This well chosen bit of wonderful arrived in my inbox today.
You have to love a slave who knows when a translation is not needed. Yes I could read it. An educated Domina is a dangerous thing.
Je suis belle, ô mortels ! Comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s’est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Éternel et muet ainsi que la matière.
Je trône dans l’azur comme un sphinx incompris ;
J’unis un cœur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes ;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.
Les poètes, devant mes grandes attitudes,
Que j’ai l’air d’emprunter aux plus fiers monuments,
Consumeront leurs jours en d’austères études ;
Car j’ai, pour fasciner ces dociles amants,
De purs miroirs qui font toutes choses plus belles :
Mes yeux, mes larges yeux aux clartés éternelles !
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For those who can’t (my own translation)
I am beautiful o mortals, like a dream all in stone
and my breast, where everyone batters himself in his turn
is shaped to inspire in the poets a love
as lasting and as mute as matter itself
enthroned in the sky like the inscrutable sphinx
I join a heart of snow to the whiteness of swans
I disdain movement which disrupts clean lines
I never laugh and I never shed tears
Poets, before the great poses I strike
derivative of the airs of the greatest of monuments
are consumed all their days in austere study
for I have entranced these docile admirers
with clear mirrors: which render everything even more beautiful
my eyes, my great eyes, which burn bright, eternal!
