To One Who Is Too Cheerful
Your head, your air, your every way
Are scenic as the countryside;
The smile plays in your lips and eyes
Like fresh winds on a cloudless day.
The gloomy drudge, brushed by your charms,
Is dazzled by the vibrancy
That flashes forth so brilliantly
Out of your shoulders and your arms.
All vivid colours, and the way
They resonate in how you dress
Have poets in their idleness
Imagining a flower-ballet.
These lavish robes are emblems of
The mad profusion that is you;
Madwoman, I am maddened too,
And hate you even as I love!
Sometimes within a park, at rest,
Where I have dragged my apathy,
I have felt like an irony
The sunshine lacerate my breast.
And then the spring's luxuriance
Humiliated so my heart
That I have pulled a flower apart
To punish Nature's insolence.
So I would wish, when you're asleep,
The time for sensuality,
Towards your body's treasury
Silently, stealthily to creep,
To bruise your ever-tender breast,
And carve in your astonished side
An injury both deep and wide,
To chastize your too-joyous flesh.
And, sweetness that would dizzy me!
In these two lips so red and new
My sister, I have made for you,
To slip my venom, lovingly!
Přeložil James McGowan