Flowers of Evil | Page 5

victorious thou resplendent one!
Evening Harmony
The hour approacheth, when, as their stems incline,?The flowers evaporate like an incense urn,?And sounds and scents in the vesper breezes turn;?A melancholy waltz and a drowsiness divine.
The flowers evaporate like an incense urn,?The viol vibrates like the wailing of souls that repine.?A melancholy waltz and a drowsiness divine,?The skies like a mosque are beautiful and stern.
The viol vibrates like the wailing of souls that repine;?Sweet souls that shrink from chaos vast and etern,?The skies like a mosque are beautiful and stern,?The sunset drowns within its blood-red brine.
Sweet souls that shrink from chaos vast and etern,?Essay the wreaths of their faded Past to entwine,?The sunset drowns within its blood-red brine,?Thy thought within me glows like an incense urn.
Overcast Sky
Meseemeth thy glance, soft enshrouded with dew,?Thy mysterious eyes (are they grey, green or blue?),?Alternately cruel, and tender, and shy,?Reflect both the languor and calm of the sky.
Thou recallest those white days with shadows caressed,?Engendering tears from th' enraptured breast,?When racked by an anguish unfathomed that weeps,?The nerves, too awake, jibe the spirit that sleeps.
At times thou art like those horizons divine,?Where the suns of the nebulous seasons decline;?How resplendent art thou O pasturage vast,?Illumed by the beams of a sky overcast!
O! dangerous dame oh seductive clime!?As well, will I love both thy snow and thy rime,?And shall I know how from the frosts to entice?Delights that are keener than iron and ice?
Invitation to a Journey
My sister, my dear
Consider how fair,?Together to live it would be!
Down yonder to fly
To love, till we die,?In the land which resembles thee.
Those suns that rise
'Neath erratic skies,?No charm could be like unto theirs
So strange and divine,
Like those eyes of thine?Which glow in the midst of their tears.
There, all is order and loveliness,?Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
The tables and chairs,?Polished bright by the years,
Would decorate sweetly our rooms,?And the rarest of flowers?Would twine round our bowers
And mingle their amber perfumes.
The ceilings arrayed,
And the mirrors inlaid,?This Eastern splendour among,
Would furtively steal
O'er our s&uls, and appeal?With its tranquillous native tongue.
There, all is order and loveliness,?Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
In the harbours, peep,
At the vessels asleep?(Their humour is always to roam),
Yet it is but to grant
Thy smallest want?From the ends of the earth that they come,
The sunsets beam
Upon meadow and stream,?And upon the city entire
'Neath a violet crest,
The world sinks to rest,?Illumed by a golden fire.
There, all is order and loveliness,?Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
Sisina
Imagine Diana in gorgeous array,?How into the forests and thickets she flies,?With her hair in the breezes, and flushed for the fray,?How the very best riders she proudly defies.
Have you seen Theroigne, of the blood-thirsty heart,?As an unshod herd to attack he bestirs,?With cheeks all inflamed, playing up to his part,?As he goes, sword in hand, up the royal stairs?
And so is Sisina yet this warrior sweet,?Has a soul with compassion and kindness replete,?Inspired by drums and by powder, her sway
Knows how to concede to the supplicants' prayers,?And her bosom, laid waste by the flames, has alway,?For those that are worthy, a fountain of tears.
To a Creolean Lady
In a country perfumed with the sun's embrace,?I knew 'neath a dais of purpled palms,?And branches where idleness weeps o'er one's face,?A Creolean lady of unknown charms.
Her tint, pale and warm this bewitching bride,?Displays a nobly nurtured mien,?Courageous and grand like a huntsman, her stride;?A tranquil smile and eyes serene.
If, madam, you'd go to the true land of gain,?By the banks of the verdant Loire or the Seine,?How worthy to garnish some pile of renown.
You'd awake in the calm of some shadowy nest,?A thousand songs in the poet's breast,?That your eyes would inspire far more than your brown.
Moesta et Errabunda
Oh, Agatha, tell! does thy heart not at times fly away??Far from the city impure and the lowering sea,?To another ocean that blinds with its dazzling array,?So blue and so clear and profound, like virginity??Oh, Agatha, tell! does thy heart not at times fly away?
The sea, the vast ocean our travail and trouble consoles!?What demon hath gifted the sea with a voice from on high,?To sing us (attuned to an ^Eolus-organ that rolls?Forth a grumbling burden) a lenitive lullabye??The sea, the vast ocean our travail and trouble consoles!
Oh, carry me, waggons, oh, sailing-ships, help me depart!?Far, far, here the dust is quite wet with our showering?tears,
Oh, say! it is true that Agatha's desolate heart,?Proclaimeth, " Away from remorse, and from crimes, and?from cares,"?Oh, carry me, waggons, oh, sailing ships, help me depart!
How distant you seem to be, perfumed Elysian fields!?Wherein there is nothing but sunshine and love and glee;?Where all that one loves is so worthy, and lovingly yields, And our hearts float about in the purest of ecstasy,?How distant you seem to be, perfumed Elysian fields!
But the green paradise of those transient infantile loves,?The strolls, and the songs, and the kisses, and bunches of?flowers,
The viols vibrating beyond, in