O Holy Horror of Evil!

Poem by Victor Hugo Period 19th century

O holy horror of evil! Mournful duty! O hatred!
When Virgil suspends the goat on the white privet;
When Lucretius clothes the naked man in leaves;
When Ennius compares to the horned satyr
The goat passing its head through the thicket
That makes Europa at her bath turn away and shudder;
When Moschus sings of Enna; when Horace gaily
Follows Canidia, and makes, on the steaming cauldron
Where the horror of the moon and of tombs seeps in,
Priapus sneeze at the acrid odor of the philter;
When Plautus beats Davus or mocks Amphitryon,
The blue sky in a corner shines and casts a ray
On the troubled bather or the climbing goat,
And in the depths one hears immense Olympus laughing.
But all azure is eclipsed where the avengers pass.
The air-holes below stain with their red glows
The sinister wall against which Jeremiah leans.
The punishers are black. Their pale and grave friend,
Death, lays her hand on their shoulder, and says to them:
— Spirit, do not let your bandit escape.
For it is they who, alone, justiciars of the abysses,
Strike down forever monsters and crimes;
For they are the giants of God’s punishments;
For, on steel placards in words of fire,
Escorted by thunder, these formidable men
Transcribe from on high the unfathomable decrees;
For they put Ahab and Tiberius at the post;
For one carries the lightning, the other holds the hammer;
They walk, posting sentences that man
Reads in dismay, on Tyre, on Nineveh, on Rome,
And, somber, through the frightened centuries,
Go, and these thunderers drag along their thunderstruck.
Isaiah, leaning on atheist Babylon,
Dreams; Aeschylus, avenger and son of Prometheus,
Nails to the brazen drama the tyrant Jupiter;
Shakespeare leads Henry VIII on a leash; and Luther
Whips the Borgias mingled with the Louis XI;
Tacitus in the night places his bronze foot
On the twelve dragons called Caesars;
Daniel goes, followed by the pale Belshazzars;
Pensive Machiavelli guards the beast prince;
Milton keeps watch at the cell’s wicket, abyss where grinds
The pandemonium of all the Satan kings;
Juvenal draws and drags through the terrors
The two-faced strix that his verse has killed,
Who growls as empress and laughs as prostitute;
And Dante holds the end of the iron chain
That pensive Judas bites in the shadow of hell.

February 17, 1854.

Victor Hugo

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

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-o-holy-horror-of-evil-victor-hugo/