Works

My heart was like a bird that fluttered joyously
And glided free among the tackle and the lines!
The vessel rolled along under a cloudless sky
An angel, tipsy, gay, full of the radiant sun.
...

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.
...

I give to you these verses, that if in
Some future time my name lands happily
To bring brief pleasure to humanity,
The craft supported by a great north wind,

Your memory, like tales from ancient times,...

It was in her white skirts that he loved to see
her run straight through the branches and leaves, gracefully,
but still gauche, and hiding her leg from the light,...

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...

My sister, my child
Imagine how sweet
To live there as lovers do!
To kiss as we choose
To love and to die
In that land resembling you!
The misty suns
Of shifting skies...

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,...

I adore you, the nocturnal vault's likeness,
o vast taciturnity, o vase of sadness:
I love you, my beauty, the more you flee,
grace of my nights, the more you seem,
to multiply distances, ah ironically,...

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,...

There are some natures purely contemplative and antipathetic to action, who nevertheless, under a mysterious and inexplicable impulse, sometimes act with a rapidity of which they would have believed themselves incapable. Such a...

It is a superb land, a country of Cockaigne, as they say, that I dream of visiting with an old friend. A strange land, drowned in our northern fogs, that one might call the East of the West, the China of Europe; a land patientl...

Twisting and writhing like a snake on fiery sands,
Kneading her breast against her corset's metal bands,
The woman, meanwhile, from her mouth of strawberry
Let flow these fragrant words of musky mystery:...

You invaded my sorrowful heart
Like the sudden stroke of a blade;
Bold as a lunatic troupe
Of demons in drunken parade,

You in my mortified soul
Made your bed and your domain;...

Muse of my heart, lover of palaces,
When January comes with wind and sleet,
During the snowy eve's long weariness,
Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet?

Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shoulders...

I was the height of a folio, my bed just
backed on the bookcases' sombre Babel,
everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust
jumbled together: novel, science, fable.

...

Pascal had his Void that went with him day and night.
Alas! It's all Abyss, action, longing, dream,
the Word! And I feel Panic's storm-wind stream
through my hair, and make it stand upright.
...

How admirable the day! The vast park swoons beneath the burning eye of the sun, as youth beneath the lordship of love....

for Maxime du Camp

I.

The wide-eyed child in love with maps and plans
Finds the world equal to his appetite.
How grand the universe by light of lamps,
How petty in the memory's clear sight....