Edited by T. R. SMITH (continued 3)

At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and fruits.

Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke.

I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest from whom one has torn his divinity, I could not, without heartbreaking bitterness, leave this so monstrously seductive ocean, this sea so infinitely various in its terrifying simplicity, which seemed to contain in itself and represent by its joys, and attractions, and angers, and smiles, the moods and agonies and ecstasies of all souls that have lived, that live, and that shall yet live.

In saying good-bye to this incomparable beauty I felt as though I had been smitten to death; and that is why when each of my companions said: "At last!" I could only cry "Already!"

Here meanwhile was the land, the land with its noises, its passions, its commodities, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of promises, that sent to us a mysterious perfume of rose and musk, and from whence the music of life flowed in an amorous murmuring.

THE DOUBLE CHAMBER

A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly spiritual, where the stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue.

There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals.

The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the skies, the dropping suns.

There are no artistic abominations upon the walls. Compared with the pure dream, with an impression unanalyzed, definite art, positive art, is a blasphemy. Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious obscurity of music.

An infinitesimal odour of the most exquisite choice, mingled with a floating humidity, swims in this atmosphere where the drowsing spirit is lulled by the sensations one feels in a hothouse.

The abundant muslin flows before the windows and the couch, and spreads out in snowy cascades. Upon the couch lies the Idol, ruler of my dreams. But why is she here?—who has brought her?—what magical power has installed her upon this throne of delight and reverie? What matter—she is there; and I recognize her.

These indeed are the eyes whose flame pierces the twilight; the subtle and terrible mirrors that I recognize by their horrifying malice. They attract, they dominate, they devour the sight of whomsoever is imprudent enough to look at them. I have often studied them; these Black Stars that compel curiosity and admiration.

To what benevolent demon, then, do I owe being thus surrounded with mystery, with silence, with peace, and sweet odours? O beatitude! the thing we name life, even in its most fortunate amplitude, has nothing in common with this supreme life with which I am now acquainted, which I taste minute by minute, second by second.

Not so! Minutes are no more; seconds are no more. Time has vanished, and Eternity reigns—an Eternity of delight.

A heavy and terrible knocking reverberates upon the door, and, as in a hellish dream, it seems to me as though I had received a blow from a mattock.

Then a Spectre enters: it is an usher who comes to torture me in the name of the Law; an infamous concubine who comes to cry misery and to add the trivialities of her life to the sorrow of mine; or it may be the errand-boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder of a manuscript.

The Chamber of paradise, the Idol, the ruler of dreams, the Sylphide, as the great René said; all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking of the Spectre.

Horror; I remember, I remember! Yes, this kennel, this habitation of eternal weariness, is indeed my own. There is my senseless furniture, dusty and tattered; the dirty fireplace without a flame or an ember; the sad windows where the raindrops have traced runnels in the dust; the manuscripts, erased or unfinished; the almanac with the sinister days marked off with a pencil!

And this perfume of another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a so perfected sensitiveness; alas, Its place is taken by an odour of stale tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness. Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation.

In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries.

Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories, Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves.

I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now; and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable, implacable Life!"

There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye.

Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me, as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Whoa, thou fool! Sweat, then, thou slave! Live on, thou damnèd!"

AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING

Alone at last! Nothing is to be heard but the rattle of a few tardy and tired-out cabs. There will be silence now, if not repose, for several hours at least. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared—I shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world.

A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me; and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time, during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said: "You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest, foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see." I have boasted (why?) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy, certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a perfect fool. Heavens! it's well ended.

Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the silence and solitude.

Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I am not inferior to those I despise.

THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST

How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the incomparable chastity of the azure—a little sail trembling upon the horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable existence—the melodious monotone of the surge—all these things thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions.

These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering: My nerves are too tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations.

And now the profundity of the sky dismays me; its limpidity exasperates me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from Beauty?

Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished.

THE THYRSUS

TO FRANZ LISZT

What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a vineprop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about in a mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollæ, all these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty of the vine branches and the flowers?

The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty. Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm, unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance. Straight line and arabesque—intention and expression—the rigidity of the will and the suppleness of the word—a variety of means united for a single purpose—the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is genius—what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to separate you?

Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles; improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain, philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of immortality!

THE MARKSMAN

As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most ordinary and legitimate occupation of man?—So he gallantly offered his hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great part of his genius.

Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously, mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air, and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, I will imagine to myself that it is you!"

He closed both eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly decapitated.

Then, bending towards his dear, adorable, and execrable wife, his inevitable and pitiless muse, he kissed her respectfully upon the hand, and added, "Ah, dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!"

THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY

"CEMETERY VIEW INN"—"A queer sign,", said our traveller to himself; "but it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper of this inn appreciates Horace and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, or some emblem of life's brevity."

He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the sunshine.

The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon the corruption beneath.

The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life—the life of things infinitely small—and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony.

And then, beneath a sun which scorched the brain, and in that atmosphere charged with the ardent perfume of death, he heard a voice whispering out of the tomb where he sat. And this voice said: "Accursed be your rifles and targets, you turbulent living ones, who care so little for the dead in their divine repose! Accursed be your ambitions and calculations, importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter near the sanctuary of Death himself! Did you but know how easy the prize to win, how facile the end to reach, and how all save Death is naught, not so greatly would you fatigue yourselves, O ye laborious alive; nor would you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago reached the End—the only true end of life detestable!"

THE DESIRE TO PAINT

Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is tom with this desire.

I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her.

She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound. Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion in the darkness.

I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star overthrowing light and happiness. But it is the moon that she makes one dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly constrain to dance upon the terrified grass.

Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, the smile of a large mouth; white, red, and delicious; a mouth that makes one dream of the miracle of some superb flower unclosing in a volcanic land.

There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo them and win them; but she makes one wish to die slowly beneath her steady gaze.

THE GLASS-VENDOR

There are some natures purely contemplative and antipathetic to action, who nevertheless, under a mysterious and inexplicable impulse, sometimes act with a rapidity of which they would have believed themselves incapable. Such a one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards action, like an arrow from a bow.

The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the most absurd and even the most dangerous acts.

One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only too well.

Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, in order to see, to know, to tempt Destiny, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most indolent and dreamy beings.

Another so timid that he must cast down his eyes before the gaze of any man, and summon all his poor will before he dare enter a café or pass the pay-box of a theatre, where the ticket-seller seems, in his eyes, invested with all the majesty of Minos, Æcus, and Rhadamanthus, will at times throw himself upon the neck of some old man whom he sees in the street, and embrace him with enthusiasm in sight of an astonished crowd. Why? Because—because this countenance is irresistibly attractive to him? Perhaps; but it is more legitimate to suppose that he himself does not know why.

I have been more than once a victim to these crises and outbreaks which give us cause to believe that evil-meaning demons slip into us, to make us the ignorant accomplices of their most absurd desires. One morning I arose in a sullen mood, very sad, and tired of idleness, and thrust as it seemed to me to the doing of some great thing, some brilliant act—and then, alas, I opened the window.

(I beg you to observe that in some people the spirit of mystification is not the result of labour or combination, but rather of a fortuitous inspiration which would partake, were it not for the strength of the feeling, of the mood called hysterical by the physician and satanic by those who think a little more profoundly than the physician; the mood which thrusts us unresisting to a multitude of dangerous and inconvenient acts.)

The first person I noticed in the street was a glass-vendor whose shrill and discordant cry mounted up to me through the heavy, dull atmosphere of Paris. It would have been else impossible to account for the sudden and despotic hatred of this poor man that came upon me.

"Hello, there!" I cried, and bade him ascend. Meanwhile I reflected, not without gaiety, that as my room was on the sixth landing, and the stairway very narrow, the man would have some difficulty in ascending, and in many a place would break off the corners of his fragile merchandise.

At length he appeared. I examined all his glasses with curiosity, and then said to him: "What, have you no coloured glasses? Glasses of rose and crimson and blue, magical glasses, glasses of Paradise? You are insolent. You dare to walk in mean streets when you have no glasses that would make one see beauty in life?" And I hurried him briskly to the staircase, which he staggered down, grumbling.

I went on to the balcony and caught up a little flower-pot, and when the man appeared in the doorway beneath I let fall my engine of war perpendicularly upon the edge of his pack, so that it was upset by the shock and all his poor walking fortune broken to bits. It made a noise like a palace of crystal shattered by lightning. Mad with my folly, I cried furiously after him: "The life beautiful! the life beautiful!"

Such nervous pleasantries are not without peril; often enough one pays dearly for them. But what matters an eternity of damnation to him who has found in one second an eternity of enjoyment?

THE WIDOWS

Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's cripples.

To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions for them. On the contrary, they feel themselves irresistibly drawn towards all that is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft.

An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected lineaments; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported.

Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who exhibit a full complement of sorrow.

Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours an aged and afflicted woman of this kind: rigid and erect, wrapped in a little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism.

She was evidently condemned by her absolute loneliness to the habits of an ancient celibacy; and the masculine characters of her habits added to their austerity a piquant mysteriousness. In what miserable café she dines I know not, nor in what manner. I followed her to a reading-room, and for a long time watched her reading the papers, her active eyes, that once burned with tears, seeking for news of a powerful and personal interest.

At length, in the afternoon, under a charming autumnal sky, one of those skies that let fall hosts of memories and regrets, she seated herself remotely in a garden, to listen, far from the crowd, to one of the regimental bands whose music gratifies the people of Paris. This was without doubt the small debauch of the innocent old woman (or the purified old woman), the well-earned consolation for another of the burdensome days without a friend, without conversation, without joy, without a confidant, that God had allowed to fall upon her perhaps for many years past—three hundred and sixty-five times a year!

Yet one more:

I can never prevent myself from throwing a glance, if not sympathetic at least full of curiosity, over the crowd of outcasts who press around the enclosure of a public concert. From the orchestra, across the night, float songs of fête, of triumph, or of pleasure. The dresses of the women sweep and shimmer; glances pass; the well-to-do, tired with doing nothing, saunter about and make indolent pretence of listening to the music. Here are only the rich, the happy; here is nothing that does not inspire or exhale the pleasure of being alive, except the aspect of the mob that presses against the outer barrier yonder, catching gratis, at the will of the wind, a tatter of music, and watching the glittering furnace within.

There is a reflection of the joy of the rich deep in the eyes of the poor that is always interesting. But to-day, beyond this people dressed in blouses and calico, I saw one whose nobility was in striking contrast with all the surrounding triviality. She was a tall, majestic woman, and so imperious in all her air that I cannot remember having seen the like in the collections of the aristocratic beauties of the past. A perfume of exalted virtue emanated from all her being. Her face, sad and worn, was in perfect keeping with the deep mourning in which she was dressed. She also, like the plebeians she mingled with and did not see, looked upon the luminous world with a profound eye, and listened with a toss of her head.

It was a strange vision. "Most certainly," I said to myself, "this poverty, if poverty it be, ought not to admit of any sordid economy; so noble a face answers for that. Why then does she remain in surroundings with which she is so strikingly in contrast?"

But in curiously passing near her I was able to divine the reason. The tall widow held by the hand a child dressed like herself in black. Modest as was the price of entry, this price perhaps sufficed to pay for some of the needs of the little being, or even more, for a superfluity, a toy.

She will return on foot, dreaming and meditating—and alone, always alone, for the child is turbulent and selfish, without gentleness or patience, and cannot become, anymore than another animal, a dog or a cat, the confidant of solitary griefs.

THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY

Last night two superb Satans and a She-devil not less extraordinary ascended the mysterious stairway by which Hell gains access to the frailty of sleeping man, and communes with him in secret. These three postured gloriously before me, as though they had been upon a stage—and a sulphurous splendour emanated from these beings who so disengaged themselves from the opaque heart of the night. They bore with them so proud a presence, and so full of mastery, that at first I took them for three of the true Gods.

The first Satan, by his face, was a creature of doubtful sex. The softness of an ancient Bacchus shone in the lines of his body. His beautiful languorous eyes, of a tenebrous and indefinite colour, were like violets still laden with the heavy tears of the storm; his slightly-parted lips were like heated censers, from whence exhaled the sweet savour of many perfumes; and each time he breathed, exotic insects drew, as they fluttered, strength from the ardours of his breath.

Twined about his tunic of purple stuff, in the manner of a cincture, was an iridescent Serpent with lifted head and eyes like embers turned sleepily towards him. Phials full of sinister fluids, alternating with shining knives and instruments of surgery, hung from this living girdle. He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red fluid, and inscribed with a legend in these singular words:

"DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE";

and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing his pleasures and pains, and to spread abroad the contagion of his folly upon the nights of the Sabbath.

From rings upon his delicate ankles trailed a broken chain of gold, and when the burden of this caused him to bend his eyes towards the earth, he would contemplate with vanity the nails of his feet, as brilliant and polished as well-wrought jewels.

He looked at me with eyes inconsolably heart-broken and giving forth an insidious intoxication, and cried in a chanting voice: "If thou wilt, if thou wilt, I will make thee an overlord of souls; thou shalt be master of living matter more perfectly than the sculptor is master of his clay; thou shalt taste the pleasure, reborn without end, of obliterating thyself in the self of another, and of luring other souls to lose themselves in thine."

But I replied to him: "I thank thee. I only gain from this venture, then, beings of no more worth than my poor self? Though remembrance brings me shame indeed, I would forget nothing; and even before I recognised thee, thou ancient monster, thy mysterious cutlery, thy equivocal phials, and the chain that imprisons thy feet, were symbols showing clearly enough the inconvenience of thy friendship. Keep thy gifts."

The second Satan had neither the air at once tragical and smiling, the lovely insinuating ways, nor the delicate and scented beauty of the first. A gigantic man, with a coarse, eyeless face, his heavy paunch overhung his hips and was gilded and pictured, like a tattooing, with a crowd of little moving figures which represented the unnumbered forms of universal misery. There were little sinew-shrunken men who hung themselves willingly from nails; there were meagre gnomes, deformed and undersized, whose beseeching eyes begged an alms even more eloquently than their trembling hands; there were old mothers who nursed clinging abortions at their pendent breasts. And many others, even more surprising.

This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from whence came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away in a sighing made by many human voices. And he smiled unrestrainedly, showing his broken teeth—the imbecile smile of a man who has dined too freely. Then the creature said to me:

"I can give thee that which gets all, which is worth all, which takes the place of all." And he tapped his monstrous paunch, whence came a sonorous echo as the commentary to his obscene speech. I turned away with disgust and replied: "I need no man's misery to bring me happiness; nor will I have the sad wealth of all the misfortunes pictured upon thy skin as upon a tapestry."

As for the She-devil, I should lie if I denied that at first I found in her a certain strange charm, which to define I can but compare to the charm of certain beautiful women past their first youth, who yet seem to age no more, whose beauty keeps something of the penetrating magic of ruins. She had an air at once imperious and sordid, and her eyes, though heavy, held a certain power of fascination. I was struck most by her voice, wherein I found the remembrance of the most delicious contralti, as well as a little of the hoarseness of a throat continually laved with brandy.

"Wouldst thou know my power?" said the charming and paradoxical voice of the false goddess. "Then listen." And she put to her mouth a gigantic trumpet, enribboned, like a mirliton, with the titles of all the newspapers in the world; and through this trumpet she cried my name so that it rolled through space with the sound of a hundred thousand thunders, and came re-echoing back to me from the farthest planet.

"Devil!" cried I, half tempted, "that at least is worth something." But it vaguely struck me, upon examining the seductive virago more attentively, that I had seen her clinking glasses with certain drolls of my acquaintance, and her blare of brass carried to my ears I know not what memory of a fanfare prostituted.

So I replied, with all disdain: "Get thee hence! I know better than wed the light o' love of them that I will not name."

Truly, I had the right to be proud of a so courageous renunciation. But unfortunately I awoke, and all my courage left me. "In truth," I said, "I must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have had such scruples. Ah, if they, would but return while I am awake, I would not be so delicate."

So I invoked the three in a loud voice, offering to dishonour myself as often as necessary to obtain their favours; but I had without doubt too deeply offended them, for they have never returned.

THE FLOWERS OF EVIL

Translated by F. P. Sturm

THE DANCE OF DEATH Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves, Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves With all the careless and high-stepping grace, And the extravagant courtesan's thin face. Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed? Her floating robe, in royal amplitude, Falls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod. The swarms that hum about her collar-bones As the lascivious streams caress the stones, Conceal from every scornful jest that flies, Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways, Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebræ. O charm of nothing decked in folly! they Who laugh and name you a Caricature, They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure, The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone, That is most dear to me, tall skeleton! Come you to trouble with your potent sneer The feast of Life! or are you driven here, To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir And goad your moving corpse on with a spur? Or do you hope, when sing the violins, And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins, To drive some mocking nightmare far apart, And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart? Fathomless well of fault and foolishness! Eternal alembic of antique distress! Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides. And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find, Among us here, no lover to your mind; Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave? The charms of horror please none but the brave. Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir, Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath, The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth. For he who has not folded in his arms A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms, Reeks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent, When Horror comes the way that Beauty went. O irresistible, with fleshless face, Say to these dancers in their dazzled race: "Proud lovers with the paint above your bones, Ye shall taste death, musk-scented skeletons! Withered Antinoüs, dandies with plump faces, Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces, Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath, Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death. From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream, The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream; They do not see, within the opened sky, The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high. In every clime and under every sun, Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run; And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye; And mingles with your madness, irony!" THE BEACONS RUBENS, oblivious garden of indolence, Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love, Where life flows forth in troubled opulence, As airs in heaven and seas in ocean move. LEONARD DA VINCI, sombre and fathomless glass, Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile, Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass, Among the ice and pines that guard some isle. REMBRANDT, sad hospital that a murmuring fills, Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls, Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils, And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls. Strong MICHELANGELO, a vague far place Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules; Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace, And tear their Shroud with clenched hands void of ease. The fighter's anger, the faun's impudence, Thou makest of all these a lovely thing; Proud heart, sick body, mind's magnificence: PUGET, the convict's melancholy king. WATTEAU, the carnival of illustrious hearts, Fluttering like moths upon the wings of chance; Bright lustres light the silk that flames and darts, And pour down folly on the whirling dance. GOYA, a nightmare full of things unknown; The fœtus witches broil on Sabbath night; Old women at the mirror; children lone Who tempt old demons with their limbs delight. DELACROIX, lake of blood ill angels haunt, Where ever-green, o'ershadowing woods arise; Under the surly heaven strange fanfares chaunt And pass, like one of Weber's strangled sighs. And malediction, blasphemy and groan, Ecstasies, cries, Te Deums, and tears of brine, Are echoes through a thousand labyrinths flown; For mortal hearts an opiate divine; A shout cried by a thousand sentinels, An order from a thousand bugles tossed, A beacon o'er a thousand citadels, A call to huntsmen in deep woodlands lost. It is the mightiest witness that could rise To prove our dignity, O Lord, to Thee; This sob that rolls from age to age, and dies Upon the verge of Thy Eternity! THE SADNESS OF THE MOON The Moon more indolently dreams to-night Than a fair woman on her couch at rest, Caressing, with a hand distraught and light, Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast. Upon her silken avalanche of down, Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh; And watches the white visions past her flown, Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky. And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep, Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow, Some pious poet, enemy of sleep, Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow Whence gleams of iris and of opal start, And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart. THE BALCONY Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses, O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire, Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses, The charm of evenings by the gentle fire, Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses! The eves illumined by the burning coal, The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings— How soft your breast was then, how sweet your soul! Ah, and we said imperishable things, Those eves illumined by the burning coal. Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm, And space profound, and strong life's pulsing flood, In bending o'er you, queen of every charm, I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood. The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm. The film of night flowed round and over us, And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet; I drank your breath, ah! sweet and poisonous, And in my hands fraternal slept your feet— Night, like a film, flowed round and over us. I can recall those happy days forgot, And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past. Your languid beauties now would move me not Did not your gentle heart and body cast The old spell of those happy days forgot. Can vows and perfumes, kisses infinite, Be reborn from the gulf we cannot sound; As rise to heaven suns once again made bright After being plunged in deep seas and profound? Ah, vows and perfumes, kisses infinite! THE SICK MUSE Poor Muse, alas, what ail's thee, then, to-day? Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn, Upon thy brow in alternation play, Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn. Have the green lemure and the goblin red, Poured on thee love and terror from their urn? Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Mintume? Would that thy breast where so deep thoughts arise, Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs; Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave, When Phœbus shared his alternating reign With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain. THE VENAL MUSE Muse of my heart, lover of palaces, When January comes with wind and sleet, During the snowy eve's long wearinesses, Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet? Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shoulders In the moon-beams that through the window fly? Or when thy purse dries up, thy palace moulders, Reap the far star-gold of the vaulted sky? For thou, to keep thy body to thy soul, Must swing a censer, wear a holy stole, And chaunt Te Deums with unbelief between. Or, like a starving mountebank, expose Thy beauty and thy tear-drowned smile to those Who wait thy jests to drive away thy spleen. THE EVIL MONK The ancient cloisters on their lofty walls Had holy Truth in painted frescoes shown, And, seeing these, the pious in those halls Felt their cold, lone austereness less alone. At that time when Christ's seed flowered all around, More than one monk, forgotten in his hour, Taking for studio the burial-ground, Glorified Death with simple faith and power. And my soul is a sepulchre where I, Ill cenobite, have spent eternity: On the vile cloister walls no pictures rise. O when may I cast off this weariness, And make the pageant of my old distress For these hands labour, pleasure for these eyes? THE TEMPTATION The Demon, in my chamber high, This morning came to visit me, And, thinking he would find some fault, He whispered: "I would know of thee Among the many lovely things That make the magic of her face, Among the beauties, black and rose, That make her body's charm and grace, Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply To the Abhorred, O soul of mine: "No single beauty is the best When she is all one flower divine. When all things charm me I ignore Which one alone brings most delight; She shines before me like the dawn, And she consoles me like the night. The harmony is far too great, That governs all her body fair. For impotence to analyse And say which note is sweetest there. O mystic metamorphosis! My senses into one sense flow— Her voice makes perfume when she speaks, Her breath is music faint and low!" THE IRRÉPARABLE Can we suppress the old Remorse Who bends our heart beneath his stroke, Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse, Or as the acorn on the oak? Can we suppress the old Remorse? Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell, May we drown this our ancient foe, Destructive glutton, gorging well, Patient as the ants, and slow? What wine, what philtre, or what spell? Tell it, enchantress, if you can, Tell me, with anguish overcast, Wounded, as a dying man, Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past. Tell it, enchantress, if you can, To him the wolf already tears Who sees the carrion pinions wave This broken warrior who despairs To have a cross above his grave— This wretch the wolf already tears. Can one illume a leaden sky, Or tear apart the shadowy veil Thicker than pitch, no star on high, Not one funereal glimmer pale? Can one illume a leaden sky? Hope lit the windows of the Inn, But now that shining flame is dead; And how shall martyred pilgrims win Along the moonless road they tread? Satan has darkened all the Inn! Witch, do you love accursèd hearts? Say, do you know the reprobate? Know you Remorse, whose venomed darts Make souls the targets for their hate? Witch, do you know accursèd hearts? The Might-have-been with tooth accursed Gnaws at the piteous souls of men, The deep foundations suffer first, And all the structure crumbles then Beneath the bitter tooth accursed. II Often, when seated at the play, And sonorous music lights the stage, I see the frail hand of a Fay With magic dawn illume the rage Of the dark sky. Oft at the play A being made of gauze and fire Casts to the earth a Demon great. And my heart, whence all hopes expire, Is like a stage where I await, In vain, the Fay with wings of fire! A FORMER LIFE Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows, Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired. The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies Mingled its music, turbulent and rich, Solemn and mystic, with the colours which The setting sun reflected in my eyes. And there I lived amid voluptuous calms, In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave, Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave, Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms. They were my slaves—the only care they had To know what secret grief had made me sad. DON JUAN IN HADES When Juan sought the subterranean flood, And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore, Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stood With one strong, vengeful hand on either oar. With open robes and bodies agonised, Lost women writhed beneath that darkling sky; There were sounds as of victims sacrificed: Behind him all the dark was one long cry. And Sganarelle, with laughter, claimed his pledge; Don Luis, with trembling finger in the air, Showed to the souls who wandered in the sedge The evil son who scorned his hoary hair. Shivering with woe, chaste Elvira the while, Near him untrue to all but her till now, Seemed to beseech him for one farewell smile Lit with the sweetness of the first soft vow. And clad in armour, a tall man of stone Held firm the helm, and clove the gloomy flood; But, staring at the vessel's track alone, Bent on his sword the unmoved hero stood. THE LIVING FLAME They pass before me, these Eyes full of light, Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise; The holy brothers pass before my sight, And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes. They keep me from all sin and error grave, They set me in the path whence Beauty came; They are my servants, and I am their slave, And all my soul obeys the living flame. Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light As candles lighted at full noon; the sun Dims not your flame phantastical and bright. You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done; Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn, Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim! CORRESPONDENCES In Nature's temple living pillars rise, And words are murmured none have understood, And man must wander through a tangled wood Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes. As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim Mingle to one deep sound and fade away; Vast as the night and brilliant as the day, Colour and sound and perfume speak to him. Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child, Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green; Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild, Have all the expansion of things infinite: As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin, Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight. THE FLASK There are some powerful odours that can pass Out of the stoppered flagon; even glass To them is porous. Oft when some old box Brought from the East is opened and the locks And hinges creak and cry; or in a press In some deserted house, where the sharp stress Of odours old and dusty fills the brain; An ancient flask is brought to light again, And forth the ghosts of long-dead odours creep. There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep A thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides, Phantoms of old the folding darkness hides, Who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold, Rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold. A memory that brings languor flutters here: The fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear Thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit Where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet, Arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost Of an old passion, long since loved and lost. So I, when vanished from man's memory Deep in some dark and sombre chest I lie, An empty flagon they have cast aside, Broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride, Will be your shroud, beloved pestilence! The witness of your might and virulence, Sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup Of life and death my heart has drunken up! REVERSIBILITY Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite, And the vague terrors of the fearful night That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf? Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? With hands clenched in the shade and tears of gall, When Vengeance beats her hellish battle-call, And makes herself the captain of our fate, Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? Angel of health, did ever you know pain, Which like an exile trails his tired footfalls The cold length of the white infirmary walls, With lips compressed, seeking the sun in vain? Angel of health, did ever you know pain? Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? Know you the fear of age, the torment vile Of reading secret horror in the smile Of eyes your eyes have loved since long ago? Angel of beauty, do you crinkles know? Angel of happiness, and joy, and light, Old David would have asked for youth afresh From the pure touch of your enchanted flesh; I but implore your prayers to aid my plight, Angel of happiness, and joy, and light. THE EYES OF BEAUTY You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose; But all the sea of sadness in my blood Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose, Salt with the memory of the bitter flood. In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er, That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate. It is a ruin where the jackals rest, And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay— A perfume swims about your naked breast! Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way! With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared! SONNET OF AUTUMN They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: "Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?" Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise All save that antique brute-like faith of thine; And will not bare the secret of their shame To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long, Nor their black legend write for thee in flame! Passion I hate, a spirit does me wrong. Let us love gently. Love, from his retreat, Ambushed and shadowy, bends his fatal bow, And I too well his ancient arrows know: Crime, horror, folly. O pale Marguerite, Thou art as I, a bright sun fallen low, O my so white, my so cold Marguerite. THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep In the deep heart of a black marble tomb; When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom; And when the stone upon thy trembling breast, And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace, Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest, And holds those feet from their adventurous race; Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie, (For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend) During long nights when sleep is far from thee, Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"— And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek. THE GHOST Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove I will return to thy alcove, And glide upon the night to thee, Treading the shadows silently. And I will give to thee, my own, Kisses as icy as the moon, And the caresses of a snake Cold gliding in the thorny brake. And when returns the livid morn Thou shalt find all my place forlorn And chilly, till the falling night. Others would rule by tenderness Over thy life and youthfulness, But I would conquer thee by fright! TO A MADONNA (An Ex-Voto in the Spanish taste.) Madonna, mistress, I would build for thee An altar deep in the sad soul of me; And in the darkest corner of my heart, From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart, Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine For thee to stand erect in, Image divine! And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crowned Wrought of the gold of my smooth Verse, set round With starry crystal rhymes; and I will make, O mortal maid, a Mantle for thy sake! And weave it of my jealousy, a gown Heavy, barbaric, stiff, and weighted down With my distrust, and broider round the hem Not pearls, but all my tears in place of them. And then thy wavering, trembling robe shall be All the desires that rise and fall in me From mountain-peaks to valleys of repose, Kissing thy lovely body's white and rose. For thy humiliated feet divine, Of my Respect I'll make thee Slippers fine Which, prisoning them within a gentle fold, Shall keep their imprint like a faithful mould. And if my art, unwearying and discreet, Can make no Moon of Silver for thy feet To have for Footstool, then thy heel shall rest Upon the snake that gnaws within my breast, Victorious Queen of whom our hope is born! And thou shalt trample down and make a scorn Of the vile reptile swollen up with hate. And thou shalt see my thoughts, all consecrate, Like candles set before thy flower-strewn shrine, O Queen of Virgins, and the taper-shine Shall glimmer star-like in the vault of blue, With eyes of flame for ever watching you. While all the love and worship in my sense Will be sweet smoke of myrrh and frankincense. Ceaselessly up to thee, white peak of snow, My stormy spirit will in vapours go! And last, to make thy drama all complete, That love and cruelty may mix and meet, I, thy remorseful-torturer, will take All the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them make In darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen, And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen, That spot profound whence love and mercy start, I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart! THE SKY Where'er he be, on water or on land, Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold; One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band, Shadowy beggar or Crœsus rich with gold; Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er His little brain may be, alive or dead; Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere, And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead. The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall; The lighted ceiling of a music-hall Where every actor treads a bloody soil— The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot; The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot Where the vast human generations boil! SPLEEN I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins Flows agèd blood; who rules a land of rains; Who, young in years, is old in all distress; Who flees good counsel to find weariness Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird; Whose weary face emotion moves no more E'en when his people die before his door. His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile; The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good, Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb. The sage who takes his gold essays in vain To purge away the old corrupted strain, His baths of blood, that in the days of old The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold, Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains, For green Lethean water fills his veins. THE OWLS Under the overhanging yews, The dark owls sit in solemn state, Like stranger gods; by twos and twos Their red eyes gleam. They meditate. Motionless thus they sit and dream Until that melancholy hour When, with the sun's last fading gleam, The nightly shades assume their power. From their still attitude the wise Will learn with terror to despise All tumult, movement, and unrest; For he who follows every shade, Carries the memory in his breast, Of each unhappy journey made. BIEN LOIN D'ICI Here is the chamber consecrate, Wherein this maiden delicate, And enigmatically sedate, Fans herself while the moments creep, Upon her cushions half-asleep, And hears the fountains plash and weep. Dorothy's chamber undefiled. The winds and waters sing afar Their song of sighing strange and wild To lull to sleep the petted child. From head to foot with subtle care, Slaves have perfumed her delicate skin With odorous oils and benzoin. And flowers faint in a corner there. CONTEMPLATION Thou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still, The eve is thine which even now drops down, To carry peace or care to human will, And in a misty veil enfolds the town. While the vile mortals of the multitude, By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on, Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood— Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years, In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim; And from the water, smiling through her tears, Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim; And in the east, her long shroud trailing light, List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night. TO A BROWN BEGGAR-MAID White maiden with the russet hair, Whose garments, through their holes, declare That poverty is part of you, And beauty too. To me, a sorry bard and mean, Your youthful beauty, frail and lean, With summer freckles here and there, Is sweet and fair. Your sabots tread the roads of chance, And not one queen of old romance Carried her velvet shoes and lace With half your grace. In place of tatters far too short Let the proud garments worn at Court Fall down with rustling fold and pleat About your feet; In place of stockings, worn and old, Let a keen dagger all of gold Gleam in your garter for the eyes Of roués wise; Let ribbons carelessly untied Reveal to us the radiant pride Of your white bosom purer far Than any star; Let your white arms uncovered shine, Polished and smooth and half divine; And let your elfish fingers chase With riotous grace The purest pearls that softly glow, The sweetest sonnets of Belleau, Offered by gallants ere they fight For your delight; And many fawning rhymers who Inscribe their first thin book to you Will contemplate upon the stair Your slipper fair; And many a page who plays at cards, And many lords and many bards, Will watch your going forth, and burn For your return; And you will count before your glass More kisses than the lily has; And more than one Valois will sigh When you pass by. But meanwhile you are on the tramp, Begging your living in the damp, Wandering mean streets and alleys o'er, From door to door; And shilling bangles in a shop Cause you with eager eyes to stop, And I, alas, have not a sou To give to you. Then go, with no more ornament, Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent, Than your own fragile naked grace And lovely face. THE SWAN I Andromache, I think of you! The stream, The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief, The lying Simoïs flooded by your tears, Made all my fertile memory blossom forth As I passed by the new-built Carrousel. Old Paris is no more (a town, alas, Changes more quickly than man's heart may change); Yet in my mind I still can see the booths; The heaps of brick and rough-hewn capitals; The grass; the stones all over-green with moss; The débris, and the square-set heaps of tiles. There a menagerie was once outspread; And there I saw, one morning at the hour When toil awakes beneath the cold, clear sky, And the road roars upon the silent air, A swan who had escaped his cage, and walked On the dry pavement with his webby feet, And trailed his spotless plumage on the ground. And near a waterless stream the piteous swan Opened his beak, and bathing in the dust His nervous wings, he cried (his heart the while Filled with a vision of his own fair lake): "O water, when then wilt thou come in rain? Lightning, when wilt thou glitter?" Sometimes yet I see the hapless bird—strange, fatal myth— Like him that Ovid writes of, lifting up Unto the cruelly blue, ironic heavens, With stretched, convulsive neck a thirsty face, As though he sent reproaches up to God! II Paris may change; my melancholy is fixed. New palaces, and scaffoldings, and blocks, And suburbs old, are symbols all to me Whose memories are as heavy as a stone. And so, before the Louvre, to vex my soul, The image came of my majestic swan With his mad gestures, foolish and sublime, As of an exile whom one great desire Gnaws with no truce. And then I thought of you, Andromache! torn from your hero's arms; Beneath the hand of Pyrrhus in his pride; Bent o'er an empty tomb in ecstasy; Widow of Hector—wife of Helenus! And of the negress, wan and phthisical, Tramping the mud, and with her haggard eyes Seeking beyond the mighty walls of fog The absent palm-trees of proud Africa; Of all who lose that which they never find; Of all who drink of tears; all whom grey grief Gives suck to as the kindly wolf gave suck; Of meagre orphans who like blossoms fade. And one old Memory like a crying horn Sounds through the forest where my soul is lost.... I think of sailors on some isle forgotten; Of captives; vanquished ... and of many more. THE SEVEN OLD MEN O swarming city, city full of dreams, Where in full day the spectre walks and speaks; Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins My story flows as flows the rising sap. One morn, disputing with my tired soul, And like a hero stiffening all my nerves, I trod a suburb shaken by the jar Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified The houses either side of that sad street, So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist, Unclean and yellow, inundated space— A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul. Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks Should have brought alms in floods upon his head. Without the misery gleaming in his eye, Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed To have been washed with gall; the bitter frost Sharpened his glance; and from his chin a beard Sword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth. He was not bent but broken: his backbone Made a so true right angle with his legs, That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gave The finish to the picture, made him seem Like some infirm and stumbling quadruped Or a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mud He walked with troubled and uncertain gait, As though his sabots trod upon the dead, Indifferent and hostile to the world. His double followed him: tatters and stick And back and eye and beard, all were the same; Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable, These centenarian twins, these spectres odd, Trod the same pace toward some end unknown. To what fell complot was I then exposed? Humiliated by what evil chance? For as the minutes one by one went by Seven times I saw this sinister old man Repeat his image there before my eyes! Let him who smiles at my inquietude, Who never trembled at a fear like mine, Know that in their decrepitude's despite These seven old hideous monsters had the mien Of beings immortal. Then, I thought, must I, Undying, contemplate the awful eighth; Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double; Disgusting Phœnix, father of himself And his own son? In terror then I turned My back upon the infernal band, and fled To my own place, and closed my door; distraught And like a drunkard who sees all things twice, With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick, Wounded by mystery and absurdity! In vain my reason tried to cross the bar, The whirling storm but drove her back again; And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck, Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea. THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN I Deep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns, Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns, I watch, obedient to my fatal mood, For the decrepit, strange and charming beings, The dislocated monsters that of old Were lovely women—Lais or Eponine! Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be, Let us still love them, for they still have souls. They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags, Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind, They tremble when an omnibus rolls by, And at their sides, a relic of the past, A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs. They trot about, most like to marionettes; They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast; Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bell Where hangs and swings a demon without pity. Though they be broken they have piercing eyes, That shine like pools where water sleeps at night; The astonished and divine eyes of a child who laughs at all that glitters in the world. Have you not seen that most old women's shrouds Are little like the shroud of a dead child? Wise Death, in token of his happy whim, Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet. And when I see a phantom, frail and wan, Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris, It ever seems as though the delicate thing Trod with soft steps towards a cradle new. And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form, How many times must workmen change the shape Of boxes where at length such limbs are laid? These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears; Crucibles where the cooling metal pales— Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to him Whose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster. II The love-sick vestal of the old "Frasciti"; Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose name Only the prompter knows and he is dead; Bygone celebrities that in bygone days The Tivoli o'ershadowed in their bloom; All charm me; yet among these beings frail Three, turning pain to honey-sweetness, said To the Devotion that had lent them wings: "Lift me, O powerful Hippogriffe, to the skies"— One by her country to despair was driven; One by her husband overwhelmed with grief; One wounded by her child, Madonna-like; Each could have made a river with her tears. III Oft have I followed one of these old women, One among others, when the falling sun Reddened the heavens with a crimson wound— Pensive, apart, she rested on a bench To hear the brazen music of the band, Played by the soldiers in the public park To pour some courage into citizens' hearts, On golden eves when all the world revives. Proud and erect she drank the music in, The lively and the warlike call to arms; Her eyes blinked like an ancient eagle's eyes; Her forehead seemed to await the laurel crown! IV Thus you do wander, uncomplaining Stoics, Through all the chaos of the living town: Mothers with bleeding hearts, saints, courtesans, Whose names of yore were on the lips of all; Who were all glory and all grace, and now None know you; and the brutish drunkard stops, Insulting you with his derisive love; And cowardly urchins call behind your back. Ashamed of living, withered shadows all, With fear-bowed backs you creep beside the walls, And none salute you, destined to loneliness! Refuse of Time ripe for Eternity! But I, who watch you tenderly afar, With unquiet eyes on your uncertain steps, As though I were your father, I—O wonder!— Unknown to you taste secret, hidden joy. I see your maiden passions bud and bloom, Sombre or luminous, and your lost days Unroll before me while my heart enjoys All your old vices, and my soul expands To all the virtues that have once been yours. Ruined! and my sisters! O congenerate hearts, Octogenarian Eves o'er whom is stretched God's awful claw, where will you be to-morrow? A MADRIGAL OF SORROW What do I care though you be wise? Be sad, be beautiful; your tears But add one more charm to your eyes, As streams to valleys where they rise; And fairer every flower appears After the storm. I love you most When joy has fled your brow downcast; When your heart is in horror lost, And o'er your present like a ghost Floats the dark shadow of the past. I love you when the teardrop flows, Hotter than blood, from your large eye; When I would hush you to repose Your heavy pain breaks forth and grows Into a loud and tortured cry. And then, voluptuousness divine! Delicious ritual and profound! I drink in every sob like wine, And dream that in your deep heart shine The pearls wherein your eyes were drowned. I know your heart, which overflows With outworn loves long cast aside, Still like a furnace flames and glows, And you within your breast enclose A damnèd soul's unbending pride; But till your dreams without release Reflect the leaping flames of hell; Till in a nightmare without cease You dream of poison to bring peace, And love cold steel and powder well; And tremble at each opened door, And feel for every man distrust, And shudder at the striking hour— Till then you have not felt the power Of Irresistible Disgust. My queen, my slave, whose love is fear, When you awaken shuddering, Until that awful hour be here, You cannot say at midnight drear: "I am your equal, O my King!" MIST AND RAIN Autumns and winters, springs of mire and rain, Seasons of sleep, I sing your praises loud, For thus I love to wrap my heart and brain In some dim tomb beneath a vapoury shroud In the wide plain where revels the cold wind, Through long nights when the weathercock whirls round, More free than in warm summer day my mind Lifts wide her raven pinions from the ground. Unto a heart filled with funereal things That since old days hoar frosts have gathered on, Naught is more sweet, O pallid, queenly springs, Than the long pageant of your shadows wan, Unless it be on moonless eves to weep On some chance bed and rock our griefs to sleep. SUNSET Fair is the sun when first he flames above, Flinging his joy down in a happy beam; And happy he who can salute with love The sunset far more glorious than a dream. Flower, stream, and furrow!—I have seen them all In the sun's eye swoon like one trembling heart— Though it be late let us with speed depart To catch at least one last ray ere it fall! But I pursue the fading god in vain, For conquering Night makes firm her dark domain, Mist and gloom fall, and terrors glide between, And graveyard odours in the shadow swim, And my faint footsteps on the marsh's rim, Bruise the cold snail and crawling toad unseen. THE CORPSE Remember, my Beloved, what thing we met By the roadside on that sweet summer day; There on a grassy couch with pebbles set, A loathsome body lay. The wanton limbs stiff-stretched into the air, Steaming with exhalations vile and dank, In ruthless cynic fashion had laid bare The swollen side and flank. On this decay the sun shone hot from heaven As though with chemic heat to broil and bum, And unto Nature all that she had given A hundredfold return. The sky smiled down upon the horror there As on a flower that opens to the day; So awful an infection smote the air, Almost you swooned away. The swarming flies hummed on the putrid side, Whence poured the maggots in a darkling stream, That ran along these tatters of life's pride With a liquescent gleam. And like a wave the maggots rose and fell, The murmuring flies swirled round in busy strife: It seemed as though a vague breath came to swell And multiply with life The hideous corpse. From all this living world A music as of wind and water ran, Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirled By the swift winnower's fan. And then the vague forms like a dream died out, Or like some distant scene that slowly falls Upon the artist's canvas, that with doubt He only half recalls. A homeless dog behind the boulders lay And watched us both with angry eyes forlorn, Waiting a chance to come and take away The morsel she had torn. And you, even you, will be like this drear thing, A vile infection man may not endure; Star that I yearn to! Sun that lights my spring! O passionate and pure! Yes, such will you be, Queen of every grace! When the last sacramental words are said; And beneath grass and flowers that lovely face Moulders among the dead. Then, O Belovèd, whisper to the worm That crawls up to devour you with a kiss, That I still guard in memory the dear form Of love that comes to this! AN ALLEGORY Here is a woman, richly clad and fair, Who in her wine dips her long, heavy hair; Love's claws, and that sharp poison which is sin, Are dulled against the granite of her skin. Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon, For their sharp scythe-like talons every one Pass by her in their all-destructive play; Leaving her beauty till a later day. Goddess she walks; sultana in her leisure; She has Mohammed's faith that heaven is pleasure, And bids all men forget the world's alarms Upon her breast, between her open arms. She knows, and she believes, this sterile maid, Without whom the world's onward dream would fade, That bodily beauty is the supreme gift Which may from every sin the terror lift. Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies; And when black Night shall roll before her eyes, She will look straight in Death's grim face forlorn, Without remorse or hate—as one new-born. THE ACCURSED Like pensive herds at rest upon the sands, These to the sea-horizons turn their eyes; Out of their folded feet and clinging hands Bitter sharp tremblings and soft languors rise. Some tread the thicket by the babbling stream, Their hearts with untold secrets ill at ease; Calling the lover of their childhood's dream, They wound the green bark of the shooting trees. Others like sisters wander, grave and slow, Among the rocks haunted by spectres thin, Where Antony saw as larvæ surge and flow The veined bare breasts that tempted him to sin. Some, when the resinous torch of burning wood Flares in lost pagan caverns dark and deep, Call thee to quench the fever in their blood, Bacchus, who singest old remorse to sleep! Then there are those the scapular bedights, Whose long white vestments hide the whip's red stain, Who mix, in sombre woods on lonely nights, The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain. O virgins, demons, monsters, martyrs! ye Who scorn whatever actual appears; Saints, satyrs, seekers of Infinity, So full of cries, so full of bitter tears; Ye whom my soul has followed into hell, I love and pity, O sad sisters mine, Your thirsts unquenched, your pains no tongue can tell, And your great hearts, those urns of love divine! LA BEATRICE In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew, I to the winds my cries of anguish threw; And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart, Pricked gently with the poignard o'er my heart. Then in full noon above my head a cloud Descended tempest-swollen, and a crowd Of wild, lascivious spirits huddled there, The cruel and curious demons of the air, Who coldly to consider me began; Then, as a crowd jeers some unhappy man, Exchanging gestures, winking with their eyes— I heard a laughing and a whispering rise: "Let us at leisure contemplate this clown, This shadow of Hamlet aping Hamlet's frown, With wandering eyes and hair upon the wind. Is't not a pity that this empty mind, This tramp, this actor out of work, this droll, Because he knows how to assume a rôle Should dream that eagles and insects, streams and woods, Stand still to hear him chaunt his dolorous moods? Even unto us, who made these ancient things, The fool his public lamentation sings." With pride as lofty as the towering cloud, I would have stilled these clamouring demons loud, And turned in scorn my sovereign head away Had I not seen—O sight to dim the day!— There in the middle of the troupe obscene The proud and peerless beauty of my Queen! She laughed with them at all my dark distress, And gave to each in turn a vile caress. THE SOUL OF WINE. One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine: "Man, unto thee, dear disinherited, I sing a song of love and light divine— Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red. "I know thou labourest on the hill of fire, In sweat and pain beneath a flaming sun, To give the life and soul my vines desire, And I am grateful for thy labours done. "For I find joys unnumbered when I lave The throat of man by travail long outworn, And his hot bosom is a sweeter grave Of sounder sleep than my cold caves forlorn. "Hearest thou not the echoing Sabbath sound? The hope that whispers in my trembling breast? Thy elbows on the table! gaze around; Glorify me with joy and be at rest. "To thy wife's eyes I'll bring their long-lost gleam, I'll bring back to thy child his strength and light, To him, life's fragile athlete I will seem Rare oil that firms his muscles for the fight. "I flow in man's heart as ambrosia flows; The grain the eternal Sower casts in the sod— From our first loves the first fair verse arose, Flower-like aspiring to the heavens and God!" THE WINE OF LOVERS Space rolls to-day her splendour round! Unbridled, spurless, without bound, Mount we upon the wings of wine For skies fantastic and divine! Let us, like angels tortured by Some wild delirious phantasy, Follow the far-off mirage born In the blue crystal of the morn. And gently balanced on the wing Of the wild whirlwind we will, ride, Rejoicing with the joyous thing. My sister, floating side by side, Fly we unceasing whither gleams The distant heaven of my dreams. THE DEATH OF LOVERS There shall be couches whence faint odours rise, Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound; Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies The death-bed of our love shall breathe around. And guarding their last embers till the end, Our hearts shall be the torches of the shrine, And their two leaping flames shall fade and blend In the twin mirrors of your soul and mine. And through the eve of rose and mystic blue A beam of love shall pass from me to you, Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell; And later still an angel, flinging wide The gates, shall bring to life with joyful spell The tarnished mirrors and the flames that died. THE DEATH OF THE POOR Death is consoler and Death brings to life; The end of all, the solitary hope; We, drunk with Death's elixir, face the strife, Take heart, and mount till eve the weary slope. Across the storm, the hoar-frost, and the snow, Death on our dark horizon pulses clear; Death is the famous hostel we all know, Where we may rest and sleep and have good cheer. Death is an angel whose magnetic palms Bring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calms To smooth the beds of naked men and poor. Death is the mystic granary of God; The poor man's purse; his fatherland of yore; The Gate that opens into heavens untrod! GYPSIES TRAVELLING The tribe prophetic with the eyes of fire Went forth last night; their little ones at rest Each on his mother's back, with his desire Set on the ready treasure of her breast. Laden with shining arms the men-folk tread By the long wagons where their goods lie hidden; They watch the heaven with eyes grown weariëd Of hopeless dreams that come to them unbidden. The grasshopper, from out his sandy screen, Watching them pass redoubles his shrill song; Dian, who loves them, makes the grass more green, And makes the rock run water for this throng Of ever-wandering ones Whose calm eyes see Familiar realms of darkness yet to be. FRANCISCÆ MEÆ LAUDES Novis te cantabo chordis, O novelletum quod ludis In solitudine cordis. Esto sertis implicata, O fœmina delicata Per quam solvuntur peccata Sicut beneficum Lethe, Hauriam oscula de te, Quæ imbuta es magnete. Quum vitiorum tempestas Turbabat omnes semitas, Apparuisti, Deitas, Velut stella salutaris In naufragiis amaris.... Suspendam cor tuis aris! Piscina plena virtutis, Fons æternæ juventutis, Labris vocem redde mutis! Quod erat spurcum, cremasti; Quod rudius, exæquasti; Quod debile, confirmasti! In fame mea tabema, In nocte mea lucerna, Recte me semper gubema. Adde nunc vires viribus, Dulce balneum suavibus, Unguentatum odoribus! Meos circa lumbos mica, O castitatis lorica, Aqua tincta seraphica; Patera gemmis corusca, Panis salsus, mollis esca, Divinum vinum, Francisca! A LANDSCAPE I would, when I compose my solemn verse, Sleep near the heaven as do astrologers, Near the high bells, and with a dreaming mind Hear their calm hymns blown to me on the wind. Out of my tower, with chin upon my hands, I'll watch the singing, babbling human bands; And see clock-towers like spars against the sky, And heavens that bring thoughts of eternity; And softly, through the mist, will watch the birth Of stars in heaven and lamplight on the earth; The threads of smoke that rise above the town; The moon that pours her pale enchantment down. Seasons will pass till Autumn fades the rose; And when comes Winter with his weary snows, I'll shut the doors and window-casements tight, And build my faery palace in the night. Then I will dream of blue horizons deep; Of gardens where the marble fountains weep; Of kisses, and of ever-singing birds— A sinless Idyll built of innocent words. And Trouble, knocking at my window-pane And at my closet door, shall knock in vain; I will not heed him with his stealthy tread, Nor from my reverie uplift my head; For I will plunge deep in the pleasure still Of summoning the spring-time with my will, Drawing the sun out of my heart, and there With burning thoughts making a summer air. THE VOYAGE I The world is equal to the child's desire Who plays with pictures by his nursery fire— How vast the world by lamplight seems! How small When memory's eyes look back, remembering all!— One morning we set forth with thoughts aflame, Or heart o'erladen with desire or shame; And cradle, to the song of surge and breeze, Our own infinity on the finite seas. Some flee the memory of their childhood's home; And others flee their fatherland; and some, Star-gazers drowned within a woman's eyes, Flee from the tyrant Circe's witcheries; And, lest they still be changed to beasts, take flight For the embrasured heavens, and space, and light, Till one by one the stains her kisses made In biting cold and burning sunlight fade. But the true voyagers are they who part From all they love because a wandering heart Drives them to fly the Fate they cannot fly; Whose call is ever "On!"—they know not why. Their thoughts are like the clouds that veil a star They dream of change as warriors dream of war; And strange wild wishes never twice the same: Desires no mortal man can give a name. II We are like whirling tops and rolling balls— For even when the sleepy night-time falls, Old Curiosity still thrusts us on, Like the cruel Angel who goads forth the sun. The end of fate fades ever through the air, And, being nowhere, may be anywhere Where a man runs, hope waking in his breast, For ever like a madman, seeking rest. Our souls are wandering ships outweariëd; And one upon the bridge asks: "What's ahead?" The topman's voice with an exultant sound Cries: "Love and Glory!"—then we run aground. Each isle the pilot signals when 'tis late, Is El Dorado, promised us by fate— Imagination, spite of her belief, Finds, in the light of dawn, a barren reef. Oh the poor seeker after lands that flee! Shall we not bind and cast into the sea This drunken sailor whose ecstatic mood Makes bitterer still the water's weary flood? Such is an old tramp wandering in the mire, Dreaming the paradise of his own desire, Discovering cities of enchanted sleep Where'er the light shines on a rubbish heap. III Strange voyagers, what tales of noble deeds Deep in your dim sea-weary eyes one reads! Open the casket where your memories are, And show each jewel, fashioned from a star; For I would travel without sail or wind, And so, to lift the sorrow from my mind, Let your long memories of sea-days far fled Pass o'er my spirit like a sail outspread. What have you seen? IV "We have seen waves and stars, And lost sea-beaches, and known many wars, And notwithstanding war and hope and fear, We were as weary there as we are here. "The lights that on the violet sea poured down, The suns that set behind some far-off town, Lit in our hearts the unquiet wish to fly Deep in the glimmering distance of the sky; "The loveliest countries that rich cities bless, Never contained the strange wild loveliness By fate and chance shaped from the floating cloud— And we were always sorrowful and proud! "Desire from joy gains strength in weightier measure. Desire, old tree who draw'st thy sap from pleasure, Though thy bark thickens as the years pass by, Thine arduous branches rise towards the sky; "And wilt thou still grow taller, tree more fair Than the tall cypress? —Thus have we, with care, "Gathered some flowers to please your eager mood, Brothers who dream that distant things are good! "We have seen many a jewel-glimmering throne; And bowed to Idols when wild horns were blown In palaces whose faery pomp and gleam To your rich men would be a ruinous dream; "And robes that were a madness to the eyes; Women whose teeth and nails were stained with dyes; Wise jugglers round whose neck the serpent winds——" V And then, and then what more? VI "O childish minds! "Forget not that which we found everywhere, From top to bottom of the fatal stair, Above, beneath, around us and within, The weary pageant of immortal sin. "We have seen woman, stupid slave and proud, Before her own frail, foolish beauty bowed; And man, a greedy, cruel, lascivious fool, Slave of the slave, a ripple in a pool; "The martyrs groan, the headsman's merry mood; And banquets seasoned and perfumed with blood; Poison, that gives the tyrant's power the slip; And nations amorous of the brutal whip; "Many religions not unlike our own, All in full flight for heaven's resplendent throne; And Sanctity, seeking delight in pain, Like a sick man of his own sickness vain; "And mad mortality, drunk with its own power, As foolish now as in a bygone hour, Shouting, in presence of the tortured Christ: 'I curse thee, mine own Image sacrificed.' "And silly monks in love with Lunacy, Fleeing the troops herded by destiny, Who seek for peace in opiate slumber furled— Such is the pageant of the rolling world!" VII O bitter knowledge that the wanderers gain! The world says our own age is little and vain; For ever, yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, 'Tis horror's oasis in the sands of sorrow. Must we depart? If you can rest, remain; Part, if you must. Some fly, some cower in vain, Hoping that Time, the grim and eager foe, Will pass them by; and some run to and fro Like the Apostles or the Wandering Jew; Go where they will, the Slayer goes there too! And there are some, and these are of the wise, Who die as soon as birth has lit their eyes. But when at length the Slayer treads us low, We will have hope and cry, "'Tis time to go!" As when of old we parted for Cathay With wind-blown hair and eyes upon the bay. We will embark upon the Shadowy Sea, Like youthful wanderers for the first time free— Hear you the lovely and funereal voice That sings: O come all ye whose wandering joys Are set upon the scented Lotus flower, For here we sell the fruit's miraculous boon; Come ye and drink the sweet and sleepy power Of the enchanted, endless afternoon. VIII O Death, old Captain, it is time, put forth! We have grown weary of the gloomy north; Though sea and sky are black as ink, lift sail! Our hearts are full of light and will not fail. O pour thy sleepy poison in the cup! The fire within the heart so burns us up That we would wander Hell and Heaven through, Deep in the Unknown seeking something new!

FROM THE FLOWERS OF EVIL

Translated by W. J. Robertson

BENEDICTION When, by the sovran will of Powers Eternal, The poet passed into this weary world, His mother, filled with fears and doubts infernal, Clenching her hands towards Heaven these curses hurled. —"Why rather did I not within me treasure "A knot of serpents than this thing of scorn? "Accursed be the night of fleeting pleasure "Whence in my womb this chastisement was borne! "Since thou hast chosen me to be the woman "Whose loathsome fruitfulness her husband shames, "Who may not cast aside this birth inhuman, "As one that flings love-tokens to the flames, "The hatred that on me thy vengeance launches "On this thwart creature I will pour in flood: "So twist the sapling that its withered branches "Shall never once put forth a cankered bud!" Regorging thus the venom of her malice, And misconceiving thy decrees sublime, In deep Gehenna's gulf she fills the chalice Of torments destined to maternal crime. Yet, safely sheltered by his viewless angel, The Childe forsaken revels in the Sun; And all his food and drink is an evangel Of nectared sweets, sent by the Heavenly One. He communes with the clouds, knows the wind's voices, And on his pilgrimage enchanted sings; Seeing how like the wild bird he rejoices The hovering Spirit weeps and folds his wings. All those he fain would love shrink back in terror, Or, boldened by his fearlessness elate, Seek to seduce him into sin and error, And flesh on him the fierceness of their hate. In bread and wine, wherewith his soul is nourished, They mix their ashes and foul spume impure; Lying they cast aside the things he cherished, And curse the chance that made his steps their lure. His spouse goes crying in the public places: "Since he doth choose my beauty to adore, "Aping those ancient idols Time defaces "I would regild my glory as of yore. "Nard, balm and myrrh shall tempt till he desires me "With blandishments, with dainties and with wine, "Laughing if in a heart that so admires me "I may usurp the sovranty divine! "Until aweary of love's impious orgies, "Fastening on him my fingers firm and frail, "These claws, keen as the harpy's when she gorges, "Shall in the secret of his heart prevail. "Then, thrilled and trembling like a young bird captured, "The bleeding heart shall from his breast be torn; "To glut his maw my wanton hound, enraptured, "Shall see me fling it to the earth in scorn." Heavenward, where he beholds a throne resplendent, The poet lifts his hands, devout and proud, And the vast lightnings of a soul transcendent Veil from his gaze awhile the furious crowd:— "Blessed be thou, my God, that givest sorrow, "Sole remedy divine for things unclean, "Whence souls robust a healing virtue borrow, "That tempers them for sacred joys serene! "I know thou hast ordained in blissful regions "A place, a welcome in the festal bowers, "To call the poet with thy holy Legions, "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers. "I know that Sorrow is the strength of Heaven, "'Gainst which in vain strive ravenous Earth and Hell, "And that his crown must be of mysteries woven "Whereof all worlds and ages hold the spell. "But not antique Palmyra's buried treasure, "Pearls of the sea, rare metal, precious gem, "Though set by thine own hand could fill the measure "Of beauty for his radiant diadem; "For this thy light alone, intense and tender, "Flows from the primal source of effluence pure, "Whereof all mortal eyes, though bright their splendour, "Are but the broken glass and glimpse obscure." SPLEEN ET IDÉAL. ILL LUCK To bear so vast a load of grief Thy courage, Sisyphus, I crave! My heart against the task is brave, But Art is long and Time is brief. For from Fame's proud sepulchral arches, Towards a graveyard lone and dumb, My sad heart, like a muffled drum, Goes beating slow funereal marches. —Full many a shrouded jewel sleeps In dark oblivion, lost in deeps Unknown to pick or plummet's sound: Full many a weeping blossom flings Her perfume, sweet as secret things, In silent solitudes profound. LE GUIGNON. BEAUTY My face is a marmoreal dream, O mortals! And on my breast all men are bruised in turn, So moulded that the poet's love may burn Mute and eternal as the earth's cold portals. Throned like a Sphinx unveiled in the blue deep, A heart of snow my swan-white beauty muffles; I hate the line that undulates and ruffles: And never do I laugh and never weep. The poets, prone beneath my presence towering With stately port of proudest obelisks, Worship with rites austere, their days devouring; For I have charms to keep their love, pure disks That make all things more beautiful and tender: My large eyes, radiant with eternal splendour! LA BEAUTÉ. IDEAL LOVE No, never can these frail ephemeral creatures, The withered offspring of a worthless age, These buskined limbs, these false and painted features, The hunger of a heart like mine assuage. Leave to the laureate of sickly posies Gavami's hospital sylphs, a simpering choir! Vainly I seek among those pallid roses One blossom that allures my red desire. Thou with my soul's abysmal dreams be blended, Lady Macbeth, in crime superb and splendid, A dream of Æschylus flowered in cold eclipse Of Northern suns! Thou, Night, inspire my passion, Calm child of Angelo, coiling in strange fashion Thy large limbs moulded for a Titan's lips! L'IDÉAL. HYMN TO BEAUTY Be thou from Hell upsprung or Heaven descended, Beauty! thy look demoniac and divine Pours good and evil things confusedly blended, And therefore art thou likened unto wine. Thine eye with dawn is filled, with twilight dwindles, Like winds of night thou sprinklest perfumes mild; Thy kiss, that is a spell, the child's heart kindles, Thy mouth, a chalice, makes the man a child. Fallen from the stars or risen from gulfs of error, Fate dogs thy glamoured garments like a slave; With wanton hands thou scatterest joy and terror, And rulest over all, cold as the grave. Thou tramplest on the dead, scornful and cruel, Horror coils like an amulet round thine arms, Crime on thy superb bosom is a jewel That dances amorously among its charms. The dazzled moth that flies to thee, the candle, Shrivels and burns, blessing thy fatal flame; The lover that dies fawning o'er thy sandal Fondles his tomb and breathes the adored name. What if from Heaven or Hell thou com'st, immortal Beauty? O sphinx-like monster, since alone Thine eye, thy smile, thy hand opens the portal Of the Infinite I love and have not known. What if from God or Satan be the evangel? Thou my sole Queen! Witch of the velvet eyes! Since with thy fragrance, rhythm and light, O Angel! In a less hideous world time swiftlier flies. HYMNE À LA BEAUTÉ. EXOTIC FRAGRANCE When, with closed eyes in the warm autumn night, I breathe the fragrance of thy bosom bare, My dream unfurls a clime of loveliest air, Drenched in the fiery sun's unclouded light. An indolent island dowered with heaven's delight, Trees singular and fruits of savour rare, Men having sinewy frames robust and spare, And women whose clear eyes are wondrous bright. Led by thy fragrance to those shores I hail A charmed harbour thronged with mast and sail, Still wearied with the quivering sea's unrest; What time the scent of the green tamarinds That thrills the air and fills my swelling breast Blends with the mariners' song and the sea-winds. PARFUM EXOTIQUE. XXVIII SONNET In undulant robes with nacreous sheen impearled She walks as in some stately saraband; Or like lithe snakes by sacred charmers curled In cadence wreathing on the slender wand. Calm as blue wastes of sky and desert sand That watch unmoved the sorrows of this world; With slow regardless sweep as on the strand The long swell of the woven sea-waves swirled. Her polished orbs are like a mystic gem, And, while this strange and symbolled being links The inviolate angel and the antique sphinx, Insphered in gold, steel, light and diadem The splendour of a lifeless star endows With clear cold majesty the barren spouse. MUSIC Launch me, O music, whither on the soundless Sea my star gleams pale! I beneath cloudy cope or rapt in boundless Æther set my sail; With breast outblown, swollen by the wind that urges Swelling sheets, I scale The summit of the wave whose vexed surges Night from me doth veil; A labouring vessel's passions in my pulses Thrill the shuddering sense; The wind that wafts, the tempest that convulses, O'er the gulf immense Swing me.—Anon flat calm and clearer air Glass my soul's despair! LA MUSIQUE. THE SPIRITUAL DAWN When on some wallowing soul the roseate East Dawns with the Ideal that awakes and gnaws, By vengeful working of mysterious laws An angel rises in the drowsed beast. The inaccessible blue of the soul-sphere To him whose grovelling dream remorse doth gall Yawns wide as when the gulfs of space enthral. So, heavenly Goddess, Spirit pure and clear, Even on the reeking ruins of vile shame Thy rosy vision, beautiful and bright, For ever floats on my enlargëd sight. Thus sunlight blackens the pale taper-flame; And thus is thy victorious phantom one, O soul of splendour, with the immortal Sun! L'AUBE SPIRITUELLE. THE FLAWED BELL Bitter and sweet it is, in winter night, Hard by the flickering fire that smokes, to list While far-off memories rise in sad slow flight, With chimes that echo singing through the mist. O blessëd be the bell whose vigorous throat, In spite of age alert, with strength unspent, Utters religiously his faithful note, Like an old warrior watching near the tent! My soul, alas! is flawed, and when despair Would people with her songs the chill night-air Too oft they faint in hoarse enfeebled tones, As when a wounded man forgotten moans By the red pool, beneath a heap of dead, And dying writhes in frenzy on his bed. LA CLOCHE FÉLÉE.