jaws of the black panthers who loved so much
  In other days to tear my flesh to shreds.

  For me thenceforth all was black and bloody,
  Alas! and I had in that allegory
  Wrapped up my heart as in a heavy shroud.

  On your isle, O Venus! I found upright only
  A symbolic gallows from which hung my image...
  O! Lord! give me the strength and the courage
  To contemplate my body and soul without loathing!