Air de Sémiramis. Song of Semiramis

SONG OF SÉMIRAMIS

À Camille Mauclair.

WITH the dawn, dear light-beams, my dreaming brow is circled! Only just arisen, it sees with an eye that sleeps On the absolute marble, the pale times reflected, The hour descend on me and grow as the gold ...

... «Exist!... Be finally yourself! says the Morning, O great soul, it is time that you form a body! Hurry to choose a day worthy to bring to birth Among all other fires, your immortal treasures!

Already, against the night struggles the harsh trumpet! A lip vibrant with life attacks the icy air; Pure gold, from tower to tower, breaks and repeats, Recalling all of space to the splendours of the past!

Lift up your true glances! Pull yourself from the shadows, And like unto a swimmer, in the full of the sea, The all-powerful heel expelling sombre waters, You, strike at the depth of being! Question your flesh,

Traverse without delay its invincible meshes, Exhaust the infinite with powerless effort, And release yourself from the disorder of dramas That engender in your bed the monsters of your blood!

I hasten from the East enough for your caprice! And I come to you offering my purest foods; That on space and on wind your ardour be nourished! Come to join the brightness of my presentiments!»

- I respond!... I arise from my profound absence! My heart wrests me from the dead who impinge on my sleep, And towards my goal, great eagle bright with power, It carries me!... I fly on high to meet the sun!

I take nothing but a rose and flee ... The lovely shaft In my side!... My head gives birth to a crowd of steps ... They speed towards my favourite tower, where the fresh Altitude calls to me, and to it I stretch my arms!

Rise, O Semiramis, mistress of a spiral Which a heart without love thrusts up as its sole honour! Your imperial eye thirsts for a great empire On which your hard sceptre makes it feel happiness ...

Dare the abyss!... Pass a final bridge of roses! I approach you, peril! Pride more irritated! These ants are all my own! These cities are my things, These roadways are the strokes of my authority!

It is a wildcat's vast skin that is my kingdom! I have killed the lion who used to wear this skin; But still the aroma of a ferocious phantom Hovers laden with death, and takes charge of my flock!

At last, I offer the sun the secret of my charms! Never has it gilded a threshold so gracious! But of my fragility I taste the dangers Between the double call of the earth and the skies.

Repast of my power, intelligible orgy, What vaporous square of roofs and of forests Sets at the feet of the pure and divine look-out, This calm distancing of secret occurrences!

The soul at last on this summit has found its dwellings! O out of what grandeur, does it draw its grandeur When my heart lifted up on interior wings Opens to the sky in myself another deepness!

Anxious for the azure, by its glory consumed, Breast, abyss of shadows with its nostrils of flesh, Inhale this incense of the souls and of the smoke Which rises from a city as it does from the sea!

O sun, O sun, laugh as you look down on my hives! The intense and restless noises of Babylon, All the hubbub of chariots, bugles, chains of jugs And groans of the stones to the mortals who construct.

How they flatter my wish for implacable temples, The sharp sounds of the saw and the cry of the chisel, And these moans of the marble and of the cables Which fill the living air with structure and with birds!

I see my new temple born among all the worlds, And my vow take place in the abode of destinies; It seems of itself to be raised to the sky by waves Underneath the seething mass of indistinct actions.

Stupid people, to whom my own power enchains me, Alas! my very pride has need of your own hands! And why force my heart if it does not love this hatred Whose innumerable head is so soft to my steps?

Smooth, it murmurs to me with such music as when The calm of the wave is formed out of its fury, When it recovers peace at the feet of a mortal But holds in reserve a return of its terror.

In vain I hear rise up against my august face This murmuring of fear and of ferocity: To the image of the gods the great soul is unjust In as much as it fits itself for necessity!

Although sometimes touched by the gentleness of love, All the same no tenderness and no renouncements Will leave me a captive and a sleeping victim In the powerful bonds of the sleep of lovers!

Kisses, the spite of love, the lowness of its bliss, O the movements marine of astounded lovers, My heart has been my counsel in such solitudes, And so high have I planted my hanging gardens

That my supreme flowers expect naught but lightning And in spite of the tears of the loveliest lovers, For my roses, the hand that touches them falls to dust: My sweetest memories are established upon tombs!

They are dear to my heart the temples given birth When slowly drawn to life from the dream of my breasts, I see a monument of massive triumphant shape Assemble in my sight the shadow of my designs!

Clash, O golden cymbals, rhythmical mamillae, And roses quivering on my pure inner wall! That I myself might vanish in my own immense thoughts, Wise Semiramis, an enchantress and a king!