It Is Well; Since to the Senate, Poem by Victor Hugo

Poem by Victor Hugo Themes PoliticsPeriod 19th century

It is well; since to the senate, since to rottenness,
You calmly, haughtily, proudly, put up your candidacy,
Since you hold out your hand to Caesar’s money,
Since your conscience is quoted at the bazaar,
Since you take your rank in the infinite shame,
Don’t hold back, cast irony at the people.
To be the servant of the public enemy,
To have the supple contortions of the basilisk,
To sell to haughty devotees atheistic baseness,
To scatter shameless things to the winds,
To offer your abject rhetoric to whoever comes along,
To collaborate in the shadows with radiant crime,
To slobber, to sully, to have affront for comrade,
To be one more caperer in this masquerade,
That is what now you can do best.
Thus, when the passerby with white arms, with gentle eyes,
Who was a woman of honor, becomes a woman of joy,
When she has become a dungheap, a prey,
A breast that at night offers itself to whoever will buy it,
She has nothing left but to laugh, to dance, to sing,
And to amuse herself until she falls
Carrion in the hospital and specter in the tomb.

May 30, 1875.

Victor Hugo

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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