Works

I've been home a long time among the vast porticos,
Which the mariner sun has tinged with a million fires,
Whose grandest pillars, upright, majestic and cold...

Is it not pleasant, now we are tired,
and tarnished, like other men, to search for those fires
in the furthest East, where, again, we might see
morning's new dawn, and, in mad history,...

Great forests you frighten me, like vast cathedrals:
You roar like an organ, and in our condemned souls,
aisles of eternal mourning, where past death-rattles
sound, the echo of your De Profundis rolls.
...

The poet in his cell, unkempt and sick,
who crushes underfoot a manuscript,
measures, with a gaze that horror has inflamed,
the stair of madness where his soul was maimed.
...

Under black yew-trees, in the shade,
The owls have kept themselves apart;
Like strange divinities, they dart
The red eye, as they meditate.

They stand like statues, silent, straight...

Quand, les deux yeux ferm's, en un soir chaud d'automne,
Je respire l'odeur de ton sein chaleureux,
Je vois se d'rouler des rivages heureux
Qu''blouissent les feux d'un soleil monotone;
...

for Constantin Guys

Of this strange, awe-inspiring scene
Such as on earth one never sees,
Today the image once again,
Obscure and distant, captures me.

Sleep is so full of miracles!...

An Old Colophon

Passion sits on the skull
Of Humanity,
And this infidel enthroned
Laughs shamelessly,

And gaily blows round bubbles
That will fly,
As if to join with worlds...

Wine can invest the most disgusting hole
With wonders to our eyes,
And make the fabled porticoes arise
In its red vapour's gold
That show in sunsets seen through hazy skies.
...

With new chords I'll sing your praises,
Little shoot, because you dally
In the heart's sweet solitude.

Be into a garland woven,
o my captivating woman
Through whom sins are all absolved!
...

When in brave days of old, Theology
Flourished with utmost sap and energy,
A celebrated doctor, it is said,
When he had force-fed some indifferent heads;
Had stirred them in their blackest lethargy...

When, sullen beauty, you will sleep and have
As resting place a fine black marble tomb,
When for a boudoir in your manor-home
You have a hollow pit, a sodden cave,
...

Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief?
Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite,
And the vague terrors of the fearful night
That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf?...

Singular goddess, brown as night, and wild,
Perfumed of fine tobacco smoke and musk,
Work of some Faust, some wizard of the dusk,
Ebony sorceress, black midnight's child,
...

You said, there grows within you some strange gloom,
A sea rising on rock, why is it so?
When once your heart has brought its harvest home
Life is an evil! (secret all men know),
...

Picture Diana decked out for the chase,
Charging through forests, beating brush aside,
Drunk with the action, wind around her face,
Breast bare, her finest horsemen left behind!
...

I.

In anatomical designs
That hang about these dusty quays
Where books' cadavers lie and sleep
Like mummies of the ancient times,

Drawings of which the gravity...

Although your wayward brows
Give you a curious air
Angelic not at all,
Witch of the tempting stare,

I love you with a passion
Terrible and odd,
With the obeisance...

They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes:
"Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?"
Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise
All save that antique brute-like faith of thine;
...

The moon tonight dreams vacantly, as if
She were a beauty cushioned at her rest
Who strokes with wandering hand her lifting
Nipples, and the contour of her breasts;
...