To Roger de Beauvoir

Poem by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly Collection PoussièresPeriod 19th century

Sending him the Ring of Hannibal

Poet of cloak and sword
Whom neither Muse nor Beauty
Has ever resisted,
Nor idle Grace,
Thaumaturge of love, who from a doll can make
A demon of delight!

You ask again for that story
Which in the mad days of my past
I wrote, one evening, from memory,
With rose and black ink,
And the gaiety of a broken heart.

Look again at this portrait of a woman
Whose smile was deadly,
Clay unreachable by the heat of the flame,
Charming body, but empty of a soul…
It is vengeance… in pastel!

A vengeance… a feeble thing!
That redeems nothing of the ills one has suffered!
It grows enervated in my prose…
But like a strong poison in rose perfumes,
It would intoxicate in your verses!

Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly

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

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