Works

Surrounded by flasks, and by spangled lames,
All matter of sumptuous goods,
Marble sculptures, fine paintings, and perfumed peignoirs
That trail in voluptuous folds,
...

Alone at last! Nothing is to be heard but the rattle of a few tardy and tired-out cabs. There will be silence now, if not repose, for several hours at least....

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,...

For Ernest Christophe

Proud, like one living, of her noble height,
With handkerchief and gloves, her great bouquet,
She has the graceful nonchalance that might
Befit a gaunt coquette with lavish ways....

' Ernest Christophe

Fi're, autant qu'un vivant, de sa noble stature,
Avec son gros bouquet, son mouchoir et ses gants,
Elle a la nonchalance et la d'sinvolture...

Tranquil as a sage and gentle as one who's cursed. I said:
I love you, oh my beauty, my charmer

many a time
your debauches without thirst, your soul-less loves,
your longing for the infinite...

for F.N.

Do you, as I do, know a zesty grief,
And is it said of you, 'curious man!'
I dreamed of dying; in my spirit's heat
Desire and horror mixed, a strange mischance;
...

Beneath a broad grey sky, upon a vast and dusty plain devoid of grass, and where not even a nettle or a thistle was to be seen, I met several men who walked bowed down to the ground....

Free man, you'll love the ocean endlessly!
It is your mirror, you observe your soul
In how its billows endlessly unroll
Your spirit's bitter depths are there to see.
...

Late autumns, winters, spring-times steeped in mud,
anaesthetizing seasons! You I praise, and love
for so enveloping my heart and brain
in vaporous shrouds, in sepulchres of rain.

...

Autumn's last days, winters and mud-soaked spring
I praise the stupefaction that you bring
By so enveloping my heart and brain
In shroud of vapours, tomb of mist and rain.
...

A vapour seems to hide your face from view;
Your mystic eye (is it green, grey, or blue?)
Tender by turns, dreamy or merciless,
Reflects the heavens' pallid indolence.
...

Agatha, tell me, could your heart take flight
From this black city, from this filthy sea
Off to some other sea, where splendour might
Burst blue and clear-a new virginity?...

You are a lovely autumn sky, rose-clear!
But sadness is flowing in me like the sea,
And leaves on my sullen lip, as it disappears,
of its bitter slime the painful memory.

...

Reveille was sounding on barrack-squares,
and the wind of dawn blew on lighted stairs.

It was the hour when a swarm of evil visions
torments swarthy adolescents, when pillows hum:...

Music doth uplift me like a sea
Towards my planet pale,
Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinity
I lift my wandering sail.

With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee,...

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...

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!
...

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;
...

That kind heart you were jealous of, my nurse
Who sleeps her sleep beneath the humble turf,
I'd like to give her flowers, wouldn't you?
The dead, the poor dead, have their sorrows too,...