Works

One day in ashy, cindery terrains,
As I meandered, making my complaint
To nature, slowly sharpening the knife
Of thought against the whetstone of my heart,
In plainest day I saw around my head...

To roll the rock you fought
takes your courage, Sisyphus!
No matter what effort from us,
Art is long, and Time is short.

Far from the grave of celebrity,
my heart, like a muffled drum,...

Through fields of ash, burnt, without verdure,
where I was complaining one day to Nature,
and slowly sharpened the knife of my thought,
as I wandered aimlessly, against my heart,...

Am as lovely as a dream in stone,
And this my heart where each finds death in turn,
Inspires the poet with a love as lone
As clay eternal and as taciturn.

Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,...

When, by an edict of the powers supreme,
The Poet in this bored world comes to be,
His daunted mother, eager to blaspheme,
Rages to God, who looks down piteously:
...

Lorsque, par un d'cret des puissances supr'mes,
Le Po'te appara't en ce monde ennuy',
Sa m're 'pouvant'e et pleine de blasph'mes
Crispe ses poings vers Dieu, qui la prend en piti':
...

You can scorn more illustrious eyes,
sweet eyes of my child, through which there takes flight
something as good or as tender as night.
Turn to mine your charmed shadows, sweet eyes!
...

Beside a monstrous Jewish whore I lay
One night, we were two corpses side by side,
And came to dream beside this hired bride
Of beauty my desire had turned away.

I saw again her native majesty,...

Ere is the chamber consecrate,
Wherein this maiden delicate,
And enigmatically sedate,

Fans herself while the moments creep,
Upon her cushions half-asleep,
And hears the fountains plash and weep....

La tribu proph'tique aux prunelles ardentes
Hier s'est mise en route, emportant ses petits
Sur son dos, ou livrant ' leurs fiers app'tits
Le tr'sor toujours pr't des mamelles pendantes.
...

If on some woebegone night
A generous Christian soul
Behind an old garbage-dump, might
Drop your proud corpse in a hole,

When the chaste stars are nodding their heads...

Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l'ab'me
O Beaut'? ton regard, infernal et divin,
Verse confus'ment le bienfait et le crime,
Et l'on peut pour cela te comparer au vin.
...

O Beauty! do you visit from the sky
Or the abyss? infernal and divine,
Your gaze bestows both kindnesses and crimes,
So it is said you act on us like wine.

Your eye contains the evening and the dawn;...

On the old oak benches, more shiny and polished
than links of a chain that were, each day, burnished
rubbed by our human flesh, we, still un-bearded,
trailed our ennui, hunched, round-shouldered,...

On the great walls of ancient cloisters were nailed
Murals displaying Truth the saint,
Whose effect, reheating the pious entrails
Brought to an austere chill a warming paint.
...

Other of memories, mistress of mistresses,
O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire,
Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses,
The charm of evenings by the gentle fire,...

Ubens, oblivious garden of indolence,
Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love,
Where life flows forth in troubled opulence,
As airs in heaven and seas in ocean move.
...

Consider them, my soul, they are a fright!
Like mannequins, vaguely ridiculous,
Peculiar, terrible somnambulists,
Beaming - who can say where - their eyes of night.
...

How bittersweet it is on winter nights
To hear old recollections raise themselves
Around the flickering fire's wisps of light
And through the mist, in voices of the bells.
...

You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose;
But all the sea of sadness in my blood
Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose,
Salt with the memory of the bitter flood.
...