Works

How beautiful a new sun is when it rises,
flashing out its greeting, like an explosion!
Happy, whoever hails with sweet emotion
its descent, nobler than a dream, to our eyes!

...

Andromache, I think of you! The stream,
The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days
Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief,
The lying Simo's flooded by your tears,
Made all my fertile memory blossom forth...

Dull soul, to whom the battle once was sweet,
Hope, who had spurred your ardour and your fame
Will no more ride you! Lie down without shame
Old horse, who makes his way on stumbling feet.
...

The Demon, in my chamber high,
This morning came to visit me,
And, thinking he would find some fault,
He whispered: "I would know of thee

Among the many lovely things...

What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But physically it is no ...

Debauch and Death are a fine, healthy pair
Of girls, whose love is prodigal and free.
Their virgin wombs, beneath the rags they wear,
Are barren, though they labour constantly.
...

You invaded my sorrowful heart
Like the sudden stroke of a blade;
Bold as a lunatic troupe
Of demons in drunken parade,

You in my mortified soul
Made your bed and your domain;...

Muse of my heart, lover of palaces,
When January comes with wind and sleet,
During the snowy eve's long weariness,
Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet?

Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shoulders...

I was the height of a folio, my bed just
backed on the bookcases' sombre Babel,
everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust
jumbled together: novel, science, fable.

...

Pascal had his Void that went with him day and night.
Alas! It's all Abyss, action, longing, dream,
the Word! And I feel Panic's storm-wind stream
through my hair, and make it stand upright.
...

Every man worth the name
has a yellow snake in his soul,
seated as on a throne, saying
if he cries: 'I want to!': 'No!'


Lock eyes with the fixed gaze
of Nixies or Satyresses, says...

The way her silky garments undulate
It seems she's dancing as she walks along,
Like serpents that the sacred charmers make
To move in rhythms of their waving wands.
...

Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted souls in whom the la...

Old monasteries under steadfast walls
Displayed tableaux of holy Verity,
Warming the inner men in those cold halls
Against the chill of their austerity.
...

White maiden with the russet hair,
Whose garments, through their holes, declare
That poverty is part of you,
And beauty too.

To me, a sorry bard and mean,
Your youthful beauty, frail and lean,...

In a perfumed land caressed by the sun
I found, beneath the trees' crimson canopy,
palms from which languor pours on one's
eyes, the veiled charms of a Creole lady.

...

Madonna, mistress, I would build for thee
An altar deep in the sad soul of me;
And in the darkest corner of my heart,
From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart,
Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine...

Pale girl with russet hair,
Tatters in what you wear
Show us your poverty
And your beauty,

For me, poor poet, in
The frail and freckled skin
Of your young flesh
Is a sweetness.
...

Your feet are as slender as hands, your hips, to me,
wide enough for the sweetest white girl's envy:
to the wise artist your body is sweet and dear,
and your great velvet eyes black without peer....

Around me roared the nearly deafening street.
Tall, slim, in mourning, in majestic grief,
A woman passed me, with a splendid hand
Lifting and swinging her festoon and hem;
...