En rit-elle moins tous les dieux.
Lui rendre un juste hommage!
Et Paris, le berger fameux,
Lui donner l'avantage
Meme sur la reine des cieux
Et Minerve la sage?
Dans le serail du grand seigneur.
Quelle est la favorite?
C'est la plus belle au gre de coeur
Du maitre qui l'habite.
C'est le seul titre en sa faveur
Et c'est le vrai merite.
Que Grammont tonne contre toi,
La chose est naturelle.
Elle voudrait donner la loi
Et n'est qu' une mortelle;
Il faut, pour plaire au plus grand roi,
Sans orgueil etre belle.*
*From those readers who may understand this chanson
in the original, and look somewhat contemptuously on
the following version, the translator begs to shelter
himself under the well-known observation of Lord
Chesterfield, "that everything suffers by translation,
but a bishop!" Those to whom such a dilution is
necessary will perhaps be contented with the
skim-milk as they cannot get the cream.- TRANS.
Thy beauty, seductress, leads mortals astray,
Over hearts, Lise, how vast and resistless thy sway.
Cease, duchess, to blush! cease, princess, to rave--
Venus sprang from the foam of the ocean wave.
All the gods pay their homage at her beauteous shrine,
And adore her as potent, resistless, divine!
To her Paris, the shepherd, awarded the prize,
Sought by Juno the regal, and Pallas the wise.
Who rules o'er her lord in the Turkish
,
Reigns queen of his heart, and e'er basks in his smile?
'Tis she, who resplendent, shines loveliest of all,
And beauty holds power in her magic thrall.
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