Epigraph for a Condemned Book
Reader, you of calm, bucolic,
Artless, sober bonhomie,
Get rid of this Saturnian book
Of orgies and despondency.
Just throw it out! unless you've learned
Your rhetoric in Satan's school
You will not understand a word,
You'll think I am hysterical.
But if your eye can brave the depths
And not be lost in gulfs or skies,
Read me, and learn to love this text;
O questing soul who suffers and
Keeps searching for your paradise
Have pity on me... or be damned!
Přeložil James McGowan
