Works

I. The Blackness

In vaults of fathomless obscurity
Where Destiny has sentenced me for life;
Where cheerful rosy beams may never shine;
Where, living with that sullen hostess, Night,
...

Reader, have you ever breathed deeply,
with slow savour and intoxicated sense,
a church's saturating grain of incense,
or the long-lasting musk in a sachet?

Profound magical spell where we...

I beg your pity, You, my only love;
My fallen heart lies in a deep abyss,
A universe of leaden heaviness,
Where cursing terrors swim the night above!

For six months stands a sun with heatless beams,...

When with closed eyes in autumn's eves of gold
I breathe the burning odours of your breast,
Before my eyes the hills of happy rest
Bathed in the sun's monotonous fires, unfold.
...

I've not forgotten, near to the town,
our white house, small but alone:
its Pomona of plaster, its Venus of old
hiding nude limbs in the meagre grove,
and the sun, superb, at evening, streaming,...

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,...

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.
...

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...

What, then, has God to say of cursing heresies,
Which rise up like a flood at precious angels' feet?
A self-indulgent tyrant, stuffed with wine and meat,
He sleeps to soothing sounds of monstrous blasphemies....

It is death that consoles and allows us to live.
Alas! that life's end should be all of our hope;
It goes to our heads like a powerful drink,
And gives us the heart to walk into the dark;
...

Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this desire....

I am a writer's pipe; you see
In looking at my dusky face,
Complexion of the Kaffir race,
My master makes good use of me.

When he is full of grief and gloom
I smoke as if I were a shack...

Wine can clothe the most sordid hole
in miraculous luxury,
and let many a fabulous portico float free
in the gold of its red glow,
like a setting sun in the sky's cloudy sea.
...

The sun is wrapped within a pall of mist,
Moon of my life! enshroud yourself like him;
Sleep, damp your fires; be silent, dim,
And plunge to ennui's most profound abyss;
...

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;
...