The Flowers of Evil
From all transgressions, from all snares, they save,
Towards the Path of Joy they guide my ways;
They are my servants, and I am their slave;
And all my soul, this living torch obeys.
Ye charming Eyes--ye have those mystic beams,
Of candles, burning in full day; the sun
Awakes, yet kills not their fantastic gleams:
Ye sing the Awak'ning, they the dark oblivion;
The Awak'ning of my spirit ye proclaim,
O stars--no sun can ever kill your flame!
The Spiritual Dawn
When the morning white and rosy breaks,
With the gnawing Ideal, upon the debauchee,
By the power of a strange decree,
Within the sotted beast an Angel wakes.
The mental Heaven's inaccessible blue,
For wearied mortals that still dream and mourn,
Expands and sinks; towards the chasm drawn.
Thus, cherished goddess, Being pure and true--
Upon the rests of foolish orgy-nights
Thine image, more sublime, more pink, more clear,
Before my staring eyes is ever there.
The sun has darkened all the candle lights;
And thus thy spectre like the immortal sun,
Is ever victorious--thou resplendent one!
Evening Harmony
The hour approacheth, when, as their stems incline,
The flowers evaporate like an incense urn,
And sounds and scents in the vesper breezes turn;
A melancholy waltz--and a drowsiness divine.
The flowers evaporate like an incense urn,
The viol vibrates like the wailing of souls that repine.
A melancholy waltz--and a drowsiness divine,
The skies like a mosque are beautiful and stern.
The viol vibrates like the wailing of souls that repine;
Sweet souls that shrink from chaos vast and etern,
The skies like a mosque are beautiful and stern,
The sunset drowns within its blood-red brine.
Sweet souls that shrink from chaos vast and etern,
Essay the wreaths of their faded Past to entwine,
The sunset drowns within its blood-red brine,
Thy thought within me glows like an incense urn.
Overcast Sky
Meseemeth thy glance, soft enshrouded with dew,
Thy mysterious eyes (are they grey, green or blue?),
Alternately cruel, and tender, and shy,
Reflect both the languor and calm of the sky.
Thou recallest those white days--with shadows caressed,
Engendering tears from th' enraptured breast,
When racked by an anguish unfathomed that weeps,
The nerves, too awake, jibe the spirit that sleeps.
At times--thou art like those horizons divine,
Where the suns of the nebulous seasons decline;
How resplendent art thou--O pasturage vast,
Illumed by the beams of a sky overcast!
O! dangerous dame--oh seductive clime!
As well, will I love both thy snow and thy rime,
And shall I know how from the frosts to entice
Delights that are keener than iron and ice?
Invitation to a Journey
My sister, my dear
Consider how fair,
Together to live it would be!
Down yonder to fly
To love, till we die,
In the land which resembles thee.
Those suns that rise
'Neath erratic skies,
--No charm could be like unto theirs--
So strange and divine,
Like those eyes of thine
Which glow in the midst of their tears.
There, all is order and loveliness,
Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
The tables and chairs,
Polished bright by the years,
Would decorate sweetly our rooms,
And the rarest of flowers
Would twine round our bowers
And mingle their amber perfumes:
The ceilings arrayed,
And the mirrors inlaid,
This Eastern splendour among,
Would furtively steal
O'er our souls, and appeal
With its tranquillous native tongue.
There, all is order and loveliness,
Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
In the harbours, peep,
At the vessels asleep
(Their humour is always to roam),
Yet it is but to grant
Thy smallest want
From the ends of the earth that they come,
The sunsets beam
Upon meadow and stream,
And upon the city entire
'Neath a violet crest,
The world sinks to rest,
Illumed by a golden fire.
There, all is order and loveliness,
Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
"Causerie"
You are a roseate autumn-sky, that glows!
Yet sadness rises in me like the flood,
And leaves in ebbing on my lips morose,
The poignant memory of its bitter mind.
In vain your hands my swooning breast embrace,
Oh, friend! alone remains the plundered spot,
Where woman's biting grip has left its trace:
My heart, the beasts devoured--seek it not!
My heart is a palace pillaged by the herd;
They kill and take each other by the throat!
A perfume glides around your bosom bared--
O loveliness, thou scourge of souls--devote
Thine eyes of fire--luminous-like feasts,
To burn these rags--rejected by the beasts!
Autumn Song
I
Shortly we will plunge within the frigid gloom,
Farewell swift summer brightness; all too short--
I hear already sounding with a death-like boom
The wood that falls upon the pavement of the court.
The whole of winter enters in my Being--pain,
Hate, honor, labour hard and forced--and dread,
And like the northern sun upon its polar plane
My heart will soon be but a stone, iced and red.
I listen trembling unto every log that falls,
The scaffold, which they build, has not a duller sound,
My spirits waver, like the trembling tower walls
that shake--with every echoing blow the builders pound.
Meeseemeth--as to these monotonous blows I sway,
They nail for one a coffin lid, or sound a knell--
For whom? Autumn now--and summer yesterday!
This strange mysterious noise betokens a farewell.
II
I love within your oblong eyes the verdant rays,
My sweet! but bitter everything to-day meseems:
And nought--your love, the boudoir, nor the flickering blaze,
Can replace the sun that o'er the screen streams.
And yet bemother and caress me, tender heart!
Even me the thankless and the worthless one;
Beloved or sister--unto me the sweets impart
Of a glorious autumn or a sinking sun.
Ephemeral task! the beckoning the beckoning empty tomb is set!
Oh grant me--as upon your knees my head I lay,
(Because the white and torrid summer I regret),
To taste the parted season's mild and amber ray.
Sisina
Imagine Diana in gorgeous array,
How into the forests and thickets she flies,
With her hair in the breezes, and flushed for the fray,
How the very best riders she proudly defies.
Have you seen Théroigne, of the blood-thirsty heart,
As an unshod herd to attack he bestirs,
With cheeks all inflamed, playing up to his part,
As he goes, sword in hand, up the royal stairs?
And so is Sisina--yet this warrior sweet,
Has a soul with compassion and kindness replete,
Inspired by drums and by powder, her sway
Knows how to concede to the supplicants' prayers,
And her bosom, laid waste by the flames, has alway,
For those that are worthy, a fountain of tears.
To a Creolean Lady
In a country perfumed with the sun's embrace,
I knew 'neath a dais of purpled palms,
And branches where idleness weeps o'er one's face,
A Creolean lady of unknown charms.
Her tint, pale and warm--this bewitching bride,
Displays a nobly nurtured mien,
Courageous and grand like a huntsman, her stride;
A tranquil smile and eyes serene.
If, madam, you'd go to the true land of gain,
By the banks of the verdant Loire or the Seine,
How worthy to garnish some pile of renown.
You'd awake in the calm of some shadowy nest,
A thousand songs in the poet's breast,
That your eyes would inspire far more than your brown.
Moesta et Errabunda
Oh, Agatha, tell! does thy heart not at times fly away?
Far from the city impure and the lowering sea,
To another ocean that blinds with its dazzling array,
So blue and so clear and profound, like virginity?
Oh, Agatha, tell! does thy heart not at times fly away?
The sea, the vast ocean our travail and trouble consoles!
What demon hath gifted the sea with a voice from on high,
To sing us (attuned to an Æolus-organ that rolls
Forth a grumbling burden) a lenitive lullabye?
The sea, the vast ocean our travail and trouble consoles!
Oh, carry me, waggons, oh, sailing-ships, help me depart!
Far, far, here the dust is quite wet with our showering tears,
Oh, say! it is true that Agatha's desolate heart,
Proclaimeth, "Away from remorse, and from crimes, and from cares,"
Oh, carry me, waggons, oh, sailing ships, help me depart!
How distant you seem to be, perfumed Elysian fields!
Wherein there is nothing but sunshine and love and glee;
Where all that one loves is so worthy, and lovingly yields,
And our hearts float about in the purest of ecstasy,
How distant you seem to be, perfumed Elysian fields!
But the green paradise of those transient infantile loves,
The strolls, and the songs, and the kisses, and bunches of flowers,
The viols vibrating beyond, in the mountainous groves,
With the chalice of wine and the evening, entwined, in the bowers,
But the green paradise of those transient infantile loves.
That innocent heaven o'erflowing with furtive delight,
Than China or India, is it still further away?
Or, could one with pityful prayers bring it back to our sight?
Or yet with a silvery voice o'er the ages convey
That innocent heaven o'erflowing with furtive delight!
The Ghost
Just like an angel with evil eye,
I shall return to thee silently,
Upon thy bower I'll alight,
With falling shadows of the night.
With thee, my brownie, I'll commune,
And give thee kisses cold as the moon,
And with a serpent's moist embrace,
I'll crawl around thy resting-place.
And when the livid morning falls,
Thou'lt find alone the empty walls,
And till the evening, cold 'twill be.
As others with their tenderness,
Upon thy life and youthfulness,
I'll reign alone with dread o'er thee.
Autumn Song
They ask me--thy crystalline eyes, so acute,
"Odd lover--why am I to thee so dear?"
--Be sweet and keep silent, my heart, which is sear,
For all save the rude and untutored brute,
Is loth its infernal depths to reveal,
And its dissolute motto engraven with fire,
Oh charmer! whose arms endless slumber inspire!
I abominate passion and wit makes me ill.
So let us love gently. Within his retreat,
Foreboding, Love seeks for his arrows a prey,
I know all the arms of his battle array.
Delirium and loathing--O pale Marguerite!
Like me, art thou not an autumnal ray,
Alas my so white, my so cold Marguerite!
Sadness of the Moon-Goddess
To-night the Moon dreams with increased weariness,
Like a beauty stretched forth on a downy heap
Of rugs, while her languorous fingers caress
The contour of her breasts, before falling to sleep.
On the satin back of the avalanche soft,
She falls into lingering swoons, as she dies,
While she lifteth her eyes to white visions aloft,
Which like efflorescence float up to the skies.
When at times, in her languor, down on to this sphere,
She slyly lets trickle a furtive tear,
A poet, desiring slumber to shun,
Takes up this pale tear in the palm of his hand
(The colours of which like an opal blend),
And buries it far from the eyes of the sun.
Cats