Translation of "Aiguillon" in English

Les abeilles, aussi bien que les les guêpes, ont un aiguillon.

Bees, like wasps, have a stinger.

Tel un affreux serpent, qui, nourri de poison, / sous la terre dormait dans la froide saison, / tout à coup reparaît, rayonnant de jeunesse, / s'étale avec orgueil, se roule, se redresse, / darde un triple aiguillon, et de son corps vermeil / allume les couleurs aux rayons du soleil.

As when a snake, that through the winter's cold / lay swoln and hidden in the ground from sight, / gorged with rank herbs, forth issues to the light, / and sleek with shining youth and newly drest, / wreathing its slippery volumes, towers upright / and, glorying, to the sunbeam rears its breast, / and darts a three-forked tongue, and points a flaming crest.

Ce peu de mots à peine a redoublé leur rage ; / soudain, tels que dans l'ombre, avides de ravage, / court de loups dévorants un affreux bataillon, / qu'irrite de la faim le pressant aiguillon, / et que les fruits affreux de leur amour sauvage / attendent dans la nuit, altérés de carnage ; / au centre de la ville, au plus fort des combats, / nous volons à la gloire, ou plutôt au trépas. / Sur nous la nuit étend ses ailes ténébreuses.

- Then fury spurred their courage, and behold, / As ravening wolves, when darkness hides the day, / Stung with mad fire of famine uncontrolled, / Prowl from their dens, and leave the whelps to stay, / With jaws athirst and gaping for the prey. / So to sure death, amid the darkness there, / Where swords, and spears, and foemen bar the way, / Into the centre of the town we fare. / Night with her shadowy cone broods o'er the vaulted air.
- Then, like wolves ravening in a black fog, whom mad malice of hunger hath driven blindly forth, and their cubs left behind await with throats unslaked; through the weapons of the enemy we march to certain death, and hold our way straight into the town. Night's sheltering shadow flutters dark around us.