Allégorie
C'est une femme belle et de riche encolure,
Qui laisse dans son vin traîner sa chevelure.
Les griffes de l'amour, les poisons du tripot,
Tout glisse et tout s'émousse au granit de sa peau.
Elle rit à la Mort et nargue la Débauche,
Ces monstres dont la main, qui toujours gratte et fauche,
Dans ses jeux destructeurs a pourtant respecté
De ce corps ferme et droit la rude majesté.
Elle marche en déesse et repose en sultane;
Elle a dans le plaisir la foi mahométane,
Et dans ses bras ouverts, que remplissent ses seins,
Elle appelle des yeux la race des humains.
Elle croit, elle sait, cette vierge inféconde
Et pourtant nécessaire à la marche du monde,
Que la beauté du corps est un sublime don
Qui de toute infamie arrache le pardon.
Elle ignore l'Enfer comme le Purgatoire,
Et quand l'heure viendra d'entrer dans la Nuit noire
Elle regardera la face de la Mort,
Ainsi qu'un nouveau-né, — sans haine et sans remords.
— Charles Baudelaire
Allegory
She's a beautiful woman with opulent shoulders
Who lets her long hair trail in her goblet of wine.
The claws of love, the poisons of brothels,
All slips and all is blunted on her granite skin.
She laughs at Death and snaps her fingers at Debauch.
The hands of those monsters, ever cutting and scraping,
Have respected nonetheless the pristine majesty
Of her firm, straight body at its destructive games.
She walks like a goddess, rests like a sultana;
She has a Mohammedan's faith in pleasure
And to her open arms which are filled by her breasts,
She lures all mortals with her eyes.
She believes, she knows, this virgin, sterile
And yet essential to the march of the world,
That a beautiful body is a sublime gift
That wrings a pardon for any foul crime.
She is unaware of Hell and Purgatory
And when the time comes for her to enter
The black Night, she will look into the face of Death
As a new-born child, — without hatred or remorse.
— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)
Allegory
She is a woman of appearance fine
Who lets her tresses trail into her wine.
Love's claws and poisons, brewed in sinks of sin,
Fall blunted from the granite of her skin.
She mocks Debauchery, Death leaves her blithe,
Two monsters always handy with the scythe.
In their grim games, where so much beauty's wrecked,
They treat her majesty with due respect.
Half goddess, half sultana, without scathe,
In pleasure she's a Moslem's steady faith.
Between her open arms, filled by her breasts,
For all mankind with burning eyes she quests,
And she believes, this fruitless virgin-wife,
Who's yet so necessary to this life,
That beauty of the body is a gift
Sublime enough all infamy to shift,
And win forgiveness. She knows naught of Hell.
When the Night comes, in which she is to dwell,
Straight in the face she'll look her deadly Fate,
Like one new-born — without remorse or hate.
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)
http://fleursdumal.org/poem/184
