Oh You Who Loved Juvenal

 Some lines that Victor Hugo wrote in 1852 when he set out to write a whole volume of savage satire against Napoleon III. He remembered the Roman poet Juvenal, who perfected the art of the withering insult poem.

OH, YOU WHO LOVED JUVENAL

Adapted by Brett Rutherford
from Victor Hugo, Chatiments, 1852

Oh, you who loved Juvenal and filed
his style so sharp it drew
the blood from the brow
of an Emperor,

Oh, you, whose borrowed luster lit
the dark gloom of Dante’s forest,
raising his thoughts
from murk to the Divine,

You, my new Muse, Indignation!
Make haste, and arm my pen
before a pink dawn
and all its fruitless victories
makes the lesser better seem.

Shame is a paltry thing
when prophets proclaim
the Right; raise
pillories and people them
with the deserving foes!