III

NURSE. You live, Princess? or do I see your shade? Your fingers at my lips and all their rings Cease to proceed in an unlearned-of age.... Hérodiade. Recede. The immaculate blond torrent of my hair Freezes my limbs with horror when it bathes Their solitude, and interlaced with light My hair’s immortal. Me a kiss would murder, Would kill, if beauty were not death, oh woman.... Driven by what allurement, should I know? What morn forgotten by the prophets pours O’er dying distances, these dismal feasts? And you have seen me enter, nurse of winter, The heavy prison built of stone and iron Where aged lions drag the centuries, And fatal, I advanced, with shielded hands, Through desert-perfume of these ancient kings: But have you still beheld my very dread? I stop to dream of exiles, and I strip, As near a pond whose gush of water welcomes, The pallid lilies in me, smitten, charmed My eyes pursue the languor of the wreck Descend, in silence, through my reverie, The lions part my indolence of robe And gaze on feet whose curves would calm the sea. Quiet the shudder of your crumbling flesh, And mimicking the fashions of my hair So fierce that makes you fear their shock of manes, Come, help, as thus you dare no longer see me, Within a mirror nonchalantly combing. Nurse. My child, unless you wish to sample myrrh Gay in its sealèd bottles, would you prove The grave funereal virtue of the essence Ravished from roses’ dim senility? Hérodiade. Leave there those perfumes! Nurse, do you not know I hate them, do you wish me then, to feel My languid frame drown in their drunkenness? I crave: my hair of flowers not created To strew oblivion of human anguish, But gold, for ever virgin of the spices, In cruel flashes and in heavy pallor, Will mark the sterile chilliness of metals, Having reflected you, my native jewels, Vases and arms, from solitary childhood. Nurse. Pardon, oh queen, for age eclipsed the plea With which you deign to vindicate my mind Grown sallow as an old or gloomy book.... Hérodiade. Enough! before me hold this mirror. Mirror! Cold water frozen hard within your frame By weariness; how often, dream-tormented And searching for my memories, like leaves Beneath the hole profound within your ice, In you I seemed a shadow, but, what horror At dusk when in your fountain I have known The nudity of my dishevelled dream! Nurse, am I beautiful? Nurse. In truth, a star, But this tress tumbles.... Hérodiade. Check in your offence Which chills my blood towards its source, and quell This gesture of notorious irreligion: Tell me, in grim emotion what sure demon Throws you this kiss, these perfumes, should I breathe it? And, oh my heart, this hand still sacrilegious, Since I believe you wished to touch me, say They are a day which will not be extinguished Without calamity upon the tower.... Oh day Hérodiade beholds with dread! Nurse. Indeed, a strange day, from which heaven guard you! You wander, lonely shadow, recent passion, Looking within you, premature in terror: Even as an immortal exquisite, And hideously beautiful, my child As.... Hérodiade. Were you not about to touch me? Nurse. I would belong to him, for whom the Fates Reserve your secrets. Hérodiade. Oh! be silent! Nurse. Sometimes He’ll come, perchance? Hérodiade. I pray you, do not listen, Innocent stars! Nurse. How else, ’mid sombre terrors To dream a suppliant, more implacable, That god the treasure of your grace attends! For whom, devoured of agony, you guard The mystery, vain splendour of your being? Hérodiade. For me. Nurse. Sad flower seen with atony In water, doleful flower that grows alone, Nor has anxiety but cloudy sound. Hérodiade. Go, keep your pity with your irony. Nurse. Expound however: no, ingenuous child, Some day this scorn triumphant will diminish.... Hérodiade. But who would touch me, reverenced of lions? Besides, I want no human thing; if, chiselled, You see me with eyes lost in Paradise, ’Tis when I call to mind your milk of yore. Nurse. Oh lamentable victim to its fate! Hérodiade. Yes, it is for myself, deserted, that I flower! Gardens of amethyst, you know too well— Fled without end into the wise abysms Dazzled and dazed; you unawared-of golds Who guard your antique mellowness of light Beneath the sombre slumber of a soil Primordial and primitive; and you Oh stones from which my pure and jewel eyes Borrow their melody of clarity; You, metals, which surrender to my hair A fatal splendour and its massive gait! Woman who speak of mortal, as for you, Created in malignant centuries, Born for the spite of caverns sybilline! According as from calyx of my clothes The white thrill of my nudity emerge, Aroma of the fierce, the savage joys— Woman who speak of mortal! prophesy That if the tepid azure of the summer, To whom the woman natively unveils, Sees me in starlike shivering chastity, I die! I love the dread of being virgin And I desire to live the terror of my hair— To sense, inviolate reptile, on my couch At evening, stir within my useless flesh The frigid sparkle of your pallid lucence, O you who die calcined with chastity, White night of icicles and cruel snow! And your lone sister, oh eternal sister, My dream will mount towards you airily: Already as the rare limpidity Of one who dreamt it, in my native-land Monotonous, I think myself alone, And all around me lives in the idolatry That in a mirror’s dozing calm reflects Hérodiade of clear and diamond gaze.... Yea, last of spells! I feel it, I’m alone. Nurse. And will you die then, Madam? Hérodiade. Grandmother, no, Be calm: withdrawing, pardon this flint heart, But, if you wish, first close the shutters fast, Seraphic azure smiles within the pane’s Profundity. I loathe the lovely azure. The waters lull themselves and, over there, Do you not know a country where the sky, So sinister, has all the heated looks Of Venus who is burning in the leaves At evening? I’ll thither ... Light these tapers, Mere childishness, you say, whose nimble flames Weep a strange weeping ’mid the empty gold And ... Nurse. Now? Hérodiade. Farewell. You lie, oh naked flower of my lips! For I await a thing unheard of yet. Perhaps unconscious of their mystery, Unconscious of your cries, you hurl the sobs Supreme and bruisèd of an infancy Perceiving dimly ’mid its reveries Those frozen gems that separate at last.