Arthur Rimbaud - Sun and Flesh lyrics

I The Sun, the hearth of affection and life Pours burning love on the delighted earth And when you lie down in the valley, you can smell How the earth is nubile and very full-blooded; How its huge breast, heaved up by a soul Is, like God, made of love, and, like woman, of flesh And that it contains, big with sap and with sunlight The vast pullulation of all embryos! And everything grows, and everything rises! - O Venus, O Goddess! I long for the days of antique youth Of lascivious satyrs, and animal fauns Gods who bit, mad with love, the bark of the boughs And among water-lilies kissed the Nymph with fair hair! I long for the time when the sap of the world River water, the rose-coloured blood of green trees Put into the veins of Pan a whole universe! When the earth trembled, green,beneath his goat-feet; When, softly kissing the fair Syrinx, his lips formed Under heaven the great hymn of love; When, standing on the plain, he heard round about him Living Nature answer his call; When the silent trees cradling the singing bird Earth cradling mankind, and the whole blue Ocean And all living creatures loved, loved in God! I long for the time of great Cybele Who was said to travel, gigantically lovely In a great bronze chariot, through splendid cities; Her twin breasts poured, through the vast deeps The pure streams of infinite life Mankind s**ed joyfully at her blessed nipple Like a small child playing on her knees - Because he was strong, Man was gentle and chaste Misfortune! Now he says: I understand things And goes about with eyes shut and ears closed - And again, no more gods! no more gods! Man is King Man is God! But the great faith is Love! Oh! if only man still drew sustenance from your nipple Great mother of gods and of men, Cybele; If only he had not forsaken immortal Astarte Who long ago, rising in the tremendous brightness Of blue waters, flower-flesh perfumed by the wave Showed her rosy navel, towards which the foam came snowing And , being a goddess with the great conquering black eyes Made the nightingale sing in the woods and love in men's hearts! II I believe! I believe in you! divine mother Sea-born Aphrodite! - Oh! the path is bitter Since the other God harnessed us to his cross; Flesh, Marble, Flower, Venus, in you I believe! - yes, Man is sad and ugly, sad under the vast sky He possesses clothes, because he is no longer chaste Because he has defiled his proud, godlike head And because he has bent, like an idol in the furnace His Olympian form towards base slaveries! Yes, even after d**h, in the form of pale skeletons He wishes to live and insult the original beauty! - And the Idol in whom you placed such maidenhood Woman, in whom you rendered our clay divine So that Man might bring light into his poor soul And slowly ascend, in unbounded love From the earthly prison to the beauty of day Woman no longer knows even how to be a Courtesan! - It's a fine farce! and the world snickers At the sweet and sacred name of great Venus! III If only the times which have come and gone might come again! - For Man is finished! Man has played all the parts! In the broad daylight, wearied with breaking idols He will revive, free of all his gods And, since he is of heaven, he will scan the heavens! The Ideal, that eternal, invincible thought, which is All; The living god within his fleshly clay Will rise, mount, burn beneath his brow! An when you see him plumbing the whole horizon Despising old yokes, and free from all fear You will come and give him holy Redemption! - Resplendent, radiant, from the bosom of the huge seas You will rise up and give to the vast Universe Infinite Love with its eternal smile! The World will vibrate like an immense lyre In the trembling of an infinite kiss! - The World thirsts for love: you will come and slake its thirst .................................................... O! Man has raised his free, proud head! And the sudden blaze of primordial beauty Makes the god quiver in the altar of the flesh! Happy in the present good, pale from the ill suffered Man wishes to plumb all depths, - and know all things! Thought So long a jade, and for so long oppressed Springs from his forehead! She will know Why!... Let her but gallop free, and Man will find Faith! - Why the blue silence, unfathomable space? Why the golden stars, teeming like sands? If one ascended forever, what would one see up there? Does a sheperd drive this enormous flock Of worlds on a journey through this horror of space? And do all these worlds contained in the vast ether Tremble at the tones of an eternal voice? - And Man, can he see? can he say: I believe? Is the langage of thought anymore than a dream? If man is born so quickly, if life is so short Whence does he come? Does he sink into the deep Ocean Of Germs, of Foetuses, of Embryos, to the bottom Of the huge Crucible where Nature the Mother Will resuscitate him, a living creature To love in the rose and to grow in the corn?... We cannot know! - We are weighed down With a cloak of ignorance, hemmed in by chimaeras! Men like apes, dropped from our mothers' wombs Our feeble reason hides the infinite from us! We wish to perceive: - and Doubt punishes us! Doubt, dismal bird, beat us down with its wing... - And the horizon rushes away in endless flight!... ....................................................... The vast heaven is open! the mysteries lie dead Before erect Man, who folds his strong arms Among the vast splendour of abundant Nature! He sings... and the woods sing, the river murmurs A song full of happiness which rises towards the light!... - it is Redemption! it is love! it is love!... ........................................................ IV O splendour of flesh! O ideal splendour! O renewal of love, triumphal dawn When, prostrating the Gods and the Heroes White Callipyge and little Eros Covered with the snow of rose petals, will caress Women and flowers beneath their lovely outstretched feet! - O great Ariadne who pour out your tears On the shore, as you see, out there on the waves The sail of Theseus flying white under the sun O sweet virgin child whom a night has broken Be silent! On his golden chariot studded with black grapes Lysios, who has been drawn through Phrygian fields By lascivious tigers and russet panthers Reddens the dark mosses along the blue rivers - Zeus, the Bull, cradles on his neck like a child The nude body of Europa who throws her white arm Round the God's muscular neck which shivers in the wave Slowly he turns his dreamy eye towards her; She, droops her pale flowerlike cheek On the brow of Zeus; her eyes are closed; she is dying In a divine kiss, and the murmuring waters Strew the flowers of their golden foam on her hair - Between the oleander and the gaudy lotus tree Slips amorously the great dreaming Swan Enfloding Leda in the whiteness of his wing; - And while Cypris goes by, strangely beautiful And, arching the marvellous curves of her back Proudly displays the golden vision of her big breasts And snowy belly embroidered with black moss - Hercules, Tamer of beasts, in his Strength Robes his huge body with the lion's skin as with glory And faces the horizons, his brow terrible and sweet! Vaguely lit by the summer moon Erect, naked, dreaming in her pallor of gold Streaked by the heavy wave of her long blue hair In the shadowy glade whenre stars spring in the moss The Dryade gazes up at the silent sky... - White Selene, timidly, lets her veil float Over the feet of beautiful Endymion And throws him a kiss in a pale beam... - The Spring sobs far off in a long ectasy... Ii is the nymph who dreams with one elbow on her urn Of the handsome white stripling her wave has pressed against - A soft wind of love has pa**ed in the night And in the sacred woods, amid the standing hair of the great trees Erect in majesty, the shadowly Marbles The Gods, on whose brows the Bullfinch has his nest - the Gods listen to Men, and to the infinite World!