To the Turks

Poem by Fanny De Beauharnais Collection Miscellaneous Fugitive Poems and Prose of No ConsequencePeriod 18th centuryPrint

Gentlemen Turks, I detest you.
What cold, what insipid good,
To abuse a fatal power,
To dare everything, while inspiring nothing!
If we are to believe you, a Woman
Was born for your amusement,
With a few charms, has no soul,
And deceives quite ingeniously.
You blaspheme… Heaven is wise;
It communicates to its image
The spark of feeling.
A beautiful eye paints it and announces it;
It is the interpreter of the Gods,
And its glances are my answer.
In us, it is the heart that pronounces:
But, for a Turk, eyes are too much.
No, nothing is like our France.
Here, one has reason,
With a grain of extravagance.
Women set the tone there;
And it is they whom we incense.
Come to our feet, come, Sultan.
Learn to enjoy life;
Set aside the pride of the Turban,
For the ribbons of my Fatherland.
To possess is less than to feel.
Come take, at the knees of Delia,
Some lessons in true pleasure.
What do you hope from these slaves,
Whose fair years you captivate;
Who find, in their shackles,
Only oppressors for lovers?
Go; give them the key to the fields.
Make your Highness cherished at last;
And you will see, in a short time,
That the freedom left to us,
Developing feelings,
Never harms wisdom.
Signed by us, grave Doctors
Thinking under flowered bonnets,
And dictating laws to Asia,
In the evening after the Comedy.

fanny-de-beauharnais

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