The Flowers of Evil Part 4

Ye charming Eyes--ye have those mystic beams, Of candles, burning in full day; the sun Awakes, yet kills not their fantastic gleams:

Ye sing the Awak'ning, they the dark oblivion; The Awak'ning of my spirit ye proclaim, O stars--no sun can ever kill your flame!

The Spiritual Dawn

When the morning white and rosy breaks, With the gnawing Ideal, upon the debauchee, By the power of a strange decree, Within the sotted beast an Angel wakes.

The mental Heaven's inaccessible blue, For wearied mortals that still dream and mourn, Expands and sinks; towards the chasm drawn.

Thus, cherished G.o.ddess, Being pure and true--

Upon the rests of foolish orgy-nights Thine image, more sublime, more pink, more clear, Before my staring eyes is ever there.

The sun has darkened all the candle lights; And thus thy spectre like the immortal sun, Is ever 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 recall est 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 souls, 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.

"Causerie"

You are a roseate autumn-sky, that glows!

Yet sadness rises in me like the flood, And leaves in ebbing on my lips morose, The poignant memory of its bitter mind.

In vain your hands my swooning breast embrace, Oh, friend! alone remains the plundered spot, Where woman's biting grip has left its trace: My heart, the beasts devoured--seek it not!

My heart is a palace pillaged by the herd; They kill and take each other by the throat!

A perfume glides around your bosom bared--

O loveliness, thou scourge of souls--devote Thine eyes of fire--luminous-like feasts, To burn these rags--rejected by the beasts!

Autumn Song

I

Shortly we will plunge within the frigid gloom, Farewell swift summer brightness; all too short-- I hear already sounding with a death-like boom The wood that falls upon the pavement of the court.

The whole of winter enters in my Being--pain, Hate, honor, labour hard and forced--and dread, And like the northern sun upon its polar plane My heart will soon be but a stone, iced and red.

I listen trembling unto every log that falls, The scaffold, which they build, has not a duller sound, My spirits waver, like the trembling tower walls that shake--with every echoing blow the builders pound.

Meeseemeth--as to these monotonous blows I sway, They nail for one a coffin lid, or sound a knell-- For whom? Autumn now--and summer yesterday!