A Voyage To Cythera - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)

My heart was like a bird and took to flight,              Around the rigging circling joyously;              The ship rolled on beneath a cloudless sky          Like a great angel drunken with the light.          "What is yon isle, sad and funereal?"              "Cythera famed in deathless song," said they,              "The gay old bachelors' Eldorado-Nay,          Look! 'tis a poor bare country after all!"          Isle of sweet secrets and heart banquetings!              The queenly shade of antique Venus thrills              Scentlike above thy level seas and fills          Our souls with languor and all amorous things.          Fair isle and of green myrtles and blown flowers              Held holy by all men for evermore,              Where the faint sighs of spirits that adore          Float like rose-incense through the quiet hours,          And dovelike sounds each murmured orison:,              Cythera lay there barren 'neath bright skies,              A rocky waste rent by discordant cries:          Natheless I saw a curious thing thereon.          No shady temple was it, close enshrined              I' the trees; no flower-crowned priestess hither came          With her young body burnt by secret flame,          Baring her breast to the caressing wind;          But when so close to the land's edge we drew              Our canvas scared the sea-fowl, gradually              We knew it for a three-branched gallows tree          Like a black cypress stark against the blue.          A rotten carcase hung, whereon did sit              A swarm of foul black birds; with writhe and shriek              Each sought to pierce and plunge his knife-like beak          Deep in the bleeding trunk and limbs of it.          The eyes were holes; the belly opened wide              Streaming its heavy entrails on the thighs;              The grim birds, gorged with dreadful delicacies,          Had dug and furrowed it on every side.          Beneath the blackened feet there strove and pressed              A herd of jealous beasts with upward snout,              And in the midst of these there turned about          One, the chief hangman, larger than the rest....          Lone Cytherean! now all silently              Thou sufferest these insults to atone              For those old infamous sins that thou hast known,          The sins that locked the gate o' the grave to thee.          Mine are thy sorrows, ludicrous corse; yea, all              Are mine! I stood thy swaying limbs beneath,              And, like a bitter vomit, to my teeth          There rose old shadows in a stream of gall.          O thou unhappy devil, I felt afresh,              Gazing at thee, the beaks and jaws of those              Black savage panthers and those ruthless crows,          Who loved of old to macerate my flesh.          The sea was calm, the sky without a cloud;              Henceforth for me all things that came to pass              Were blood and darkness,, round my heart, alas!          There clung that allegory, like a shroud.          Naught save mine image on a gibbet thrust              Found I on Venus island desolate....              Ah, God! the courage and strength to contemplate          My body and my heart without disgust.