Flowers of Evil | Page 6

the mountainous groves,?With the chalice of wine and the evening, entwined, in the?bowers,?But the green paradise of those transient infantile loves.
That innocent heaven o'erflowing with furtive delight,?Than China or India, is it still further away?
Or, could one with pityful prayers bring it back to our?sight?
Or yet with a silvery voice o'er the ages convey?That innocent heaven o'erflowing with furtive delight!
The Ghost
Just like an angel with evil eye,?I shall return to thee silently,?Upon thy bower I'll alight,?With falling shadows of the night
With thee, my brownie, I'll commune,?And give thee kisses cold as the moon,?And with a serpent's moist embrace,?I'll crawl around thy resting-place.
And when the livid morning falls,?Thou'lt find alone the empty walls,?And till the evening, cold 'twill be.
As others with their tenderness,?Upon thy life and youthfulness,?I'll reign alone with dread o'er thee.
Autumn Song
They ask me thy crystalline eyes, so acute,?"Odd lover why am I to thee so dear?"?Be sweet and keep silent, my heart, wrifch is sear,?For all, save the rude and untutored brute,
Is loth its infernal depths to reveal,?And its dissolute motto engraven with fire,?Oh charmer! whose arms endless slumber inspire!?I abominate passion and wit makes me ill.
So let us love gently. Within his retreat,?Foreboding, Love seeks for his arrows a prey,?I know all the arms of his battle array.
Delirium and loathing O pale Marguerite!?Like me, art thou not an autumnal ray,?Alas my so white, my so cold Marguerite!
Sadness of the Moon-Goddess
To-night the Moon dreams with increased weariness,?Like a beauty stretched forth on a downy heap?Of rugs, while her languorous fingers caress?The contour of her breasts, before falling to sleep.
On the satin back of the avalanche soft,?She falls into lingering swoons, as she dies,?While she lifteth her eyes to white visions aloft,?Which like efflorescence float up to the skies.
When at times, in her languor, down on to this sphere,?She slyly lets trickle a furtive tear,?A poet, desiring slumber to shun,
Takes up this pale tear in the palm of his hand?(The colours of which like an opal blend),?And buries it far from the eyes of the sun.
Cats
All ardent lovers and all sages prize,?As ripening years incline upon their brows?The mild and mighty cats pride of the house?That like unto them are indolent, stern and wise.
The^friends of Learning and of Ecstasy,?They search for silence and the horrors of gloom;?The^devil had used them for his steeds of Doom,?Could he alone have bent their pride to slavery.
When musing, they display those outlines chaste,?Of the great sphinxes stretched o'er the sandy waste,?That seem to slumber deep in a dream without end :
From out their loins a fountainous furnace flies,?And grains of sparkling gold, as fine as sand,?Bestar the mystic pupils of their eyes.
Owls
Beneath the shades of sombre yews,?The silent owls sit ranged in rows,?Like ancient idols, strangely pose,?And darting fiery eyes, they muse.
Immovable, they sit and gaze,?Until the melancholy hour,?At which the darknesses devour?The faded sunset's slanting rays.
Their attitude, instructs the wise,?That he within this world who flies?From tumult and from merriment;
The man allured by a passing face,
For ever bears the chastisement
Of having wished to change his place.
Music
Oft Music possesses me like the seas!
To my planet pale,?'Neath a ceiling of mist, in the lofty breeze,
I set my sail.
With inflated lungs and expanded chest,
Like to a sail,?On the backs of the heaped-up billows I rest
Which the shadows veil
I feel all the anguish within me arise
Of a ship in distress;?The tempest, the rain, 'neath the lowering skies,
My body caress:
At times, the calm pool or the mirror clear?Of my despair!
The Joyous Defunct
Where snails abound in a juicy soil,?I will dig for myself a fathomless grave,?Where at leisure mine ancient bones I can coil,?And sleep quite forgotten like a shark 'neath the wave.
I hate every tomb I abominate wills,?And rather than tears from the world to implore,?I would ask of the crows with their vampire bills?To devour every bit of my carcass impure.
Oh worms, without eyes, without ears, black friends!?To you a defunct-one, rejoicing, descends,?Enlivened Philosophers offspring of Dung!
Without any qualms, o'er my wreckage spread,?And tell if some torment there still can be wrung?For this soul-less old frame that is dead 'midst the dead!
The Broken Bell
How sweet and bitter, on a winter night,?Beside the palpitating fire to list,?As, slowly, distant memories alight,?To sounds of chimes that sing across the mist.
Oh, happy is that bell with hearty throat,?Which neither age nor time can e'er defeat,?Which faithfully uplifts its pious note,?Like an ag&d soldier on his beat.
For me, my soul is cracked, and 'mid her cares,?Would often fill with her songs the midnight airs;?And oft it chances that her feeble moan
Is like the wounded warrior's fainting groan,?W T ho by a lake of blood, 'neath bodies slain,?In anguish falls, and never moves again.
Spleen
The rainy moon of all the world is weary,?And from its urn a gloomy cold pours down,?Upon the pallid inmates of the mortuary,?And on the neighbouring-outskirts of the