Don Juan in Hell

Poem by Charles Baudelaire Collection The Flowers of EvilThemes TimePeriod 19th century

When Don Juan descended to the subterranean wave
And when he had given his obol to Charon,
A somber beggar, with an eye as proud as Antisthenes,
With a vengeful and strong arm seized each oar.

Showing their hanging breasts and their open dresses,
Women writhed beneath the black firmament,
And, like a great herd of offered victims,
Trailed behind him a long lowing.

Sganarelle, laughing, demanded his wages from him,
While Don Luis with a trembling finger
Showed to all the dead wandering on the shores
The audacious son who mocked his white brow.

Shuddering beneath her mourning, the chaste and gaunt Elvira,
Near the perfidious spouse who had been her lover,
Seemed to demand of him a supreme smile
In which might shine the sweetness of her first vow.

Upright in his armor, a great man of stone
Stood at the helm and cut the black flood,
But the calm hero, bent over his rapier,
Gazed at the wake and deigned to see nothing.

Charles Baudelaire

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