Flowers of Evil | Page 7

town.
My wasted cat, in searching for a litter,?Bestirs its mangy paws from post to post;?(A poet's soul that wanders in the gutter,?With the jaded voice of a shiv'ring ghost).
The smoking pine-log, while the drone laments,?Accompanies the wheezy pendulum,?The while amidst a haze of dirty scents,
Those fatal remnants of a sick man's room?The gallant knave of hearts and queen of spades?Relate their ancient amorous escapades.
Obsession
Great forests, you alarm me like a mighty fane;?Like organ-tones you roar, and in our hearts of stone,?Where ancient sobs vibrate, O halls of endless pain!?The answering echoes of your " De Profundis " moan.
I hate thee, Ocean! hate thy tumults and thy throbs,?My spirit finds them in himself. This bitter glee?Of vanquished mortals, full of insults and of sobs,?I hear it in the mighteous laughter of the sea.
O starless night! thy loveliness my soul inhales,?Without those starry rays which speak a language known,?For I desire the dark, the naked and the lone.
But e'en those darknesses themselves to me are veils,?Where live and, by the millions 'neath my eyelids prance,?Long, long departed Beings with familiar glance.
Magnetic Horror
"Beneath this sky, so livid and strange,?Tormented like thy destiny,?What thoughts within thy spirit range?Themselves? O libertine reply."
With vain desires, for ever torn?Towards the uncertain, and the vast,?And yet, like Ovid I'll not mourn?Who from his Roman Heaven was cast.
O heavens, turbulent as the streams,?In you I mirror forth my pride!?Your clouds, which clad in mourning, glide,
Are the hearses of my dreams,?And in your illusion lies the hell,?Wherein my heart delights to dwell.
The Lid
Where'er he may rove, upon sea or on land,?'Neath a fiery sky or a pallid sun,?Be he Christian or one of Cythera's band,?Opulent Croesus or beggar 'tis one,
Whether citizen, peasant or vagabond he,?Be his little brain active or dull. Everywhere,?Man feels the terror of mystery,?And looks upon high with a glance full of fear.
The Heaven above, that oppressive wall;?A ceiling lit up in some lewd music hall,?Where the actors step forth on a blood-red soil
The eremite's hope, and the dread of the sot,?The Sky; that black lid of a mighty pot,?Where, vast and minute, human Races boil.
Bertha's Eyes
The loveliest eyes you can scorn with your wondrous glow:?O! beautiful childish eyes there abounds in your light,?A something unspeakably tender and good as the night:?O! eyes! over me your enchanting darkness let flow.
Large eyes of my child! O Arcana profoundly adored!?Ye resemble so closely those caves in the magical creek;?Where within the deep slumbering shade of some petrified?peak,?There shines, undiscovered, the gems of a dazzling hoard.
My child has got eyes so profound and so dark and so vast,?Like thee! oh unending Night, and thy mystical shine:?Their flames are those thoughts that with Love and with
Faith combine,?And sparkle deep down in the depths so alluring or chaste.
The Set of the Romantic Sun
How beauteous the sun as it rises supreme,?Like an explosion that greets us from above,?Oh, happy is he that can hail with love,?Its decline, more glorious far, than a dream.
I saw flower, furrow, and brook. ... I recall?How they swooned like a tremulous heart 'neath the sun,?Let us haste to the sky-line, 'tis late, let us run,?At least to catch one slanting ray ere it fall.
But the god, who eludes me, I chase all in vain,?The night, irresistible, plants its domain,?Black mists and vague shivers of death it forbodes;
While an odour of graves through the darkness spreads,?And on the swamp's margin, my timid foot treads?Upon slimy snails, and on unseen toads.
Meditation
Be wise, O my Woe, seek thy grievance to drown,?Thou didst call for the night, and behold it is here,?An atmosphere sombre, envelopes the town,?To some bringing peace and to others a care.
Whilst the manifold souls of the vile multitude,?'Neath the lash of enjoyment, that merciless sway,?Go plucking remorse from the menial brood,
From them far, O my grief, hold my hand, come this way.?Behold how they beckon, those years, long expired,?From Heaven, in faded apparel attired,?How Regret, smiling, foams on the waters like yeast;
Its arches of slumber the dying sun spreads,?And like a long winding-sheet dragged to the East,?Oh, hearken Beloved, how the Night softly treads!
To a Passer-by
Around me thundered the deafening noise of the street,?In mourning apparel, portraying majestic distress,?With queenly ringers, just lifting the hem of her dress,?A stately woman passed by with hurrying feet.
Agile and noble, with limbs of perfect poise.?Ah, how I drank, thrilled through like a Being insane,?In her look, a dark sky, from whence springs forth the?hurricane,?There lay but the sweetness that charms, and the joy that?destroys.
A flash then the night. . . . O loveliness fugitive!?Whose glance has so suddenly caused me again to live,?Shall I not see you again till this life is o'er!
Elsewhere, far away ... too late, perhaps never more,?For I know not whither you fly, nor you, where I go,?O soul that I would have loved, and that you