I
The Sun, the hearth of life and tenderness,
Pours burning love on the delighted earth,
And when you rest in the valley you know,
How nubile earth is, how it overflows;
How, raised up by soul, its immense breastIs love, as God is, and, like woman, flesh,
And big with sap and sunlight will enclose
The mighty seething of all embryos!
All burgeons, and all rises!
–OVenus, O goddess!
I long for the ancient times of youthfulness,
Animalistic fauns, lascivious satyrs,
Gods, love-maddened, biting the bark of firs,
Kissing the blond Nymph among water lilies!
I long for the days when the green sap of trees,
River-waters, red blood from the branches, ran,
A whole universe, through the veins of mighty Pan!
When the soil trembled, green, under his goat-feet;
When, kissing bright Syrinx, soft his lips would meet,
To sound beneath the sky the vast hymn of love;
When, in the plain, he heard about him move
A living Nature responding to his word;
When the silent trees, cradling the singing bird,
Earth, cradling man, and the whole blue Sea,And all creatures, loved, loved in that DeityI long for the age of mighty CybeleWho rode, they say, gigantically lovely,In her vast bronze chariot, through splendid cities;Her twin breasts pouring, through the immensities,Of an infinite existence, each purest ripple.Man sucked happily at her blessed nipple,Like a little infant, playing on her knee.– Strong, Man knew gentleness and chastity.Misery! Now he says: all things I know,And goes about eyes shut and ears closed.– Cries: No more gods, no more! Man is king,Man is God! Love’s our Faith, the noblest thing!Oh, if only man still drank there at your breast,Cybele, mother of gods, men, all the rest!If he had not forsaken deathless Astarte,Who rising, once, from the immense clarityOf blue waters, flesh-flower the wave perfumed,Showed her rosy navel where snowed the foam,Goddess with vast black conquering eyes, to moveThe nightingale to song, the heart to love!III believe in you, I believe! Oh, divine mother,Sea-borne Aphrodite! – Ah, the path is bitterSince another God yoked us to his cross. You,Flesh, Marble, Flower, Venus, I believe in you!–Yes, Man is ugly, sad under this vast sky,Wearing clothes, now his chastity’s laid by,Since he’s defiled his proud godlike head,Like an idol in the fire, has bowed insteadHis Olympian form to basest slaveries!Yes, as a pale skeleton, after his decease,He would live on, insulting primal beauty!–And the Idol in whom you praised virginity,In whom you made our clay divine, Woman,So as to light the impoverished soul of ManThat he might arise, in love’s immensity,From earthly prison to the day’s pure beauty,No longer knows how to play the courtesan!–What a fine farce! And the world againSniggers at the sweet and sacred name of Venus!IIIIf those times would but return, times lost to us!–For Man is finished! Man has played every part!In the light, tired of breaking idols, see him startTo revive once more, free of all his deities,And scan the heavens, since he is heavenly!The Ideal, the invincible thought, eternalAll; the god that lives in his fleshly thrall,Will rise, and mount, burn beneath his brow!And when he sounds the whole horizon now,Despising ancient yokes, free of trepidation,You will come bringing sacred Redemption!–Splendid, radiant, from depths of vast seas,You will arise, and grant Love’s infinitiesWith their eternal smile to the huge Universe!The World will vibrate like a vast lyre – it thirstsThe World thirsts for love: you’ll bring it bliss–In the trembling there of an enormous kiss!IVO splendour of the flesh! O ideal splendour!
O love renewed, triumphant dawn aurora,
Where, at their feet the Gods and Heroes,
Callipyge the white and her little Eros,
Drowned in the snow of rose-petals, press
Women and flowers beneath their feet’s caress!
– O great Ariadne, drench the sand with tears
As visibly, out there on the waves, appears
Theseus’ sail, flying white beneath the sun;
O sweet virgin child, by a night undone,
Silence! In his gold car strewn with black grapes,
Lysios, wandering over Phrygian landscapes,
Drawn by lascivious tigers, tawny panthers,
Reddens the sombre moss by azure rivers.
– Zeus, the Bull, like a child’s keeps from harm
Europa’s naked body, who casts a white arm
Over the God’s tense neck, trembling the wave…
Slowly he turns on her his dreamy gaze;
She lets her pale flowerlike cheek rest, it lies
Against Zeus’ brow; her eyes close; she dies
In a divine kiss, the waves, murmuring there,
Adorning with golden foam her unbound hair.
–Between the oleander and the gaudy lotus,
The great dreaming Swan slides by, all amorous,
Folding Leda in the whiteness of its wing;
–And as Cypris passes, strange lovely thing,
Arching the splendid curves of back and neck,
Proudly displaying her large golden breasts
And snowy belly embroidered with black moss,
–Hercules, Tamer of Beasts, draws across
His huge body his lion’s skin, like a glory,
Fronts the horizon, his brow sweet and deadly!
Vaguely lit now by the moon of summer,
Erect and naked, dreaming in golden pallor,
Streaked by her heavy wave of long blue hair,
In the shadowy glade starred by the moss,
The Dryad views the silent sky up there…
– White Selene, allows her veil to pass,
Fearfully, over lovely Endymion’s feet,
And throws him a pale beam, kiss discreet…
– The Fountain weeps in slow ecstasy afar…
It’s the Nymph who dreams, an elbow on her vase,
Of the fine young man her wave has touched.
– A breeze of love through the night has washed,
And, in the sacred wood, its terrifying arbours,
Majestically erect, the sombre Marbles,
The Gods, on whose brow the Bullfinch has birth,
– The Gods listen to Man, and the infinite Earth!
