Flowers of Evil | Page 7

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 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.