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Though your eyebrows surprise,
and give you an air of strangeness,
which isn't that of the angels,
witch with seductive eyes,

I adore my frivolous girl,
my terrible passion,
with the devotion...

One's ardour, Nature, makes you bright,
One finds within you mourning, grief!
What speaks to one of tombs and death
Says to the other, Splendour! Life!

Mystical Hermes, help to me,...

I.

Now will we plunge into the frigid dark,
The living light of summer gone too soon!
A1ready I can hear a dismal sound,
The thump of logs on courtyard paving stones.
...

I hear them say to me, your crystal eyes,
'Strange love, what merit do you find in me?'
Be charming and be still! My heart, disturbed
By all except the candour of the flesh
...

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!
...

Sous un grand ciel gris, dans une grande plaine poudreuse, sans
chemins, sans gazon, sans un chardon, sans une ortie, je rencontrai
plusieurs hommes qui marchaient courb's.
...

One would say your gaze was a misted screen:
your strange eyes (are they blue, grey or green?)
changeable, tender, dreamy, cruel, and again
echoing the indolence and pallor of heaven.
...

In evening as the sun goes down
She twists and dances mindlessly
Life, in her brash effrontery.
But also, when above the town

The night has risen, charming, vast,...

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...

Voici venir les temps o vibrant sur sa tige
Chaque fleur s'vapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir;
Valse mlancolique et langoureux vertige!...

De ce ciel bizarre et livide,
Tourment' comme ton destin,
Quels pensers dans ton 'me vide
Descendent? R'ponds, libertin.

'Insatiablement avide
De l'obscur et de l'incertain,...

To bear a weight that cannot be borne,
Sisyphus, even you aren't that strong,
Although your heart cannot be torn
Time is short and Art is long.

Far from celebrated sepulchers...

I love you as I love the night's high vault
O silent one, 0 sorrow's lachrymal,
And love you more because you flee from me,
And temptress of my nights, ironically
You seem to hoard the space, to take to you...

The great-hearted servant of whom you were jealous,
sleeping her sleep in the humble grass,
shouldn't we take her a few flowers?
The dead, the poor dead, have griefs like ours,...

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,...

O Angel, the most brilliant and most wise,
A God betrayed by fate, deprived of praise,

Satan, take pity on my misery!

O Prince of exile, you who have been wronged,...

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.
...

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.
...

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.
...

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...