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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/36287-0.txt b/36287-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..52bbb11 --- /dev/null +++ b/36287-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4060 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 36287 *** + +THE POEMS AND PROSE POEMS + +OF + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE + + +WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE BY + +JAMES HUNEKER + + + +NEW YORK +BRENTANO'S +PUBLISHERS + +1919 + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by James Huneker + + +THE FLOWERS OF EVIL + +The Dance of Death +The Beacons +The Sadness of the Moon +Exotic Perfume +Beauty +The Balcony +The Sick Muse +The Venal Muse +The Evil Monk +The Temptation +The Irreparable +A Former Life +Don Juan in Hades +The Living Flame +Correspondences +The Flask +Reversibility +The Eyes of Beauty +Sonnet of Autumn +The Remorse of the Dead +The Ghost +To a Madonna +The Sky +Spleen +The Owls +Bien Loin d'Ici +Music +Contemplation +To a Brown Beggar-maid +The Swan +The Seven Old Men +The Little Old Women +A Madrigal of Sorrow +The Ideal +Mist and Rain +Sunset +The Corpse +An Allegory +The Accursed +La Beatrice +The Soul of Wine +The Wine of Lovers +The Death of Lovers +The Death of the Poor +The Benediction +Gypsies Travelling +Francisco Meæ Laudes +Robed in a Silken Robe +A Landscape +The Voyage + + +LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE + +The Stranger +Every Man his Chimæra +Venus and the Fool +Intoxication +The Gifts of the Moon +The Invitation to the Voyage +What is Truth? +Already! +The Double Chamber +At One o'Clock in the Morning +The Confiteor of the Artist +The Thyrsus +The Marksman +The Shooting-range and the Cemetery +The Desire to Paint +The Glass-vendor +The Widows +The Temptations; or, Eros, Plutus, and Glory + + + + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. + +BY JAMES HUNEKER. + + + + +I + + +For the sentimental no greater foe exists than the iconoclast who +dissipates literary legends. And he is abroad nowadays. Those golden +times when they gossiped of De Quincey's enormous opium consumption, of +the gin absorbed by gentle Charles Lamb, of Coleridge's dark ways, +Byron's escapades, and Shelley's atheism--alas! into what faded limbo +have they vanished. Poe, too, whom we saw in fancy reeling from Richmond +to Baltimore, Baltimore to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to New York. Those +familiar fascinating anecdotes have gone the way of all such jerry-built +spooks. We now know Poe to have been a man suffering at the time of his +death from cerebral lesion, a man who drank at intervals and little. Dr. +Guerrier of Paris has exploded a darling superstition about De Quincey's +opium-eating. He has demonstrated that no man could have lived so +long--De Quincey was nearly seventy-five at his death--and worked so +hard, if he had consumed twelve thousand drops of laudanum as often as +he said he did. Furthermore, the English essayist's description of the +drug's effects is inexact. He was seldom sleepy--a sure sign, asserts +Dr. Guerrier, that he was not altogether enslaved by the drug habit. +Sprightly in old age, his powers of labour were prolonged until past +three-score and ten. His imagination needed little opium to produce the +famous Confessions. Even Gautier's revolutionary red waistcoat worn at +the première of Hernani was, according to Gautier, a pink doublet. And +Rousseau has been whitewashed. So they are disappearing, those literary +legends, until, disheartened, we cry out: Spare us our dear, +old-fashioned, disreputable men of genius! + +But the legend of Charles Baudelaire is seemingly indestructible. This +French poet has suffered more from the friendly malignant biographer and +chroniclers than did Poe. Who shall keep the curs out of the cemetery? +asked Baudelaire after he had read Griswold on Poe. A few years later +his own cemetery was invaded and the world was put into possession of +the Baudelaire legend; that legend of the atrabilious, irritable poet, +dandy, maniac, his hair dyed green, spouting blasphemies; that grim, +despairing image of a diabolic, a libertine, saint, and drunkard. Maxime +du Camp was much to blame for the promulgation of these tales--witness +his Souvenirs littéraires. However, it may be confessed that part of the +Baudelaire legend was created by Charles Baudelaire. In the history of +literature it is difficult to parallel such a deliberate piece of +self-stultification. Not Villon, who preceded him, not Verlaine, who +imitated him, drew for the astonishment or disedification of the world a +like unflattering portrait. Mystifier as he was, he must have suffered +at times from acute cortical irritation. And, notwithstanding his +desperate effort to realize Poe's idea, he only proved Poe correct, who +had said that no man can bare his heart quite naked; there always will +be something held back, something false ostentatiously thrust forward. +The grimace, the attitude, the pomp of rhetoric are so many buffers +between the soul of man and the sharp reality of published confessions. +Baudelaire was no more exception to this rule than St. Augustine, +Bunyan, Rousseau, or Huysmans; though he was as frank as any of them, as +we may see in the printed diary, Mon cÅ“ur mis à nu (Posthumous Works, +Société du Mercure de France); and in the Journal, Fusées, Letters, and +other fragments exhumed by devoted Baudelarians. + +To smash legends, Eugène Crépet's biographical study, first printed in +1887, has been republished with new notes by his son, Jacques Crépet. +This is an exceedingly valuable contribution to Baudelaire lore; a +dispassionate life, however, has yet to be written, a noble task for +some young poet who will disentangle the conflicting lies originated by +Baudelaire--that tragic comedian--from the truth and thus save him from +himself. The Crépet volume is really but a series of notes; there are +some letters addressed to the poet by the distinguished men of his day, +supplementing the rather disappointing volume of Letters, 1841-1866, +published in 1908. There are also documents in the legal prosecution of +Baudelaire, with memories of him by Charles Asselineau, Léon Cladel, +Camille Lemonnier, and others. + +In November, 1850, Maxime du Camp and Gustave Flaubert found themselves +at the French Ambassador's, Constantinople. The two friends had taken a +trip in the Orient which later bore fruit in Salammbô. General Aupick, +the representative of the French Government, cordially the young men +received; they were presented to his wife, Madame Aupick. She was the +mother of Charles Baudelaire, and inquired rather anxiously of Du Camp: +"My son has talent, has he not?" Unhappy because her second marriage, a +brilliant one, had set her son against her, the poor woman welcomed from +such a source confirmation of her eccentric boy's gifts. Du Camp tells +the much-discussed story of a quarrel between the youthful Charles and +his stepfather, a quarrel that began at table. There were guests +present. After some words Charles bounded at the General's throat and +sought to strangle him. He was promptly boxed on the ears and succumbed +to a nervous spasm. A delightful anecdote, one that fills with joy +psychiatrists in search of a theory of genius and degeneration. Charles +was given some money and put on board a ship sailing to East India. He +became a cattle-dealer in the British army, and returned to France +years afterward with a Vénus noire, to whom he addressed extravagant +poems! All this according to Du Camp. Here is another tale, a comical +one. Baudelaire visited Du Camp in Paris, and his hair was violently +green. Du Camp said nothing. Angered by this indifference, Baudelaire +asked: "You find nothing abnormal about me?" "No," was the answer. "But +my hair--it is green!" "That is not singular, mon cher Baudelaire; every +one has hair more or less green in Paris." Disappointed in not creating +a sensation, Baudelaire went to a café, gulped down two large bottles of +Burgundy, and asked the waiter to remove the water, as water was a +disagreeable sight; then he went away in a rage. It is a pity to doubt +this green hair legend; presently a man of genius will not be able to +enjoy an epileptic fit in peace--as does a banker or a beggar. We are +told that St. Paul, Mahomet, Handel, Napoleon, Flaubert, Dostoiëvsky +were epileptoids; yet we do not encounter men of this rare kind among +the inmates of asylums. Even Baudelaire had his sane moments. + +The joke of the green hair has been disposed of by Crépet. Baudelaire's +hair thinning after an illness, he had his head shaved and painted with +salve of a green hue, hoping thereby to escape baldness. At the time +when he had embarked for Calcutta (May, 1841), he was not seventeen, but +twenty years of age. Du Camp said he was seventeen when he attacked +General Aupick. The dinner could not have taken place at Lyons because +the Aupick family had left that city six years before the date given by +Du Camp. Charles was provided with five thousand francs for his +expenses, instead of twenty--Du Camp's version--and he never was a +beef-drover in the British army, for a good reason--he never reached +India. Instead, he disembarked at the Isle of Bourbon, and after a short +stay suffered from homesickness and returned to France, after being +absent about ten months. But, like Flaubert, on his return home +Baudelaire was seized with the nostalgia of the East; over there he had +yearned for Paris. Jules Claretie recalls Baudelaire saying to him with +a grimace: "I love Wagner; but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung +up by his tail outside of a window, and trying to stick to the panes of +glass with its claws. There is an odd grating on the glass which I find +at the same time strange, irritating, and singularly harmonious." Is it +necessary to add that Baudelaire, notorious in Paris for his love of +cats, dedicating poems to cats, would never have perpetrated such +revolting cruelty? + +Another misconception, a critical one, is the case of Poe and +Baudelaire. The young Frenchman first became infatuated with Poe's +writings in 1846 or 1847--he gave these two dates, though several +stories of Poe had been translated into French as early as 1841 or 1842; +L'Orang-Outang was the first, which we know as The Murders in the Rue +Morgue; Madame Meunier also adapted several Poe stories for the reviews. +Baudelaire's labours as a translator lasted over ten years. That he +assimilated Poe, that he idolized Poe, is a commonplace of literary +gossip. But that Poe had overwhelming influence in the formation of his +poetic genius is not the truth. Yet we find such an acute critic as the +late Edmund Clarence Stedman writing, "Poe's chief influence upon +Baudelaire's own production relates to poetry." It is precisely the +reverse. Poe's influence affected Baudelaire's prose, notably in the +disjointed confessions, Mon cÅ“ur mis à nu, which vaguely recall the +American writer's Marginalia. The bulk in the poetry in Les Fleurs du +Mal was written before Baudelaire had read Poe, though not published in +book form until 1857. But in 1855 some of the poems saw the light in the +Revue des deux Mondes, while many of them had been put forth a decade or +fifteen years before as fugitive verse in various magazines. Stedman was +not the first to make this mistake. In Bayard Taylor's The Echo Club we +find on page 24 this criticism: "There was a congenital twist about Poe +... Baudelaire and Swinburne after him have been trying to surpass him +by increasing the dose; but his muse is the natural Pythia inheriting +her convulsions, while they eat all sorts of insane roots to produce +theirs." This must have been written about 1872, and after reading it +one would fancy that Poe and Baudelaire were rhapsodic wrigglers on the +poetic tripod, whereas their poetry is often reserved, even glacial. +Baudelaire, like Poe, sometimes "built his nests with the birds of +Night," and that was enough to condemn the work of both men by critics +of the didactic school. + +Once, when Baudelaire heard that an American man of letters(?) was in +Paris, he secured an introduction and called on him. Eagerly inquiring +after Poe, he learned that he was not considered a genteel person in +America, Baudelaire withdrew, muttering maledictions. Enthusiastic poet! +Charming literary person! Yet the American, whoever he was, represented +public opinion at the time. To-day criticisms of Poe are vitiated by the +desire to make him an angel. It is to be doubted whether without his +barren environment and hard fortunes we should have had Poe at all. He +had to dig down deep into the pit of his personality to reach the +central core of his music. But every ardent young soul entering +"literature" begins by a vindication of Poe's character. Poe was a man, +and he is now a classic. He was a half-charlatan as was Baudelaire. In +both the sublime and the sickly were never far asunder. The pair loved +to mystify, to play pranks on their contemporaries. Both were implacable +pessimists. Both were educated in affluence, and both had to face +unprepared the hardships of life. The hastiest comparison of their +poetic work will show that their only common ideal was the worship of an +exotic beauty. Their artistic methods of expression were totally +dissimilar. Baudelaire, like Poe, had a harp-like temperament which +vibrated in the presence of strange subjects. Above all, he was obsessed +by sex. Women, as angel of destruction, is the keynote of his poems. Poe +was almost sexless. His aerial creatures never footed the dusty highways +of the world. His lovely lines, "Helen, thy beauty is to me," could +never have been written by Baudelaire; while Poe would never have +pardoned the "fulgurant" grandeur, the Beethoven-like harmonies, the +Dantesque horrors of that "deep wide music of lost souls" in "Femmes +Damnées": + + "Descendes, descendes, lamentable victimes." + +Or this, which might serve as a text for one of John Martin's vast +sinister mezzotints: + + J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal + Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore, + Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal + Une miraculeuse aurore; + + J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal + Un être, qui n'était que lumière, or et gaze, + Terrasser rénorme Satan; + Mais mon cÅ“ur que jamais ne visite l'extase, + Est un théâtre où l'on attend + Toujours, toujours en vain l'Etre aux ailes de gaze. + +George Saintsbury thus sums up the differences between Poe and +Baudelaire: "Both authors--Poe and De Quincey--fell short of Baudelaire +himself as regards depth and fulness of passion, but both have a +superficial likeness to him in eccentricity of temperameut and affection +for a certain peculiar mixture of grotesque and horror." Poe is without +passion, except a passion for the macabre; what Huysmans calls "The +October of the sensations"; whereas, there is a gulf of despair and +terror and humanity in Baudelaire, which shakes your nerves, yet +stimulates the imagination. However, profounder as a poet, he was no +match for Poe in what might be termed intellectual prestidigitation. The +mathematical Poe, the Poe of the ingenious detective tales, tales +extraordinary, the Poe of the swift flights into the cosmic blue, the +Poe the prophet and mystic--in these the American was more versatile +than his French translator. That Baudelaire said, "Evil be thou my +good," is doubtless true. He proved all things and found them vanity. He +is the poet of original sin, a worshipper of Satan for the sake of +paradox; his Litanies to Satan ring childish to us--in his heart he was +a believer. His was "an infinite reverse aspiration," and mixed up with +his pose was a disgust for vice, for life itself. He was the last of the +Romanticists; Sainte-Beuve called him the Kamchatka of Romanticism; its +remotest hyperborean peak. Romanticism is dead to-day, as dead as +Naturalism; but Baudelaire is alive, and read. His glistening +phosphorescent trail is over French poetry and he is the begetter of a +school:--Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Carducci, Arthur Rimbaud, +Jules Laforgue, Gabriel D'Annunzio, Aubrey Beardsley, Verhaeren, and +many of the youthful crew. He affected Swinburne, and in Huysmans, who +was not a poet, his splenetic spirit lives. Baudelaire's motto might be +the obverse of Browning's lines: "The Devil is in heaven. All's wrong +with the world." + +When Goethe said of Hugo and the Romanticists that they came +from Chateaubriand, he should have substituted the name of +Rousseau--"Romanticism, it is Rousseau," exclaims Pierre Lasserre. But +there is more of Byron and Petrus Borel--a forgotten half-mad poet--in +Baudelaire; though, for a brief period, in 1848, he became a Rousseau +reactionary, sported the workingman's blouse, cut his hair, shouldered a +musket, went to the barricades, wrote inflammatory editorials calling +the proletarian "Brother!" (oh, Baudelaire!) and, as the Goncourts +recorded in their diary, had the head of a maniac. How seriously we may +take this swing of the pendulum is to be noted in a speech of the poet's +at the time of the Revolution: "Come," he said, "let us go shoot General +Aupick!" It was his stepfather that he thought of, not the eternal +principles of Liberty. This may be a false anecdote; many such were +foisted upon Baudelaire. For example, his exclamations at cafés or in +public places, such as: "Have you ever eaten a baby? I find it pleasing +to the palate!" or, "The night I killed my father!" Naturally, people +stared and Baudelaire was happy--he had startled a bourgeois. The +cannibalistic idea he may have borrowed from Swift's amusing pamphlet, +for this French poet knew English literature. + +Gautier compares the poems to a certain tale of Hawthorne's in which +there is a garden of poisoned flowers. But Hawthorne worked in his +laboratory of evil wearing mask and gloves; he never descended into the +mud and sin of the street. Baudelaire ruined his health, smudged his +soul, yet remained withal, as Anatole France says, "a divine poet." How +childish, yet how touching is his resolution--he wrote in his diary of +prayer's dynamic force--when he was penniless, in debt, threatened with +imprisonment, sick, nauseated with sin: "To make every morning my prayer +to God, the reservoir of all force, and all justice; to my father, to +Mariette, and to Poe as intercessors." (Evidently, Maurice Barrès +encountered here his theory of Intercessors.) Baudelaire loved the +memory of his father as much as Stendhal hated his own. He became +reconciled with his mother after the death of General Aupick, in 1857. +He felt in 1862 that his own intellectual eclipse was approaching, for +he wrote: "I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror. To-day +imbecility's wing fanned me as it passed." The sense of the vertiginous +gulf was abiding with him; read his poem, "Pascal avait son gouffre." + +In preferring the Baudelaire translations of Poe to the original--and +they give the impression of being original works--Stedman agreed with +Asselineau that the French is more concise than the English. The prose +of Poe and Baudelaire is clear, sober, rhythmic; Baudelaire's is more +lapidary, finer in contour, richer coloured, more supple, though without +the "honey and tiger's blood" of Barbey d'Aurevilly. Baudelaire's soul +was patiently built up as a fabulous bird might build its nest--bits of +straw, the sobbing of women, clay, cascades of black stars, rags, +leaves, rotten wood, corroding dreams, a spray of roses, a sparkle of +pebble, a gleam of blue sky, arabesques of incense and verdigris, +despairing hearts and music and the abomination of desolation, for its +ground-tones. But this soul-nest is also a cemetery of the seven +sorrows. He loves the clouds ... les nuages ... là bas.... It was là bas +with him even in the tortures of his wretched love-life. Corruption and +death were ever floating in his consciousness. He was like Flaubert, who +saw everywhere the hidden skeleton. Félicien Hops has best interpreted +Baudelaire; the etcher and poet were closely knit spirits. Rodin, too, +is a Baudelarian. If there could be such an anomaly as a native +wood-note wildly evil, it would be the lyric and astringent voice of +this poet. His sensibility was both catholic and morbid, though he could +be frigid in the face of the most disconcerting misfortunes. He was a +man for whom the invisible word existed; if Gautier was pagan, +Baudelaire was a strayed spirit from mediæval days. The spirit rules, +and, as Paul Bourget said, "he saw God." A Manichean in his worship of +evil, he nevertheless abased his soul: "Oh! Lord God! Give me the force +and courage to contemplate my heart and my body without disgust," he +prays: but as some one remarked to Rochefoucauld, "Where you end, +Christianity begins." + +Baudelaire built his ivory tower on the borders of a poetic Maremma, +which every miasma of the spirit pervaded, every marsh-light and +glow-worm inhabited. Like Wagner, Baudelaire painted in his sultry music +the profundities of abysms, the vastness of space. He painted, too, the +great nocturnal silences of the soul. + +Pacem summum tenent! He never reached peace on the heights. Let us +admit that souls of his kind are encased in sick frames; their steel is +too shrewd for the scabbard; yet the enigma for us is none the less +unfathomable. Existence for such natures is a sort of muffled delirium. +To affiliate him with Poe, De Quincey, Hoffman, James Thomson, +Coleridge, and the rest of the sombre choir does not explain him; he is, +perhaps, nearer Donne and Villon than any of the others--strains of the +metaphysical and sinister and supersubtle are to be discovered in him. +The disharmony of brain and body, the spiritual bilocation, are only too +easy to diagnose; but the remedy? Hypocrite lecteur--mon semblable--mon +frère! When the subtlety, force, grandeur, of his poetic production be +considered, together with its disquieting, nervous, vibrating qualities, +it is not surprising that Victor Hugo wrote to the poet: "You invest the +heaven of art with we know not what deadly rays; you create a new +shudder." Hugo might have said that he turned Art into an Inferno. +Baudelaire is the evil archangel of poetry. In his heaven of fire, glass +and ebony he is the blazing Lucifer. "A glorious devil, large in heart +and brain, that did love beauty only..." once sang Tennyson, though not +of the Frenchman. + + + + +II + + +As long ago as 1869, and in our "barbarous gas-lit country," as +Baudelaire named the land of Poe, an unsigned review appeared in which +this poet was described as "unique and as interesting as Hamlet. He is +that rare and unknown being, a genuine poet--a poet in the midst of +things that have disordered his spirit--a poet excessively developed in +his taste for and by beauty ... very responsive to the ideal, very +greedy of sensation." A better description of Baudelaire does not exist +The Hamlet-motive, particularly, is one that sounded throughout the +disordered symphony of the poet's life. + +He was, later, revealed--also reviled--to American readers by Henry +James, who completely missed his significance. This was in 1878, when +appeared the first edition of French Poets and Novelists. Previous to +that there had been some desultory discussion, a few essays in the +magazines, and in 1875 a sympathetic paper by Professor James Albert +Harrison of the University of Virginia. He denounced the Frenchman for +his reprehensible taste, though he did not mention his beautiful verse +nor his originality in the matter of criticism. Baudelaire, in his eyes, +was not only immoral, but he had, with the approbation of Sainte-Beuve, +introduced Poe as a great man to the French nation. (See Baudelaire's +letter to Sainte-Beuve in the newly published Letters, 1841-1866.) +Perhaps "Mr. Dick Minim" and his projected Academy of Criticism might +make clear these devious problems. + +The Etudes Critiques of Edmond Schérer were collected in 1863. In them +we find this unhappy, uncritical judgment: "Baudelaire, lui, n'a rien, +ni le cÅ“ur, ni l'esprit, ni l'idée, ni le mot, ni la raison, ni la +fantaisie, ni la verve, ni même la facture ... son unique titre c'est +d'avoir contribué à créer l'esthétique de la débauche." It is not our +intention to dilate upon the injustice of this criticism. It is +Baudelaire the critic of æsthetics in whom we are interested. Yet I +cannot forbear saying that if all the negations of Schérer had been +transformed into affirmations, only justice would have been accorded +Baudelaire, who was not alone a poet, the most original of his century, +but also a critic of the first rank, one who welcomed Richard Wagner +when Paris hooted him and his fellow composer, Hector Berlioz, played +the rôle of the envious; one who fought for Edouard Manet, Leconte de +Lisle, Gustave Flaubert, Eugène Delacroix; fought with pen for the +modern etchers, illustrators, Meryon, Daumier, Félicien Rops, Gavarni, +and Constantin Guys. He literally identified himself with De Quincey and +Poe, translating them so wonderfully well that some unpatriotic persons +like the French better than the originals. So much was Baudelaire +absorbed in Poe that a writer of his times asserted that the translator +would meet the same fate as the American poet. A singular, vigorous +spirit is Baudelaire's, whose poetry with its "icy ecstasy" is profound +and harmonious, whose criticism is penetrated by a catholic quality, who +anticipated modern critics in his abhorrence of schools and +environments, preferring to isolate the man and uniquely study him. He +would have subscribed to Swinburne's generous pronouncement: "I have +never been able to see what should attract man to the profession of +criticism but the noble pleasure of praising." The Frenchman has said +that it would be impossible for a critic to become a poet; and it is +impossible for a poet not to contain a critic. + +Théophile Gautier's study prefixed to the definitive edition of Les +Fleurs du Mal is not only the most sympathetic exposition of Baudelaire +as man and genius, but it is also the high-water mark of Gautier's gifts +as a critical essayist. We learn therein how the young Charles, an +incorrigible dandy, came to visit Hôtel Pimodan about 1844. In this +Hôtel Pimodan a dilettante, Ferdinand Boissard, held high revel. His +fantastically decorated apartments were frequented by the painters, +poets, sculptors, romancers, of the day--that is, carefully selected +ones such as Liszt, George Sand, Mérimée, and others whose verve or +genius gave them the privilege of saying Open Sesame! to this cave of +forty Supermen. Balzac has in his Peau de Chagrin pictured the same sort +of scenes which were supposed to occur weekly at the Pimodan. Gautier +eloquently describes the meeting of these kindred artistic souls, where +the beautiful Jewess, Maryx, who had posed for Ary Scheffer's Mignon +and for Paul Delaroche's La Gloire, met the superb Madame Sabatier, the +only woman that Baudelaire loved, and the original of that extraordinary +group of Clésinger's--the sculptor and son-in-law of George Sand--la +Femme au Serpent, a Salammbô à la mode in marble. Hasheesh was eaten, so +Gautier writes, by Boissard and Baudelaire. As for the creator of +Mademoiselle Maupin, he was too robust for such nonsense. He had to work +for his living at journalism, and he died in harness, an irreproachable +father, while the unhappy Baudelaire, the inheritor of an intense, +unstable temperament, soon devoured his patrimony of 75,000 francs, and +for the remaining years of his life was between the devil of his dusky +Jenny Duval and the deep sea of hopeless debt. + +It was at these Pimodan gatherings, which were no doubt much less wicked +than the participants would have us believe, that Baudelaire encountered +Emile Deroy, a painter of skill, who made his portrait, and encouraged +the fashionable young fellow to continue his art studies. We have seen +an album containing sketches by the poet. They betray talent of about +the same order as Thackeray's, with a superadded note of the +"horrific"--that favourite epithet of the early Poe critics. Baudelaire +admired Thackeray, and when the Englishman praised the illustrations of +Guys, he was delighted. Deroy taught his pupil the commonplaces of a +painter's technique; also how to compose a palette--a rather meaningless +phrase nowadays. At least, he did not write of the arts without some +technical experience. Delacroix took up his enthusiastic disciple, and +when the Salons of Baudelaire appeared in 1845, 1846, 1855, and 1859, +the praise and blame they evoked were testimonies to the training and +knowledge of their author. A new spirit had been born. + +The names of Diderot and Baudelaire were coupled. Neither academic nor +spouting the jargon of the usual critic, the Salons of Baudelaire are +the production of a humanist. Some would put them above Diderot's. Mr. +Saintsbury, after Swinburne the warmest advocate of Baudelaire among the +English, thinks that the French poet in his picture criticism observed +too little and imagined too much. "In other words," he adds, "to read a +criticism of Baudelaire's without the title affixed is by no means a +sure method of recognizing the picture afterward." Now, word-painting +was the very thing that Baudelaire avoided. It was his friend Gautier, +with the plastic style, who attempted the well-nigh impossible feat of +competing in his verbal descriptions with the certitudes of canvas and +marble. And, if he with his verbal imagination did not entirely succeed, +how could a less adept manipulator of the vocabulary? We do not agree +with Mr. Saintsbury. No one can imagine too much when the imagination is +that of a poet. Baudelaire divined the work of the artist and set it +down scrupulously in a prose of exceeding rectitude. He did not paint +pictures in prose. He did not divagate. He did not overburden his pages +with technical terms. But the spirit of his subject he did disengage in +a few swift phrases. The polemics of historical schools were a cross for +him to bear, and he wore his prejudices lightly. Like a true critic, he +judged more by form than theme. There are no types; there is only life, +he asserted, and long before Jules Laforgue. He was ever art-for-art, +yet, having breadth of comprehension and a Heine-like capacity for +seeing both sides of his own nature with its idiosyncrasies, he could +write: "The puerile utopia of the school of art-for-art, in excluding +morality, and often even passion, was necessarily sterile. All +literature which refuses to advance fraternally between science and +philosophy is a homicidal and a suicidal literature." + +Baudelaire, then, was no less sound a critic of the plastic arts than of +music and literature. Like his friend Flaubert, he had a horror of +democracy, of the democratisation of the arts, of all the sentimental +fuss and fuddle of a pseudo-humanitarianism. During the 1848 agitation +the former dandy of 1840 put on a blouse and spoke of barricades. Those +things were in the air. Wagner rang the alarm-bells during the Dresden +uprising. Chopin wrote for the pianoforte a revolutionary étude. Brave +lads! Poets and musicians fight their battles best in the region of the +ideal. Baudelaire's little attack of the equality-measles soon vanished. +He lectured his brother poets and artists on the folly and injustice of +abusing or despising the bourgeois (being a man of paradox, he dedicated +a volume of his Salons to the bourgeois), but he would not have +contradicted Mr. George Moore for declaring that "in art the democrat +is always reactionary. In 1830 the democrats were against Victor Hugo +and Delacrois." And Les Fleurs du Mal, that book of opals, blood, and +evil swamp-flowers, will never be savoured by the mob. + +In his Souvenirs de Jeunesse, Champfleury speaks of the promenades in +the Louvre he enjoyed the company with Baudelaire. Bronzino was one of +the poet's preferences. He was also attracted by El Greco--not an +unnatural admiration, considering the sombre extravagance of his own +genius. Of Goya he has written in exalted phrases. Velasquez was his +touchstone. Being of a perverse nature, his Derves ruined by abuse of +drink and drugs, the landscapes of his imagination were more beautiful +than Nature herself. The country itself, he declared, was odious. Like +Whistler, whom he often met--see the Hommage à Delacrois by +Fantin-Latour, with its portraits of Whistler, Baudelaire, Manet, +Bracquemond the etcher, Legros, Delacrois, Cordier, Duranty the critic, +and De Balleroy--he could not help showing his aversion to "foolish +sunsets." In a word, Baudelaire, into whose brain had entered too much +moonlight, was the father of a lunar school of poetry, criticism and +fiction. His Samuel Cramer, in La Fanfarlo, is the literary progenitor +of Jean, Duc d'Esseintes, in Huysmans's _A Rebours_. Huysmans at first +modelled himself upon Baudelaire. His Le Drageoir aux Epices is a +continuation of Petits Poèmes en Prose. And to Baudelaire's account must +be laid much artificial morbid writing. Despite his pursuit of +perfection in form, his influence has been too often baneful to +impressionable artists in embryo. A lover of Gallic Byronism, and +high-priest of the Satanic school, there was no extravagance, absurd or +terrible, that he did not commit, from etching a four-part fugue on ice +to skating hymns in honour of Lucifer. In his criticism alone was he the +sane logical Frenchman. And while he did not live to see the success of +the Impressionist group, he surely would have acclaimed their theory and +practice. Was he not an impressionist himself? + +As Richard Wagner was his god in music, so Delacroix quite overflowed +his æsthetic consciousness. Read Volume II of his collected works, +_Curiosités Esthétiques_, which contains his Salons; also his essay, _De +l'Essence du Rire_ (worthy to be placed side by side with George +Meredith's essay on Comedy). Caricaturists, French and foreign, are +considered in two chapters at the close of the volume. Baudelaire was as +conscientious as Gautier. He trotted around miles of mediocre canvas, +saying an encouraging word to the less talented, boiling over with holy +indignation or indulging in glacial irony, before the rash usurpers +occupying the seats of the mighty, and pouncing on new genius with +promptitude. Upon Delacroix he lavished the largesse of his admiration. +He smiled at the platitudes of Horace Vernet, and only shook his head +over the Schnetzes and other artisans of the day. He welcomed William +Hausollier, now so little known. He praised Devéria, Chasseriau--who +waited years before he came into his own; his preferred landscapists +were Corot, Rousseau and Troyon. He impolitely spoke of Ary Scheffer and +the "apes of sentiment"; while his discussions of Hogarth, Cruikshank, +Pinelli and Breughel proclaims his versatility of vision. In his essay +Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne he was the first among critics to recognize +the peculiar quality called "modernity," that naked vibration which +informs the novels of Goncourt, Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale, +and the pictures of Manet, Monet, Degas and Raffaelli with their +evocations of a new, nervous Paris. It is in his Volume III, entitled +L'Art Romantique, that so many things dear to the new century were then +subjects of furious quarrels. This book contains much just and brilliant +writing. It was easy for Nietzsche to praise Wagner in Germany in 1876, +but dangerous at Paris in 1861 to declare war on Wagner's adverse +critics. This Baudelaire did. + +The relations of Baudelaire and Edouard Manet were exceedingly cordial. +In a letter to Théophile Thoré, the art critic (Letters, p. 361), we +find Baudelaire defending his friend from the accusation that his +pictures were pastiches of Goya. He wrote: "Manet has never seen Goya, +never El Greco; he was never in the Pourtalés Gallery." Which may have +been true at the time, 1864, nevertheless Manet had visited Madrid and +spent much time studying Velasquez and abusing Spanish cookery. +(Consider, too, Goya's Balcony with Girls and Manet's famous Balcony.) +Raging at the charge of imitation, Baudelaire said in this same epistle: +"They accuse even me of imitating Edgar Poe.... Do you know why I so +patiently translated Poe? Because he resembled me." The poet italicized +these words. With stupefaction, therefore, he admired the mysterious +coincidences of Manet's work with that of Goya and El Greco. + +He took Manet seriously. He wrote to him in a paternal and severe tone. +Recall his reproof when urging the painter to exhibit his work. "You +complain about attacks, but are you the first to endure them? Have you +more genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by +derision. And in order not to make you too proud I must tell you that +they are models, each in his way, and in a very rich world, while you +are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." (Letters, p. 436.) + +Would Baudelaire recall these prophetic words if he were able to revisit +the glimpses of the Champs Elysées at the Autumn Salons? What would he +think of Cézanne? Odilon Redon he would understand, for he is the +transposer of Baudelairianism to terms of design and colour. And perhaps +the poet whose verse is saturated with tropical hues--he, when young, +sailed in southern seas--might appreciate the monstrous debauch of form +and colour in the Tahitian canvases of Paul Gauguin. + +Baudelaire's preoccupation with pictorial themes may be noted in his +verse. He is par excellence the poet of æsthetics. To Daumier he +inscribed a poem; and to the sculptor Ernest Christophe, to Delacroix +(Sur Tasse en Prison), to Manet, to Guys (Rêve Parisien), to an unknown +master (Une Martyre); and Watteau, a Watteau à rebours, is seen in Un +Voyage à Cythère; while in Les Phares this poet of the ideal, spleen +music, and perfume, shows his adoration for Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci, +Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Puget, Goya, Delacroix--"Delacroix, lac de sang +hanté des mauvais anges." And what is more exquisite than his quatrain +to Lola de Valence, a poetic inscription for the picture of Edouard +Manet, with its last line as vaporous, as subtle as Verlaine: "Le charme +inattendu d'un bijou rose et noir!" Heine called himself the last of the +Romantics. The first of the "Moderns" and the last of the Romantics was +the many-sided Charles Baudelaire. + + + + +III + + +He was born at Paris, April 9, 1821 (Flaubert's birth year), and not +April 21, as Gautier has it. His father was Joseph Francis Baudelaire, +or Baudelaire, who occupied a government position. A cultivated art +lover, his taste was apparent in the home he made for his second wife, +Caroline Archimbaut-Dufays, an orphan and the daughter of a military +officer. There was a considerable difference in the years of this pair; +the mother was twenty-seven, the father sixty-two, at the birth of their +only child. By his first marriage the elder Baudelaire had one son, +Claude, who, like his half-brother Charles, died of paralysis, though a +steady man of business. That great modern neurosis, called Commerce, has +its mental wrecks, too, and no one pays attention; but when a poet falls +by the wayside is the chase begun by neurologists and other soul-hunters +seeking victims. After the death of Baudelaire's father, the widow, +within a year, married the handsome, ambitious Aupick, then chef de +bataillon, lieutenant-colonel, decorated with the Legion of Honour, and +later general and ambassador to Madrid, Constantinople, and London. +Charles was a nervous, frail youth, but unlike most children of genius, +he was a scholar and won brilliant honours at school. His stepfather was +proud of him. From the Royal College of Lyons, Charles went to the Lycée +Louis-le-Grand, Paris, but was expelled in 1839, on various +discreditable charges. Troubles soon began at home. He was irascible, +vain, precocious, and given to dissipation. He quarreled with General +Aupick, and disdained his mother. But she was to blame, she has +confessed; she had quite forgotten the boy in the flush of her second +love. He could not forget, or forgive what he called her infidelity to +the memory of his father. Hamlet-like, he was inconsolable. The good +Bishop of Montpellier, who knew the family, said that Charles was a +little crazy--second marriages usually bring woe in their train. "When a +mother has such a son, she doesn't re-marry," said the young poet +Charles signed himself Baudelaire-Dufays, or sometimes Dufais. He wrote +in his journal: "My ancestors, idiots or maniacs ... all victims of +terrible passions"; which was one of his exaggerations. His grandfather +on the paternal side was a Champenois peasant, his mother's family +presumably Norman, but not much is known of her forbears. Charles +believed himself lost from the time his half-brother was stricken. He +also believed that his instability of temperament--and he studied his +"case" as would a surgeon--was the result of his parents' disparity in +years. + +After his return from the East, where he did not learn English as has +been said--his mother taught him as a boy to converse in and write the +language--he came into his little inheritance, about fifteen thousand +dollars. Two years later he was so heavily in debt that his family asked +for a guardian on the ground of incompetency. He had been swindled, +being young and green. How had he squandered his money? Not exactly on +opera-glasses, like Gérard de Nerval, but on clothes, pictures, +furniture, books. The remnant was set aside to pay his debts. Charles +would be both poet and dandy. He dressed expensively but soberly, in the +English fashion; his linen dazzling, the prevailing hue of his +habiliments black. In height he was medium, his eyes brown, searching, +luminous, the eye of a nyctalops, "eyes like ravens"; nostrils +palpitating, cleft chin, mouth expressive, sensual jaw, strong and +square. His hair was black, curly, glossy, his forehead high, square and +white. In the Deroy portrait he wears a beard; he is there what Catulle +Mendès nicknamed him: "His Excellence, Monseigneur Brummel!" Later he +was the elegiac Satan, the author of L'Imitation de N.S. le Diable; or +the Baudelaire of George Moore: "the clean-shaven face of the mock +priest, the slow cold eyes and the sharp cunning sneer of the cynical +libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness +of temptation." In the heyday of his blood he was perverse and +deliberate. Let us credit him with contradicting the Byronic notion that +ennui could best be cured by dissipation; in sin Baudelaire found the +saddest of all consolations. Mendès laughs at the legend of Baudelaire's +violence, of his being given to explosive phrases. Despite Gautier's +stories about the Hôtel Pimodan and its club of hasheesh-eaters, M. +Mendès denies that Baudelaire was a victim of the hemp. What the +majority of mankind does not know concerning the habits of literary +workers is this prime fact: men who work hard, writing verse--and there +is no mental toil comparable to it--cannot drink, or indulge in opium, +without inevitable collapse. The old-fashioned ideas of "inspiration," +spontaneity, easy improvisation, the sudden bolt from heaven, are +delusions still hugged by the world. To be told that Chopin filed +at his music for years, that Beethoven in his smithy forged his +thunderbolts by the sweat of his brow, that Manet toiled like a +labourer on the dock, that Baudelaire was a mechanic in his devotion +to poetic work, that Gautier was a hard-working journalist, are +disillusions for the sentimental. Minerva springing full-fledged from +Jupiter's skull to the desk of the poet is a pretty fancy; but Balsac +and Flaubert did not encourage this fancy. Work literally killed Poe, as +it killed Jules de Goncourt, Flaubert and Daudet. Maupassant went insane +because he would work and he would play the same day. Baudelaire worked +and worried. His debts haunted him his life long. His constitution was +flawed--Sainte-Beuve told him that he had worn out his nerves--from the +start, he was détraqué; but that his entire life was one huge debauch is +a nightmare of the moral police in some red cotton nightcap country. + +His period of mental production was not brief nor barren. He was a +student. Du Camp's charge that he was an ignorant man is disproved by +the variety and quality of his published work. His range of sympathies +was large. His mistake, in the eyes of his colleagues, was to write so +well about the seven arts. Versatility is seldom given its real +name--which is protracted labour. Baudelaire was one of the elect, an +aristocrat, who dealt with the quintessence of art; his delicate air of +a bishop, his exquisite manners, his modulated voice, aroused unusual +interest and admiration. He was a humanist of distinction; he has left a +hymn to Saint Francis in the Latin of the decadence. Baudelaire, like +Chopin, made more poignant the phrase, raised to a higher intensity the +expressiveness of art. + +Women played a commanding rôle in his life. They always do with any poet +worthy of the name, though few have been so frank in acknowledging this +as Baudelaire. Yet he was in love more with Woman than the individual. +The legend of the beautiful creature he brought from the East resolves +itself into the dismal affair with Jeanne Duval. He met her in Paris, +after he had been in the East. She sang at a café concert in Paris. She +was more brown than black. She was not handsome, not intelligent, not +good; yet he idealized her, for she was the source of half his +inspiration. To her were addressed those marvellous evocations of the +Orient, of perfume, tresses, delicious dawns on strange far-away seas +and "superb Byzant," domes that devils built. Baudelaire is the poet of +perfumes; he is also the patron saint of ennui. No one has so chanted +the praise of odours. His soul swims on perfume as do other souls on +music, he has sung. As he grew older he seemed to hunt for more acrid +odours; he often presents an elaborately chased vase the carving of +which transports us, but from which the head is quickly averted. Jeanne, +whom he never loved, no matter what may be said, was a sorceress. But +she was impossible; she robbed, betrayed him; he left her a dozen times +only to return. He was a capital draughtsman with a strong nervous line +and made many pen-and-ink drawings of her. They are not prepossessing. +In her rapid decline she was not allowed to want. Madame Aupick paid her +expenses in the hospital. A sordid history. She was a veritable flower +of evil for Baudelaire. Yet poetry, like music, would be colourless, +scentless, if it sounded no dissonances. Fancy art reduced to the +beatific and banal chord of C major! + +He fell in love with the celebrated Madame Sabatier, a reigning beauty, +at whose salon artistic Paris assembled. She had been christened by +Gautier Madame la Présidente, and her sumptuous beauty was portrayed by +Ricard in his La Femme au Chien. She returned Baudelaire's love. They +soon parted. Again a riddle which the published letters hardly solve. +One letter, however, does show that Baudelaire had tried to be faithful, +and failed. He could not extort from his exhausted soul the sentiment; +but he put its music on paper. His most seductive lyrics were addressed +to Madame Sabatier: "A la très chère, à la très-belle," a hymn saturated +with love. Music, spleen, perfumes--"colour, sound, perfumes call to +each other as deep to deep; perfumes like the flesh of children, soft as +hautboys, green as the meadows"--criminals, outcasts, the charm of +childhood, the horrors of love, pride, and rebellion, Eastern +landscapes, cats, soothing and false; cats, the true companions of +lonely poets; haunted clocks, shivering dusks, and gloomier +dawns--Paris in a hundred phases--these and many other themes this +strange-souled poet, this "Dante, pacer of the shore," of Paris has +celebrated in finely wrought verse and profound phrases. In a single +line he contrives atmosphere; the very shape of his sentence, the ring +of the syllables, arouse the deepest emotion. A master of harmonic +undertones is Baudelaire. His successors have excelled him in making +their music more fluid, more lyrical, more vapourous--many young French +poets pass through their Baudelarian green-sickness--but he alone knows +the secrets of moulding those metallic, free sonnets, which have the +resistance of bronze; and of the despairing music that flames from the +mouths of lost souls trembling on the wharves of hell. He is the supreme +master of irony and troubled voluptuousness. + +Baudelaire is a masculine poet. He carved rather than sang; the plastic +arts spoke to his soul. A lover and maker of images. Like Poe, his +emotions transformed themselves into ideas. Bourget classified him as +mystic, libertine, and analyst. He was born with a wound in his soul, to +use the phrase of Père Lacordaire. (Curiously enough, he actually +contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat +in the French Academy. Sainte-Beuve dissuaded him from this folly.) +Recall Baudelaire's prayer: "Thou, O Lord, my God, grant me the grace to +produce some fine lines which will prove to myself that I am not the +last of men, that I am not inferior to those I contemn." Individualist, +egoist, anarchist, his only thought was letters. Jules Laforgue thus +described Baudelaire: "Cat, Hindoo, Yankee, Episcopal, Alchemist." Yes, +an alchemist who suffocated in the fumes he created. He was of Gothic +imagination, and could have said with Rolla: "Je suis venu trop tard +dans un monde trop vieux." He had an unassuaged thirst for the absolute. +The human soul was his stage, he its interpreting orchestra. + +In 1857 The Flowers of Evil was published by Poulet-Malassis, who +afterward went into bankruptcy--a warning to publishers with a taste for +fine literature. The titles contemplated were Limbes, or Lesbiennes. +Hippolyte Babou suggested the one we know. These poems were suppressed +on account of six, and poet and publisher summoned. As the municipal +government had made a particular ass of itself in the prosecution of +Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary, the Baudelaire matter was +disposed of in haste. He was condemned to a fine of three hundred +francs, a fine which was never paid, as the objectionable poems were +removed. They were printed in the Belgian edition, and may be read in +the new volume, Å’uvres. Posthumes. + +Baudelaire was infuriated over the judgment, for he knew that his book +was dramatic in expression. He had expected, like Flaubert, to emerge +from the trial with flying colours; therefore to be classed as one who +wrote objectionable literature was a shock. "Flaubert had the Empress +back of him," he complained; which was true; the Empress Eugénie, also +the Princess Mathilde. But he worked as ever and put forth those +polished intaglios called Poems in Prose, for the form of which he had +taken a hint from Aloys Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit. He filled this +form with a new content; not alone pictures, but moods, are to be found +in those miniatures. Pity is their keynote, a tenderness for the abject +and lowly, a revelation of sensibility that surprised those critics who +had discerned in Baudelaire only a sculptor of evil. In one of his poems +he described a landscape of metal, of marble and water; a babel of +staircases and arcades, a palace of infinity, surrounded by the silence +of eternity. This depressing yet magical dream was utilized by Huysmans +in his A Rebours. But in the tiny landscapes of the Prose Poems there is +nothing rigid or artificial. Indeed, the poet's deliberate attitude of +artificiality is dropped. He is human. Not that the deep fundamental +note of humanity is ever absent in his poems; the eternal diapason is +there even when least overheard. Baudelaire is more human than Poe. His +range of sympathy is wider. In this he transcends him as a poet, though +his subject-matter often issues from the very dregs of life. Brother to +pitiable wanderers, there are, nevertheless, no traces of cant, no +"Russian pity" à la Dostoiëvsky, no humanitarian or socialistic +rhapsodies in his work. Baudelaire is an egoist He hated the sentimental +sapping of altruism. His prose-poem, Crowds, with its "bath of +multitude," may have been suggested by Poe; but in Charles Lamb we find +the idea: "Are there no solitudes out of caves and the desert? or +cannot the heart, in the midst of crowds, feel frightfully alone?" + +His best critical work is the Richard Wagner and Tannhauser, as +significant an essay as Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. And +Baudelaire's polemic appeared at a more critical period in Wagner's +career. Wagner sent a brief hearty letter of thanks to the critic, and +later made his acquaintance. To Wagner, Baudelaire introduced a young +Wagnerian, Villiers de l'Isle Adam. This Wagner letter is included in +the volume of Crépet; but there are no letters published from Baudelaire +to Franz Liszt, though they were friends. In Weimar I saw at the Liszt +Museum several from Baudelaire which should have been included in the +Letters. The poet understood Liszt and his reforms as he understood +Wagner. The German composer admired the French poet, and his Kundry, in +the sultry second act of Parsifal, has a Baudelairian hue, especially in +the temptation scene. + +The end was at hand. Baudelaire had been steadily, rather, unsteadily, +going downhill; a desperate figure, a dandy in shabby attire. He went +out only after dark, he haunted the exterior boulevards, associated +with birds of nocturnal plumage. He drank without thirst, ate without +hunger, as he has said. A woeful decadence for this aristocrat of life +and letters. Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged +his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre. He fled to +Brussels, there to rehabilitate his dwindling fortunes. He gave a few +lectures, and met Rops, Lemonnier, drank to forget, and forgot to work. +He abused Brussels, Belgium, its people. A country, he cried, where the +trees are black, the flowers without odour, and where there is no +conversation! He, the brilliant causeur, the chief blaguer of a circle +in which young James McNeill Whistler was reduced to the rôle of a +listener--this most spiritual among artists, found himself a failure in +the Belgian capital. It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that +Baudelaire was the creator of many of the paradoxes attributed, not only +to Whistler, but to an entire school--if one may employ such a phrase. +The frozen imperturbability of the poet, his cutting enunciation, his +power of blasphemy, his hatred of Nature, his love of the artificial, +have been copied by the æsthetic blades of our day. He it was who first +taunted Nature with being an imitator of art, with always being the +same. Oh, the imitative sunsets! Oh, the quotidian eating and drinking! +And as pessimist, too, he led the mode. Baudelaire, like Flaubert, +grasped the murky torch of pessimism once held by Chateaubriand, +Benjamin Constant, and Senancour. Doubtless, all this stemmed from +Byronism. And now it is as stale as Byronism. + +His health failed, and he lacked money enough to pay for doctor's +prescriptions; he even owed for the room in his hotel. At Namur, where +he was visiting the father-in-law of Felician Rops (March, 1866), he +suffered from an attack of paralysis. He was removed to Brussels. His +mother, who lived at Honneur, in mourning for her husband, came to his +aid. Taken to France, he was placed in a sanatorium. Aphasia set in. He +could only ejaculate a mild oath, and when he caught sight of himself in +the mirror he would bow pleasantly as if to a stranger. His friends +rallied, and they were among the most distinguished people in Paris, the +élite of souls. Ladies visited him, one or two playing Wagner on the +piano--which must have added a fresh nuance to death--and they brought +him flowers. He expressed his love for flowers and music to the last. He +could not bear the sight of his mother; she revived in him some painful +memories, but that passed, and he clamoured for her when she was absent. +If anyone mentioned the names of Wagner or Manet, he smiled. And with a +fixed stare, as if peering through some invisible window opening upon +eternity, he died, August 31, 1867, aged forty-six. + +Barbey d'Aurevilly himself a Satanist and dandy (oh, those comical old +attitudes of literature), had prophesied that the author of Fleurs du +Mal would either blow out his brains or prostrate himself at the foot of +the cross. (Later he said the same of Huysmans.) Baudelaire had the +alternative course forced upon him by fate after he had attempted +spiritual suicide for how many years? (He once tried actual suicide, but +the slight cut in his throat looked so ugly to him that he went no +farther.) His soul had been a battle-field for the powers of good and +evil. That at the end he brought the wreck of both soul and body to his +God should not be a subject for comment. He was an extraordinary poet +with a bad conscience, who lived miserably and was buried with honours. +Then it was that his worth was discovered (funeral orations over a +genius are a species of public staircase-wit). His reputation waxes with +the years. He is an exotic gem in the crown of French poetry. Of him +Swinburne has chanted Ave Atque Vale: + + Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, + Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? + + * * * * * + + + + +THE FLOWERS OF EVIL + + + + +THE DANCE OF DEATH. + + +Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves, +Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves +With all the careless and high-stepping grace, +And the extravagant courtesan's thin face. + +Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed? +Her floating robe, in royal amplitude, +Palls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod +With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod. + +The swarms that hum about her collar-bones +As the lascivious streams caress the stones, +Conceal from every scornful jest that flies, +Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes + +Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays +Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways, +Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebræ. +O charm of nothing decked in folly! they + +Who laugh and name you a Caricature, +They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure, +The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone +That is most dear to me, tall skeleton! + +Come you to trouble with your potent sneer +The feast of Life! or are you driven here, +To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir +And goad your moving corpse on with a spur? + +Or do you hope, when sing the violins, +And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins, +To drive some mocking nightmare far apart, +And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart? + +Fathomless well of fault and foolishness! +Eternal alembic of antique distress! +Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides +The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides. + +And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find, +Among us here, no lover to your mind; +Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave? +The charms of horror please none but the brave. + +Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir, +Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller +Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath, +The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth. + +For he who has not folded in his arms +A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms, +Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent, +When Horror comes the way that Beauty went. + +O irresistible, with fleshless face, +Say to these dancers in their dazzled race: +"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones, +Ye shall taste death, musk-scented skeletons! + +Withered Antinous, dandies with plump faces, +Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces, +Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath, +Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death. + +From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream, +The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream; +They do not see, within the opened sky, +The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high. + +In every clime and under every sun, +Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run; +And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye +And mingles with your madness, irony!" + + + + + THE BEACONS. + + + RUBENS, 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, + + LEONARD DA VINCI, sombre and fathomless glass, + Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile, + Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass, + Among the ice and pines that guard some isle. + + REMBRANDT, sad hospital that a murmuring fills, + Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls, + Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils, + And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls. + + Strong MICHELANGELO, a vague far place + Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules; + Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace, + And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease. + + The fighter's anger, the faun's impudence, + Thou makest of all these a lovely thing; + Proud heart, sick body, mind's magnificence: + PUGET, the convict's melancholy king. + + WATTEAU, the carnival of illustrious hearts, + Fluttering like moths upon the wings of chance; + Bright lustres light the silk that flames and darts, + And pour down folly on the whirling dance. + + GOYA, a nightmare full of things unknown; + The fÅ“tus witches broil on Sabbath night; + Old women at the mirror; children lone + Who tempt old demons with their limbs delight. + + DELACROIX, lake of blood ill angels haunt, + Where ever-green, o'ershadowing woods arise; + Under the surly heaven strange fanfares chaunt + And pass, like one of Weber's strangled sighs. + + And malediction, blasphemy and groan, + Ecstasies, cries, Te Deums, and tears of brine, + Are echoes through a thousand labyrinths flown; + For mortal hearts an opiate divine; + + A shout cried by a thousand sentinels, + An order from a thousand bugles tossed, + A beacon o'er a thousand citadels, + A call to huntsmen in deep woodlands lost. + + It is the mightiest witness that could rise + To prove our dignity, O Lord, to Thee; + This sob that rolls from age to age, and dies + Upon the verge of Thy Eternity! + + + + + THE SADNESS OF THE MOON. + + + The Moon more indolently dreams to-night + Than a fair woman on her couch at rest. + Caressing, with a hand distraught and light, + Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast. + + Upon her silken avalanche of down, + Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh; + And watches the white visions past her flown, + Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky. + + And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep, + Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow, + Some pious poet, enemy of sleep, + + Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow + Whence gleams of iris and of opal start, + And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart. + + + + + EXOTIC PERFUME. + + + 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. + + Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs + Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down. + Where men are upright, maids have never grown + Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows. + + Led by that perfume to these lands of ease, + I see a port where many ships have flown + With sails outwearied of the wandering seas; + + While the faint odours from green tamarisks blown, + Float to my soul and in my senses throng, + And mingle vaguely with the sailor's song. + + + + + BEAUTY. + + + I 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, + My throne is in the heaven's azure deep; + I hate all movements that disturb my pose, + I smile not ever, neither do I weep. + + Before my monumental attitudes, + That breathe a soul into the plastic arts, + My poets pray in austere studious moods, + + For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts, + Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies, + The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes. + + + + + THE BALCONY. + + + Mother 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, + Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses! + + The eves illumined by the burning coal, + The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings-- + How soft your breast was then, how sweet your soul! + Ah, and we said imperishable things, + Those eves illumined by the burning coal. + + Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm, + And space profound, and strong life's pulsing flood, + In bending o'er you, queen of every charm, + I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood. + The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm. + + The film of night flowed round and over us, + And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet; + I drank your breath, ah! sweet and poisonous, + And in my hands fraternal slept your feet-- + Night, like a film, flowed round and over us. + + I can recall those happy days forgot, + And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past. + Your languid beauties now would move me not + Did not your gentle heart and body cast + The old spell of those happy days forgot. + + Can vows and perfumes, kisses infinite, + Be reborn from the gulf we cannot sound; + As rise to heaven suns once again made bright + After being plunged in deep seas and profound? + Ah, vows and perfumes, kisses infinite! + + + + + THE SICK MUSE. + + + Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day? + Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn, + Upon thy brow in alternation play, + Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn. + + Have the green lemure and the goblin red, + Poured on thee love and terror from their urn? + Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread + Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne? + + Would that thy breast where so deep thoughts arise, + Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs; + Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave + + In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave, + When PhÅ“bus shared his alternating reign + With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain. + + + + + THE VENAL MUSE. + + + Muse of my heart, lover of palaces, + When January comes with wind and sleet, + During the snowy eve's long wearinesses, + Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet? + + Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shoulders + In the moon-beams that through the window fly? + Or when thy purse dries up, thy palace moulders, + Reap the far star-gold of the vaulted sky? + + For thou, to keep thy body to thy soul, + Must swing a censer, wear a holy stole, + And chaunt Te Deums with unbelief between. + + Or, like a starving mountebank, expose + Thy beauty and thy tear-drowned smile to those + Who wait thy jeste to drive away thy spleen. + + + + + THE EVIL MONK. + + + The ancient cloisters on their lofty walls + Had holy Truth in painted frescoes shown, + And, seeing these, the pious in those halls + Felt their cold, lone austereness less alone. + + At that time when Christ's seed flowered all around, + More than one monk, forgotten in his hour, + Taking for studio the burial-ground, + Glorified Death with simple faith and power. + + And my soul is a sepulchre where I, + Ill cenobite, have spent eternity: + On the vile cloister walls no pictures rise. + + O when may I cast off this weariness, + And make the pageant of my old distress + For these hands labour, pleasure for these eyes? + + + + + THE TEMPTATION. + + + The Demon, in my chamber high. + This morning came to visit me, + And, thinking he would find some fault, + He whispered: "I would know of thee + + Among the many lovely things + That make the magic of her face, + Among the beauties, black and rose, + That make her body's charm and grace, + + Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply + To the Abhorred, O soul of mine: + "No single beauty is the best + When she is all one flower divine. + + When all things charm me I ignore + Which one alone brings most delight; + She shines before me like the dawn, + And she consoles me like the night. + + The harmony is far too great, + That governs all her body fair, + For impotence to analyse + And say which note is sweetest there. + + O mystic metamorphosis! + My senses into one sense flow-- + Her voice makes perfume when she speaks, + Her breath is music faint and low!" + + + + + THE IRREPARABLE. + + + Can we suppress the old Remorse + Who bends our heart beneath his stroke, + Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse, + Or as the acorn on the oak? + Can we suppress the old Remorse! + + Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell, + May we drown this our ancient foe, + Destructive glutton, gorging well, + Patient as the ants, and slow? + What wine, what philtre, or what spell? + + Tell it, enchantress, if you can, + Tell me, with anguish overcast, + Wounded, as a dying man, + Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past. + Tell it, enchantress, if you can, + + To him the wolf already tears + Who sees the carrion pinions wave, + This broken warrior who despairs + To have a cross above his grave-- + This wretch the wolf already tears. + + Can one illume a leaden sky, + Or tear apart the shadowy veil + Thicker than pitch, no star on high, + Not one funereal glimmer pale + Can one illume a leaden sky? + + Hope lit the windows of the Inn, + But now that shining flame is dead; + And how shall martyred pilgrims win + Along the moonless road they tread? + Satan has darkened all the Inn! + + Witch, do you love accursèd hearts? + Say, do you know the reprobate? + Know you Remorse, whose venomed darts + Make souls the targets for their hate? + Witch, do you know accursèd hearts? + + The Might-have-been with tooth accursed + Gnaws at the piteous souls of men, + The deep foundations suffer first, + And all the structure crumbles then + Beneath the bitter tooth accursed. + + + II. + + Often, when seated at the play, + And sonorous music lights the stage, + I see the frail hand of a Fay + With magic dawn illume the rage + Of the dark sky. Oft at the play + + A being made of gauze and fire + Casts to the earth a Demon great. + And my heart, whence all hopes expire, + Is like a stage where I await, + In vain, the Fay with wings of fire! + + + + + A FORMER LIFE. + + + Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, + By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, + Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows, + Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired. + + The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies + Mingled its music, turbulent and rich, + Solemn and mystic, with the colours which + The setting sun reflected in my eyes. + + And there I lived amid voluptuous calms, + In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave, + Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave, + + Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms. + They were my slaves--the only care they had + To know what secret grief had made me sad. + + + + + DON JUAN IN HADES. + + + When Juan sought the subterranean flood. + And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore. + Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stood + With one strong, vengeful hand on either oar. + + With open robes and bodies agonised, + Lost women writhed beneath that darkling sky; + There were sounds as of victims sacrificed: + Behind him all the dark was one long cry. + + And Sganarelle, with laughter, claimed his pledge; + Don Luis, with trembling finger in the air, + Showed to the souls who wandered in the sedge + The evil son who scorned his hoary hair. + + Shivering with woe, chaste Elvira the while, + Near him untrue to all but her till now, + Seemed to beseech him for one farewell smile + Lit with the sweetness of the first soft vow. + + And clad in armour, a tall man of stone + Held firm the helm, and clove the gloomy flood; + But, staring at the vessel's track alone, + Bent on his sword the unmoved hero stood. + + + + + THE LIVING FLAME. + + + They pass before me, these Eyes full of light, + Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise; + The holy brothers pass before my sight, + And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes. + + They keep me from all sin and error grave, + They set me in the path whence Beauty came; + They are my servants, and I am their slave, + And all my soul obeys the living flame. + + Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light + As candles lighted at full noon; the sun + Dims not your flame phantastical and bright. + + You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done; + Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn, + Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim! + + + + + CORRESPONDENCES. + + + In Nature's temple living pillars rise, + And words are murmured none have understood. + And man must wander through a tangled wood + Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes. + + As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim + Mingle to one deep sound and fade away; + Vast as the night and brilliant as the day, + Colour and sound and perfume speak to him. + + Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child, + Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green; + Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild, + + Have all the expansion of things infinite: + As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin, + Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight. + + + + + THE FLASK. + + + There are some powerful odours that can pass + Out of the stoppered flagon; even glass + To them is porous. Oft when some old box + Brought from the East is opened and the locks + And hinges creak and cry; or in a press + In some deserted house, where the sharp stress + Of odours old and dusty fills the brain; + An ancient flask is brought to light again, + And forth the ghosts of long-dead odours creep. + There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep + A thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides, + Phantoms of old the folding darkness hides, + Who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold, + Rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold. + + A memory that brings languor flutters here: + The fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear + Thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit + Where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet, + Arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost + Of an old passion, long since loved and lost. + So I, when vanished from man's memory + Deep in some dark and sombre chest I lie. + An empty flagon they have cast aside, + Broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride, + Will be your shroud, beloved pestilence! + The witness of your might and virulence, + Sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup + Of life and death my heart has drunken up! + + + + + REVERSIBILITY. + + + Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? + Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite, + And the vague terrors of the fearful night + That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf? + Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? + + Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? + With hands clenched in the shade and tears of gall, + When Vengeance beats her hellish battle-call, + And makes herself the captain of our fate, + Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? + + Angel of health, did ever you know pain, + Which like an exile trails his tired footfalls + The cold length of the white infirmary walls, + With lips compressed, seeking the sun in vain? + Angel of health, did ever you know pain? + + Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? + Know you the fear of age, the torment vile + Of reading secret horror in the smile + Of eyes your eyes have loved since long ago? + Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? + + Angel of happiness, and joy, and light, + Old David would have asked for youth afresh + From the pure touch of your enchanted flesh; + I but implore your prayers to aid my plight, + Angel of happiness, and joy, and light. + + + + + THE EYES OF BEAUTY. + + + 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. + + In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er, + That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate + By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more + Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate. + + It is a ruin where the jackals rest, + And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay-- + A perfume swims about your naked breast! + + Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way! + With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared + Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared! + + + + + SONNET OF AUTUMN. + + + They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: + "Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?" + Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise + All save that antique brute-like faith of thine; + + And will not bare the secret of their shame + To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long, + Nor their black legend write for thee in flame! + Passion I hate, a spirit does me wrong. + + Let us love gently. Love, from his retreat, + Ambushed and shadowy, bends his fatal bow, + And I too well his ancient arrows know: + + Crime, horror, folly. O pale marguerite, + Thou art as I, a bright sun fallen low, + O my so white, my so cold Marguerite. + + + + + THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD. + + + O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep + In the deep heart of a black marble tomb; + When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep + Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom; + + And when the stone upon thy trembling breast, + And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace, + Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest, + And holds those feet from their adventurous race; + + Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie, + (For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend) + During long nights when sleep is far from thee, + + Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend + The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"-- + And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek. + + + + + THE GHOST. + + + Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove + I will return to thy alcove. + And glide upon the night to thee, + Treading the shadows silently. + + And I will give to thee, my own, + Kisses as icy as the moon, + And the caresses of a snake + Cold gliding in the thorny brake. + + And when returns the livid morn + Thou shalt find all my place forlorn + And chilly, till the falling night. + + Others would rule by tenderness + Over thy life and youthfulness, + But I would conquer thee by fright! + + + + + TO A MADONNA. + + (_An Ex-Voto in the Spanish taste_.) + + + Madonna, mistress. I would build for thee + An altar deep in the sad soul of me; + And in the darkest corner of my heart, + From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart, + Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine + For thee to stand erect in, Image divine! + And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crowned + Wrought of the gold of my smooth Verse, set round + With starry crystal rhymes; and I will make, + O mortal maid, a Mantle for thy sake, + And weave it of my jealousy, a gown + Heavy, barbaric, stiff, and weighted down + With my distrust, and broider round the hem + Not pearls, but all my tears in place of them. + And then thy wavering, trembling robe shall be + All the desires that rise and fall in me + From mountain-peaks to valleys of repose, + Kissing thy lovely body's white and rose. + For thy humiliated feet divine, + Of my Respect I'll make thee Slippers fine + Which, prisoning them within a gentle fold, + + Shall keep their imprint like a faithful mould. + And if my art, unwearying and discreet, + Can make no Moon of Silver for thy feet + To have for Footstool, then thy heel shall rest + Upon the snake that gnaws within my breast, + Victorious Queen of whom our hope is born! + And thou shalt trample down and make a scorn + Of the vile reptile swollen up with hate. + And thou shalt see my thoughts, all consecrate, + Like candles set before thy flower-strewn shrine, + O Queen of Virgins, and the taper-shine + Shall glimmer star-like in the vault of blue, + With eyes of flame for ever watching you. + While all the love and worship in my sense + Will be sweet smoke of myrrh and frankincense. + Ceaselessly up to thee, white peak of snow, + My stormy spirit will in vapours go! + + And last, to make thy drama all complete, + That love and cruelty may mix and meet, + I, thy remorseful torturer, will take + All the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them make + In darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen, + And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen, + That spot profound whence love and mercy start, + I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart! + + + + + THE SKY. + + + Where'er he be, on water or on land, + Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold; + One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band, + Shadowy beggar or CrÅ“sus rich with gold; + + Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er + His little brain may be, alive or dead; + Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere, + And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead. + + The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall; + The lighted ceiling of a music-hall + Where every actor treads a bloody soil-- + + The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot; + The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot + Where the vast human generations boil! + + + + + SPLEEN. + + + I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins + Flows aged blood; who rules a land of rains; + Who, young in years, is old in all distress; + Who flees good counsel to find weariness + Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred + Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird; + Whose weary face emotion moves no more + E'en when his people die before his door. + His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile + Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile; + The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good, + Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood + No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom + Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb. + The sage who takes his gold essays in vain + To purge away the old corrupted strain, + His baths of blood, that in the days of old + The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold, + Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains, + For green Lethean water fills his veins. + + + + + THE OWLS. + + + Under the overhanging yews, + The dark owls sit in solemn state. + Like stranger gods; by twos and twos + Their red eyes gleam. They meditate. + + Motionless thus they sit and dream + Until that melancholy hour + When, with the sun's last fading gleam, + The nightly shades assume their power. + + From their still attitude the wise + Will learn with terror to despise + All tumult, movement, and unrest; + + For he who follows every shade, + Carries the memory in his breast, + Of each unhappy journey made. + + + + + BIEN LOIN D'ICI. + + + Here 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. + + Dorothy's chamber undefiled. + The winds and waters sing afar + Their song of sighing strange and wild + To lull to sleep the petted child. + + From head to foot with subtle care, + Slaves have perfumed her delicate skin + With odorous oils and benzoin. + And flowers faint in a corner there. + + + + + MUSIC. + + + Music doth oft 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, + And through the cordage wail, + I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me + Beneath her sombre veil. + + I feel the tremblings of all passions known + To ships before the breeze; + Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown + + I pass the abysmal seas + That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair + Of my despair! + + + + + CONTEMPLATION. + + + Thou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still, + The eve is thine which even now drops down, + To carry peace or care to human will, + And in a misty veil enfolds the town. + + While the vile mortals of the multitude, + By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on, + Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood-- + Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone + + Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years, + In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim; + And from the water, smiling through her tears, + + Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim; + And in the east, her long shroud trailing light, + List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night. + + + + + TO A BROWN BEGGAR-MAID. + + + White maiden with the russet hair, + Whose garments, through their holes, declare + That poverty is part of you, + And beauty too. + + To me, a sorry bard and mean, + Your youthful beauty, frail and lean, + With summer freckles here and there, + Is sweet and fair. + + Your sabots tread the roads of chance, + And not one queen of old romance + Carried her velvet shoes and lace + With half your grace. + + In place of tatters far too short + Let the proud garments worn at Court + Fall down with rustling fold and pleat + About your feet; + + In place of stockings, worn and old, + Let a keen dagger all of gold + Gleam in your garter for the eyes + Of roués wise; + + Let ribbons carelessly untied + Reveal to us the radiant pride + Of your white bosom purer far + Than any star; + + Let your white arms uncovered shine. + Polished and smooth and half divine; + And let your elfish fingers chase + With riotous grace + + The purest pearls that softly glow. + The sweetest sonnets of Belleau, + Offered by gallants ere they fight + For your delight; + + And many fawning rhymers who + Inscribe their first thin book to you + Will contemplate upon the stair + Your slipper fair; + + And many a page who plays at cards, + And many lords and many bards, + Will watch your going forth, and burn + For your return; + + And you will count before your glass + More kisses than the lily has; + And more than one Valois will sigh + When you pass by. + + But meanwhile you are on the tramp, + Begging your living in the damp, + Wandering mean streets and alleys o'er, + From door to door; + + And shilling bangles in a shop + Cause you with eager eyes to stop, + And I, alas, have not a son + To give to you. + + Then go, with no more ornament, + Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent, + Than your own fragile naked grace + And lovely face. + + + + + THE SWAN. + + + Andromache, I think of you! The stream, + The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days + Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief, + The lying Simoïs flooded by your tears, + Made all my fertile memory blossom forth + As I passed by the new-built Carrousel. + Old Paris is no more (a town, alas, + Changes more quickly than man's heart may change); + Yet in my mind I still can see the booths; + The heaps of brick and rough-hewn capitals; + The grass; the stones all over-green with moss; + The _débris_, and t&e square-set heaps of tiles. + + There a menagerie was once outspread; + And there I saw, one morning at the hour + When toil awakes beneath the cold, clear sky, + And the road roars upon the silent air, + A swan who had escaped his cage, and walked + On the dry pavement with his webby feet, + And trailed his spotless plumage on the ground. + + And near a waterless stream the piteous swan + Opened his beak, and bathing in the dust + His nervous wings, he cried (his heart the while + Filled with a vision of his own fair lake): + "O water, when then wilt thou come in rain? + Lightning, when wilt thou glitter?" + + Sometimes yet + I see the hapless bird--strange, fatal myth-- + Like him that Ovid writes of, lifting up + Unto the cruelly blue, ironic heavens, + With stretched, convulsive neck a thirsty face, + As though he sent reproaches up to God! + + + II. + + Paris may change; my melancholy is fixed. + New palaces, and scaffoldings, and blocks, + And suburbs old, are symbols all to me + Whose memories are as heavy as a stone. + And so, before the Louvre, to vex my soul, + The image came of my majestic swan + With his mad gestures, foolish and sublime, + As of an exile whom one great desire + Gnaws with no truce. And then I thought of you, + Andromache! torn from your hero's arms; + Beneath the hand of Pyrrhus in his pride; + + Bent o'er an empty tomb in ecstasy; + Widow of Hector--wife of Helenus! + And of the negress, wan and phthisical, + Tramping the mud, and with her haggard eyes + Seeking beyond the mighty walls of fog + The absent palm-trees of proud Africa; + Of all who lose that which they never find; + Of all who drink of tears; all whom grey grief + Gives suck to as the kindly wolf gave suck; + Of meagre orphans who like blossoms fade. + And one old Memory like a crying horn + Sounds through the forest where my soul is lost.... + I think of sailors on some isle forgotten; + Of captives; vanquished ... and of many more. + + + + + THE SEVEN OLD MEN. + + + O swarming city, city full of dreams, + Where in full day the spectre walks and speaks; + Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins + My story flows as flows the rising sap. + + One morn, disputing with my tired soul, + And like a hero stiffening all my nerves, + I trod a suburb shaken by the jar + Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified + The houses either side of that sad street, + So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood + Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist, + Unclean and yellow, inundated space-- + A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul. + Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags + Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks + Should have brought alms in floods upon his head, + Without the misery gleaming in his eye, + Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed + To have been washed with gall; the bitter frost + Sharpened his glance; and from his chin a beard + Sword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth. + He was not bent but broken: his backbone + Made a so true right angle with his legs, + That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gave + The finish to the picture, made him seem + Like some infirm and stumbling quadruped + Or a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mud + He walked with troubled and uncertain gait, + As though his sabots trod upon the dead, + Indifferent and hostile to the world. + + His double followed him: tatters and stick + And back and eye and beard, all were the same; + Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable, + These centenarian twins, these spectres odd, + Trod the same pace toward some end unknown. + To what fell complot was I then exposed! + Humiliated by what evil chance? + For as the minutes one by one went by + Seven times I saw this sinister old man + Repeat his image there before my eyes! + + Let him who smiles at my inquietude, + Who never trembled at a fear like mine, + Know that in their decrepitude's despite + These seven old hideous monsters had the mien + Of beings immortal. + Then, I thought, must I, + Undying, contemplate the awful eighth; + Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double; + Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself + And his own son! In terror then I turned + My back upon the infernal band, and fled + To my own place, and closed my door; distraught + And like a drunkard who sees all things twice, + With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick, + Wounded by mystery and absurdity! + + In vain my reason tried to cross the bar, + The whirling storm but drove her back again; + And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck, + Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea. + + + + + THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN. + + + Deep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns, + Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns, + I watch, obedient to my fatal mood, + For the decrepit, strange and charming beings, + The dislocated monsters that of old + Were lovely women--Laïs or Eponine! + Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be, + Let us still love them, for they still have souls. + They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags, + Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind, + They tremble when an omnibus rolls by, + And at their sides, a relic of the past, + A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs. + They trot about, most like to marionettes; + They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast; + Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bell + Where hangs and swings a demon without pity. + Though they be broken they have piercing eyes, + That shine like pools where water sleeps at night; + The astonished and divine eyes of a child + Who laughs at all that glitters in the world. + + Have you not seen that most old women's shrouds + Are little like the shroud of a dead child? + Wise Death, in token of his happy whim, + Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet. + And when I see a phantom, frail and wan, + Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris, + It ever seems as though the delicate thing + Trod with soft steps towards a cradle new. + And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form, + How many times must workmen change the shape + Of boxes where at length such limbs are laid? + These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears; + Crucibles where the cooling metal pales-- + Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to him + Whose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster. + + + II. + + The love-sick vestal of the old "Frasciti"; + Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose name + Only the prompter knows and he is dead; + Bygone celebrities that in bygone days + The Tivoli o'ershadowed in their bloom; + All charm me; yet among these beings frail + Three, turning pain to honey-sweetness, said + To the Devotion that had lent them wings: + "Lift me, O powerful Hippogriffe, to the skies"-- + One by her country to despair was driven; + One by her husband overwhelmed with grief; + One wounded by her child, Madonna-like; + Each could have made a river with her tears. + + + III. + + Oft have I followed one of these old women, + One among others, when the falling sun + Reddened the heavens with a crimson wound-- + Pensive, apart, she rested on a bench + To hear the brazen music of the band, + Played by the soldiers in the public park + To pour some courage into citizens' hearts, + On golden eves when all the world revives. + Proud and erect she drank the music in, + The lively and the warlike call to arms; + Her eyes blinked like an ancient eagle's eyes; + Her forehead seemed to await the laurel crown! + + + IV. + + Thus you do wander, uncomplaining Stoics, + Through all the chaos of the living town: + Mothers with bleeding hearts, saints, courtesans, + Whose names of yore were on the lips of all; + Who were all glory and all grace, and now + None know you; and the brutish drunkard stops, + Insulting you with his derisive love; + And cowardly urchins call behind your back. + Ashamed of living, withered shadows all, + With fear-bowed backs you creep beside the walls, + And none salute you, destined to loneliness! + Refuse of Time ripe for Eternity! + But I, who watch you tenderly afar, + With unquiet eyes on your uncertain steps, + As though I were your father, I--O wonder!-- + Unknown to you taste secret, hidden joy. + I see your maiden passions bud and bloom, + Sombre or luminous, and your lost days + Unroll before me while my heart enjoys + All your old vices, and my soul expands + To all the virtues that have once been yours. + Ruined! and my sisters! O congenerate hearts, + Octogenarian Eves o'er whom is stretched + God's awful claw, where will you be to-morrow? + + + + + A MADRIGAL OF SORROW. + + + What do I care though you be wise? + Be sad, be beautiful; your tears + But add one more charm to your eyes, + As streams to valleys where they rise; + And fairer every flower appears + + After the storm. I love you most + When joy has fled your brow downcast; + When your heart is in horror lost, + And o'er your present like a ghost + Floats the dark shadow of the past. + + I love you when the teardrop flows, + Hotter than blood, from your large eye; + When I would hush you to repose + Your heavy pain breaks forth and grows + Into a loud and tortured cry. + + And then, voluptuousness divine! + Delicious ritual and profound! + I drink in every sob like wine, + And dream that in your deep heart shine + The pearls wherein your eyes were drowned. + + I know your heart, which overflows + With outworn loves long cast aside, + Still like a furnace flames and glows, + And you within your breast enclose + A damnèd soul's unbending pride; + + But till your dreams without release + Reflect the leaping flames of hell; + Till in a nightmare without cease + You dream of poison to bring peace, + And love cold steel and powder well; + + And tremble at each opened door, + And feel for every man distrust, + And shudder at the striking hour-- + Till then you have not felt the power + Of Irresistible Disgust. + + My queen, my slave, whose love is fear, + When you awaken shuddering, + Until that awful hour be here, + You cannot say at midnight drear: + "I am your equal, O my King!" + + + + + THE IDEAL. + + + Not all the beauties in old prints vignetted, + The worthless products of an outworn age, + With slippered feet and fingers castanetted, + The thirst of hearts like this heart can assuage. + + To Gavarni, the poet of chloroses, + I leave his troupes of beauties sick and wan; + I cannot find among these pale, pale roses, + The red ideal mine eyes would gaze upon. + + Lady Macbeth, the lovely star of crime, + The Greek poet's dream born in a northern clime-- + Ah, she could quench my dark heart's deep desiring; + + Or Michelangelo's dark daughter Night, + In a strange posture dreamily admiring + Her beauty fashioned for a giant's delight! + + + + + MIST AND RAIN. + + + Autumns and winters, springs of mire and rain, + Seasons of sleep, I sing your praises loud, + For thus I love to wrap my heart and brain + In some dim tomb beneath a vapoury shroud + + In the wide plain where revels the cold wind, + Through long nights when the weathercock whirls round, + More free than in warm summer day my mind + Lifts wide her raven pinions from the ground. + + Unto a heart filled with funereal things + That since old days hoar frosts have gathered on, + Naught is more sweet, O pallid, queenly springs, + + Than the long pageant of your shadows wan, + Unless it be on moonless eves to weep + On some chance bed and rock our griefs to sleep. + + + + + SUNSET. + + + Fair is the sun when first he flames above, + Flinging his joy down in a happy beam; + And happy he who can salute with love + The sunset far more glorious than a dream. + + Flower, stream, and furrow!--I have seen them all + In the sun's eye swoon like one trembling heart-- + Though it be late let us with speed depart + To catch at least one last ray ere it fall! + + But I pursue the fading god in vain, + For conquering Night makes firm her dark domain, + Mist and gloom fall, and terrors glide between, + + And graveyard odours in the shadow swim, + And my faint footsteps on the marsh's rim, + Bruise the cold snail and crawling toad unseen. + + + + + THE CORPSE. + + + Remember, my Beloved, what thing we met + By the roadside on that sweet summer day; + There on a grassy couch with pebbles set, + A loathsome body lay. + + The wanton limbs stiff-stretched into the air, + Steaming with exhalations vile and dank, + In ruthless cynic fashion had laid bare + The swollen side and flank. + + On this decay the sun shone hot from heaven + As though with chemic heat to broil and burn, + And unto Nature all that she had given + A hundredfold return. + + The sky smiled down upon the horror there + As on a flower that opens to the day; + So awful an infection smote the air, + Almost you swooned away. + + The swarming flies hummed on the putrid side, + Whence poured the maggots in a darkling stream, + That ran along these tatters of life's pride + With a liquescent gleam. + + And like a wave the maggots rose and fell, + The murmuring flies swirled round in busy strife: + It seemed as though a vague breath came to swell + And multiply with life + + The hideous corpse. From all this living world + A music as of wind and water ran, + Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirled + By the swift winnower's fan. + + And then the vague forms like a dream died out, + Or like some distant scene that slowly falls + Upon the artist's canvas, that with doubt + He only half recalls. + + A homeless dog behind the boulders lay + And watched us both with angry eyes forlorn, + Waiting a chance to come and take away + The morsel she had torn. + + And you, even you, will be like this drear thing, + A vile infection man may not endure; + Star that I yearn to! Sun that lights my spring! + O passionate and pure! + + Yes, such will you be, Queen of every grace! + When the last sacramental words are said; + And beneath grass and flowers that lovely face + Moulders among the dead. + + Then, O Beloved, whisper to the worm + That crawls up to devour you with a kiss, + That I still guard in memory the dear form + Of love that comes to this! + + + + + AN ALLEGORY. + + + Here is a woman, richly clad and fair, + Who in her wine dips her long, heavy hair; + Love's claws, and that sharp poison which is sin, + Are dulled against the granite of her skin. + Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon, + For their sharp scythe-like talons every one + Pass by her in their all-destructive play; + Leaving her beauty till a later day. + Goddess she walks; sultana in her leisure; + She has Mohammed's faith that heaven is pleasure, + And bids all men forget the world's alarms + Upon her breast, between her open arms. + She knows, and she believes, this sterile maid, + Without whom the world's onward dream would fade, + That bodily beauty is the supreme gift + Which may from every sin the terror lift. + Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies; + And when black Night shall roll before her eyes, + She will look straight in Death's grim face forlorn, + Without remorse or hate--as one new born. + + + + + THE ACCURSED. + + + Like pensive herds at rest upon the sands, + These to the sea-horizons turn their eyes; + Out of their folded feet and clinging hands + Bitter sharp tremblings and soft languors rise. + + Some tread the thicket by the babbling stream, + Their hearts with untold secrets ill at ease; + Calling the lover of their childhood's dream, + They wound the green bark of the shooting trees. + + Others like sisters wander, grave and slow, + Among the rocks haunted by spectres thin, + Where Antony saw as larvæ surge and flow + The veined bare breasts that tempted him to sin. + + Some, when the resinous torch of burning wood + Flares in lost pagan caverns dark and deep, + Call thee to quench the fever in their blood, + Bacchus, who singest old remorse to sleep! + + Then there are those the scapular bedights, + Whose long white vestments hide the whip's red stain, + Who mix, in sombre woods on lonely nights, + The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain. + + O virgins, demons, monsters, martyrs! ye + Who scorn whatever actual appears; + Saints, satyrs, seekers of Infinity, + So full of cries, so full of bitter tears; + + Te whom my soul has followed into hell, + I love and pity, O sad sisters mine, + Tour thirsts unquenched, your pains no tongue can tell, + And your great hearts, those urns of love divine! + + + + + LA BEATRICE. + + + In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew, + I to the winds my cries of anguish threw; + And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart, + Pricked gently with the poignard o'er my heart. + Then in full noon above my head a cloud + Descended tempest-swollen, and a crowd + Of wild, lascivious spirits huddled there, + The cruel and curious demons of the air, + Who coldly to consider me began; + Then, as a crowd jeers some unhappy man, + Exchanging gestures, winking with their eyes-- + I heard a laughing and a whispering rise: + + "Let us at leisure contemplate this clown, + This shadow of Hamlet aping Hamlet's frown, + With wandering eyes and hair upon the wind. + Is't not a pity that this empty mind, + This tramp, this actor out of work, this droll, + Because he knows how to assume a rôle + Should dream that eagles and insects, streams and woods, + Stand still to hear him chaunt his dolorous moods? + + Even unto us, who made these ancient things, + The fool his public lamentation sings." + + With pride as lofty as the towering cloud, + I would have stilled these clamouring demons loud, + And turned in scorn my sovereign head away + Had I not seen--O sight to dim the day!-- + There in the middle of the troupe obscene + The proud and peerless beauty of my Queen! + She laughed with them at all my dark distress, + And gave to each in turn a vile caress. + + + + + THE SOUL OF WINE. + + + One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine: + "Man, unto thee, dear disinherited, + I sing a song of love and light divine-- + Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red. + + "I know thou labourest on the hill of fire, + In sweat and pain beneath a flaming sun, + To give the life and soul my vines desire, + And I am grateful for thy labours done. + + "For I find joys unnumbered when I lave + The throat of man by travail long outworn, + And his hot bosom is a sweeter grave + Of sounder sleep than my cold caves forlorn. + + "Hearest thou not the echoing Sabbath sound? + The hope that whispers in my trembling breast? + Thy elbows on the table! gaze around; + Glorify me with joy and be at rest. + + "To thy wife's eyes I'll bring their long-lost gleam, + I'll bring back to thy child his strength and light, + To him, life's fragile athlete I will seem + Rare oil that firms his muscles for the fight. + + "I flow in man's heart as ambrosia flows; + The grain the eternal Sower casts in the sod-- + From our first loves the first fair verse arose, + Flower-like aspiring to the heavens and God!" + + + + + THE WINE OF LOVERS. + + + Space rolls to-day her splendour round! + Unbridled, spurless, without bound, + Mount we upon the wings of wine + For skies fantastic and divine! + + Let us, like angels tortured by + Some wild delirious phantasy, + Follow the far-off mirage born + In the blue crystal of the morn. + + And gently balanced on the wing + Of the wild whirlwind we will ride, + Rejoicing with the joyous thing. + + My sister, floating side by side, + Fly we unceasing whither gleams + The distant heaven of my dreams. + + + + + THE DEATH OF LOVERS. + + + There shall be couches whence faint odours rise, + Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound; + Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies + The death-bed of our love shall breathe around. + + And guarding their last embers till the end, + Our hearts shall be the torches of the shrine, + And their two leaping flames shall fade and blend + In the twin mirrors of your soul and mine. + + And through the eve of rose and mystic blue + A beam of love shall pass from me to you, + Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell; + + And later still an angel, flinging wide + The gates, shall bring to life with joyful spell + The tarnished mirrors and the flames that died. + + + + + THE DEATH OF THE POOR. + + + Death is consoler and Death brings to life; + The end of all, the solitary hope; + We, drunk with Death's elixir, face the strife, + Take heart, and mount till eve the weary slope. + + Across the storm, the hoar-frost, and the snow, + Death on our dark horizon pulses clear; + Death is the famous hostel we all know, + Where we may rest and sleep and have good cheer. + + Death is an angel whose magnetic palms + Bring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calms + To smooth the beds of naked men and poor. + + Death is the mystic granary of God; + The poor man's purse; his fatherland of yore; + The Gate that opens into heavens un trod! + + + + + THE BENEDICTION. + + + When by the high decree of powers supreme, + The Poet came into this world outworn, + She who had borne him, in a ghastly dream, + Clenched blasphemous hands at God, and cried in scorn: + + "O rather had I borne a writhing knot + Of unclean vipers, than my breast should nurse + This vile derision, of my joy begot + To be my expiation and my curse! + + "Since of all women thou hast made of me + Unto my husband a disgust and shame; + Since I may not cast this monstrosity, + Like an old love-epistle, to the flame; + + "I will pour out thine overwhelming hate + On this the accursed weapon of thy spite; + This stunted tree I will so desecrate + That not one tainted bud shall see the light!" + + So foaming with the foam of hate and shame, + Blind unto God's design inexorable, + With her own hands she fed the purging flame + To crimes maternal consecrate in hell. + + Meanwhile beneath an Angel's care unseen + The child disowned grows drunken with the sun; + His food and drink, though they be poor and mean, + With streams of nectar and ambrosia run. + + Speaking to clouds and playing with the wind, + With joy he sings the sad Way of the Rood; + His shadowing pilgrim spirit weeps behind + To see him gay as birds are in the wood. + + Those he would love looked sideways and with fear, + Or, taking courage from his aspect mild, + Sought who should first bring to his eye the tear, + And spent their anger on the dreaming child. + + With all the bread and wine the Poet must eat + They mingled earth and ash and excrement, + All things he touched were spurned beneath their feet; + They mourned if they must tread the road he went. + + His wife ran crying in the public square: + "Since he has found me worthy to adore, + Shall I not be as antique idols were, + With gold and with bright colours painted o'er? + + "I will be drunk with nard and frankincense. + With myrrh, and knees bowed down, and flesh and wine. + Can I not, smiling, in his love-sick sense, + Usurp the homage due to beings divine? + + "I will lay on him my fierce, fragile hand + When I am weary of the impious play; + For well these harpy talons understand + To furrow to his heart their crimson way. + + "I'll tear the red thing beating from his breast, + To cast it with disdain upon the ground, + Like a young bird torn trembling from the nest-- + His heart shall go to gorge my favourite hound." + + To the far heaven, where gleams a splendid throne, + The Poet uplifts his arms in calm delight, + And the vast beams from his pure spirit flown, + Wrap all the furious peoples from his sight: + + "Thou, O my God, be blest who givest pain, + The balm divine for each imperfect heart, + The strong pure essence cleansing every stain + Of sin that keeps us from thy joys apart. + + "Among the numbers of thy legions blest, + I know a place awaits the poet there; + Him thou hast bid attend the eternal feast + That Thrones and Virtues and Dominions share. + + "I know the one thing noble is a grief + Withstanding earth's and hell's destructive tooth, + And I, through all my dolorous life and brief, + To gain the mystic crown, must cry the truth. + + "The jewels lost in Palmyra of old, + Metals unknown, pearls of the outer sea, + Are far too dim to set within the gold + Of the bright crown that Time prepares for me. + + "For it is wrought of pure unmingled light, + Dipped in the white flame whence all flame is born-- + The flame that makes all eyes, though diamond-bright, + Seem obscure mirrors, darkened and forlorn." + + + + + GYPSIES TRAVELLING. + + + The tribe prophetic with the eyes of fire + Went forth last night; their little ones at rest + Each on his mother's back, with his desire + Set on the ready treasure of her breast. + + Laden with shining arms the men-folk tread + By the long wagons where their goods lie hidden; + They watch the heaven with eyes grown wearied + Of hopeless dreams that come to them unbidden. + + The grasshopper, from out his sandy screen, + Watching them pass redoubles his shrill song; + Dian, who loves them, makes the grass more green, + + And makes the rock run water for this throng + Of ever-wandering ones whose calm eyes see + Familiar realms of darkness yet to be. + + + + + FRANCISCÆ MEÆ LAUDES. + + + Novis te cantabo chordis, + O novelletum quod ludia + In solitudine cordis. + + Esto sertis implicata, + O fÅ“mina delicata + Per quam solvuntur peccata + + Sicut beneficum Lethe, + Hauriam oscula de te, + Quæ imbuta es magnete. + + Quum vitiorum tempestas + Turbabat omnes semitas, + Apparuisti, Deitas, + + Velut stella salutaris + In naufragiis amaris.... + Suspendam cor tuis aris! + + Piscina plena virtutis, + Fons æternæ juventutis, + Labris vocem redde mutis! + + Quod erat spurcum, cremasti; + Quod rudius, exæquasti; + Quod debile, confirmasti! + + In fame mea taberna, + In nocte mea lucerna, + Recte me semper guberna. + + Adde nunc vires viribus, + Dulce balneum suavibus, + Unguentatum odoribus! + + Meos circa I umbos mica, + O castitatis lorica, + Aqua tincta seraphica; + + Patera gemmis corusca, + Panis salsus, mollis esca, + Divinum vinum, Francisca! + + + + + ROBED IN A SILKEN ROBE. + + + Robed in a silken robe that shines and shakes, + She seems to dance whene'er she treads the sod, + Like the long serpent that a fakir makes + Dance to the waving cadence of a rod. + + As the sad sand upon the desert's verge, + Insensible to mortal grief and strife; + As the long weeds that float among the surge, + She folds indifference round her budding life. + + Her eyes are carved of minerals pure and cold, + And in her strange symbolic nature where + An angel mingles with the sphinx of old, + + Where all is gold and steel and light and air, + For ever, like a vain star, unafraid + Shines the cold hauteur of the sterile maid. + + + + + A LANDSCAPE. + + + I would, when I compose my solemn verse, + Sleep near the heaven as do astrologers, + Near the high bells, and with a dreaming mind + Hear their calm hymns blown to me on the wind. + + Out of my tower, with chin upon my hands, + I'll watch the singing, babbling human bands; + And see clock-towers like spars against the sky, + And heavens that bring thoughts of eternity; + + And softly, through the mist, will watch the birth + Of stars in heaven and lamplight on the earth; + The threads of smoke that rise above the town; + The moon that pours her pale enchantment down. + + Seasons will pass till Autumn fades the rose; + And when comes Winter with his weary snows, + I'll shut the doors and window-casements tight, + And build my faery palace in the night. + + Then I will dream of blue horizons deep; + Of gardens where the marble fountains weep; + Of kisses, and of ever-singing birds-- + A sinless Idyll built of innocent words. + + And Trouble, knocking at my window-pane + And at my closet door, shall knock in vain; + I will not heed him with his stealthy tread, + Nor from my reverie uplift my head; + + For I will plunge deep in the pleasure still + Of summoning the spring-time with my will, + Drawing the sun out of my heart, and there + With burning thoughts making a summer air. + + + + + THE VOYAGE. + + + The world is equal to the child's desire + Who plays with pictures by his nursery fire-- + How vast the world by lamplight seems! How small + When memory's eyes look back, remembering all!-- + + One morning we set forth with thoughts aflame, + Or heart o'erladen with desire or shame; + And cradle, to the song of surge and breeze, + Our own infinity on the finite seas. + + Some flee the memory of their childhood's home; + And others flee their fatherland; and some, + Star-gazers drowned within a woman's eyes, + Flee from the tyrant Circe's witcheries; + + And, lest they still be changed to beasts, take flight + For the embrasured heavens, and space, and light, + Till one by one the stains her kisses made + In biting cold and burning sunlight fade. + + But the true voyagers are they who part + From all they love because a wandering heart + Drives them to fly the Fate they cannot fly; + Whose call is ever "On!"--they know not why. + + Their thoughts are like the clouds that veil a star; + They dream of change as warriors dream of war; + And strange wild wishes never twice the same: + Desires no mortal man can give a name. + + + II. + + We are like whirling tops and rolling balls-- + For even when the sleepy night-time falls, + Old Curiosity still thrusts us on, + Like the cruel Angel who goads forth the sun. + + The end of fate fades ever through the air, + And, being nowhere, may be anywhere + Where a man runs, hope waking in his breast, + For ever like a madman, seeking rest. + + Our souls are wandering ships outwearied; + And one upon the bridge asks: "What's ahead?" + The topman's voice with an exultant sound + Cries: "Love and Glory!"--then we run aground. + + Each isle the pilot signals when 'tis late, + Is El Dorado, promised us by fate-- + Imagination, spite of her belief, + Finds, in the light of dawn, a barren reef. + + Oh the poor seeker after lands that flee! + Shall we not bind and cast into the sea + This drunken sailor whose ecstatic mood + Makes bitterer still the water's weary flood? + + Such is an old tramp wandering in the mire, + Dreaming the paradise of his own desire, + Discovering cities of enchanted sleep + Where'er the light shines on a rubbish heap. + + + III. + + Strange voyagers, what tales of noble deeds + Deep in your dim sea-weary eyes one reads! + Open the casket where your memories are, + And show each jewel, fashioned from a star; + + For I would travel without sail or wind, + And so, to lift the sorrow from my mind, + Let your long memories of sea-days far fled + Pass o'er my spirit like a sail outspread. + + What have you seen? + + + IV. + + "We have seen waves and stars, + And lost sea-beaches, and known many wars, + And notwithstanding war and hope and fear, + We were as weary there as we are here. + + "The lights that on the violet sea poured down, + The suns that set behind some far-off town, + Lit in our hearts the unquiet wish to fly + Deep in the glimmering distance of the sky; + + "The loveliest countries that rich cities bless, + Never contained the strange wild loveliness + By fate and chance shaped from the floating cloud-- + And we were always sorrowful and proud! + + "Desire from joy gains strength in weightier measure. + Desire, old tree who draw'st thy sap from pleasure, + Though thy bark thickens as the years pass by, + Thine arduous branches rise towards the sky; + + "And wilt thou still grow taller, tree more fair + Than the tall cypress? + + --Thus have we, with care, + Gathered some flowers to please your eager mood, + Brothers who dream that distant things are good! + + "We have seen many a jewel-glimmering throne; + And bowed to Idols when wild horns were blown + In palaces whose faery pomp and gleam + To your rich men would be a ruinous dream; + + "And robes that were a madness to the eyes; + Women whose teeth and nails were stained with dyes; + Wise jugglers round whose neck the serpent winds--" + + + V. + + And then, and then what more? + + + VI. + + "O childish minds! + + "Forget not that which we found everywhere, + From top to bottom of the fatal stair, + Above, beneath, around us and within, + The weary pageant of immortal sin. + + "We have seen woman, stupid slave and proud, + Before her own frail, foolish beauty bowed; + And man, a greedy, cruel, lascivious fool, + Slave of the slave, a ripple in a pool; + + "The martyrs groan, the headsman's merry mood; + And banquets seasoned and perfumed with blood; + Poison, that gives the tyrant's power the slip; + And nations amorous of the brutal whip; + + "Many religions not unlike our own, + All in full flight for heaven's resplendent throne; + And Sanctity, seeking delight in pain, + Like a sick man of his own sickness vain; + + "And mad mortality, drunk with its own power, + As foolish now as in a bygone hour, + Shouting, in presence of the tortured Christ: + 'I curse thee, mine own Image sacrificed.' + + "And silly monks in love with Lunacy, + Fleeing the troops herded by destiny, + Who seek for peace in opiate slumber furled-- + Such is the pageant of the rolling world!" + + + VII. + + O bitter knowledge that the wanderers gain! + The world says our own age is little and vain; + For ever, yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, + 'Tis horror's oasis in the sands of sorrow. + + Must we depart? If you can rest, remain; + Part, if you must. Some fly, some cower in vain, + Hoping that Time, the grim and eager foe, + Will pass them by; and some run to and fro + + Like the Apostles or the Wandering Jew; + Go where they will, the Slayer goes there too! + And there are some, and these are of the wise, + Who die as soon as birth has lit their eyes. + + But when at length the Slayer treads us low, + We will have hope and cry, "'Tis time to go!" + As when of old we parted for Cathay + With wind-blown hair and eyes upon the bay. + + We will embark upon the Shadowy Sea, + Like youthful wanderers for the first time free-- + Hear you the lovely and funereal voice + That sings: _O come all ye whose wandering joys_ + _Are set upon the scented Lotus flower_, + _For here we sell the fruit's miraculous boon_; + _Come ye and drink the sweet and sleepy power_ + _Of the enchanted, endless afternoon_. + + + VIII. + + O Death, old Captain, it is time, put forth! + We have grown weary of the gloomy north; + Though sea and sky are black as ink, lift sail! + Our hearts are full of light and will not fail. + + O pour thy sleepy poison in the cup! + The fire within the heart so burns us up + That we would wander Hell and Heaven through, + Deep in the Unknown seeking something _new_! + + * * * * * + + + + +LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE + + + + +THE STRANGER. + + +Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, +your sister, or your brother? + +"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother." + +Your friends, then? + +"You use a word that until now has had no meaning for me." + +Your country? + +"I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated." + +Then Beauty? + +"Her I would love willingly, goddess and immortal." + +Gold? + +"I hate it as you hate your God." + +What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love? + +"I love the clouds--the clouds that pass--yonder--the marvellous +clouds." + + + + +EVERY MAN HIS CHIMÆRA. + + +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. + +Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimæra as heavy as a sack of +flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier. + +But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and +oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with +her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head +reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by +which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy. + +I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied +that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they +went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to +walk. + +Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the +ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had +said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary +faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the +heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as +the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned +to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere +of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the +curiosity of the human eye. + +During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this +mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor +was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing +Chimæras. + + + + +VENUS AND THE FOOL. + + +How admirable the day! The vast park swoons beneath the burning eye of +the sun, as youth beneath the lordship of love. + +There is no rumour of the universal ecstasy of all things. The waters +themselves are as though drifting into sleep. Very different from the +festivals of humanity, here is a silent revel. + +It seems as though an ever-waning light makes all objects glimmer more +and more, as though the excited flowers burn with a desire to rival the +blue of the sky by the vividness of their colours; as though the heat, +making perfumes visible, drives them in vapour towards their star. + +Yet, in the midst of this universal joy, I have perceived one afflicted +thing. + +At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those motley fools, those +willing clowns whose business it is to bring laughter upon kings when +weariness or remorse possesses them, lies wrapped in his gaudy and +ridiculous garments, coined with his cap and bells, huddled against the +pedestal, and raises towards the goddess his eyes filled with tears. + +And his eyes say: "I am the last and most alone of all mortals, inferior +to the meanest of animals in that I am denied either love or friendship. +Yet I am made, even I, for the understanding and enjoyment of immortal +Beauty. O Goddess, have pity upon my sadness and my frenzy." + +The implacable Venus gazed into I know not what distances with her +marble eyes. + + + + +INTOXICATION. + + +One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. +If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your +shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. +But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But +be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green +grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should +waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, +of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that +flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that +speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and +timepiece will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be +the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without +cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will." + + + + +THE GIFTS OF THE MOON. + + +The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in +your cradle, and said to herself: "I am well pleased with this child." + +And she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the +window-pane without noise. She bent over you with the supple tenderness +of a mother and laid her colours upon your face. Therefrom your eyes +have remained green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. From +contemplation of your visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she +so tenderly wounded you upon the breast that you have ever kept a +certain readiness to tears. + +In the amplitude of her joy, the Moon filled all your chamber as with a +phosphorescent air, a luminous poison; and all this living radiance +thought and said: "You shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. +You shall love all that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, +and night; the vast green sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; +the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous +flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves +swooning upon the piano and lament with the sweet, hoarse voices of +women. + +"And you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. You +shall be the Queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also I have +wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green +ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where +they are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem +to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the +will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images of their own folly." + +And that is why I am couched at your feet, O spoiled child, beloved and +accursed, seeking in all your being the reflection of that august +divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all +_lunatics_. + + + + +THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE. + + +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 patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate +vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy. + +A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and +honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is +opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the +unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where +even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all +things, my beloved, are like you. + +Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold +miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguish of curiosity? +It is a land which resembles you, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil +and honest, where phantasy has built and decorated an occidental China, +where life is sweet to breathe, and happiness married to silence. It is +there that one would live; there that one would die. + +Yes, it is there that one must go to breathe, to dream, and to lengthen +one's hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written the +"Invitation to the Waltz"; where is he who will write the "Invitation to +the Voyage," that one may offer it to his beloved, to the sister of his +election? + +Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live,--yonder, +where slower hours contain more thoughts, where the clocks strike the +hours of happiness with a more profound and significant solemnity. + +Upon the shining panels, or upon skins gilded with a sombre opulence, +beatified paintings have a discreet life, as calm and profound as the +souls of the artists who created them. + +The setting suns that colour the rooms and salons with so rich a light, +shine through veils of rich tapestry, or through high leaden-worked +windows of many compartments. The furniture is massive, curious, and +bizarre, armed with locks and secrets, like profound and refined souls. +The mirrors, the metals, the ail ver work and the china, play a mute and +mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from the corners, +from the chinks in the drawers, from the folds of drapery, a singular +perfume escapes, a Sumatran _revenez-y_, which is like the soul of the +apartment. + +A true country of Cockaigne, I have said; where all is rich, correct and +shining, like a beautiful conscience, or a splendid set of silver, or a +medley of jewels. The treasures of the world flow there, as in the house +of a laborious man who has well merited the entire world. A singular +land, as superior to others as Art is superior to Nature; where Nature +is made over again by dream; where she is corrected, embellished, +refashioned. + +Let them seek and seek again, let them extend the limits of their +happiness for ever, these alchemists who work with flowers! Let them +offer a prize of sixty or a hundred thousand florins to whosoever can +solve their ambitious problems! As for me, I have found my _black tulip_ +and my _blue dahlia_! + +Incomparable flower, tulip found at last, symboli-cal dahlia, it is +there, is it not, in this so calm and dreamy land that you live and +blossom? Will you not there be framed in your proper analogy, and will +you not be mirrored, to speak like the mystics, in your own +_correspondence_? + +Dreams!--always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul, +the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him +his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from +birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with +positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in +and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that +resembles you? + +These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous +flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The +enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with +the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon +your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity, +reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your +lovely soul;--and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the +products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they +are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from +Infinity. + + + + +WHAT IS TRUTH? + + +I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the +ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of +glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality. + +But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died +soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon +a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I +myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as +uncorruptible as the coffers of India. + +And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I +became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the +dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and +hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true +Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly +and blindness you shall love me as I truly am." + +But I, furious, replied: "No!" The better to emphasise my refusal I +struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to +the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught +perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal. + + + + +ALREADY! + + +A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from +the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred +times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of +twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the +firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And +each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the +approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they +said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by +a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an +unmoving table?" + +There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their +sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the +image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass +with as much enthusiasm as the beasts. + +At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent +and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed +therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of +growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and +fruits. + +Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were +forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted +out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke. + +I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest from whom one has torn +his divinity, I could not, without heartbreaking bitterness, leave this +so monstrously seductive ocean, this sea so infinitely various in its +terrifying simplicity, which seemed to contain in itself and represent +by its joys, and attractions, and angers, and smiles, the moods and +agonies and ecstasies of all souls that have lived, that live, and that +shall yet live. + +In saying good-bye to this incomparable beauty I felt as though I had +been smitten to death; and that is why when each of my companions said: +"At last!" I could only cry "_Already!_" + +Here meanwhile was the land, the land with its noises, its passions, its +commodities, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of +promises, that sent to us a mysterious perfume of rose and musk, and +from whence the music of life flowed in an amorous murmuring. + + + + +THE DOUBLE CHAMBER. + + +A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly _spiritual_, where the +stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue. + +There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and +desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue +and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the +furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed +with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals. + +The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the +skies, the dropping suns. + +There are no artistic abominations upon the walls. Compared with the +pure dream, with an impression unanalysed, definite art, positive art, +is a blasphemy. Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious +obscurity of music. + +An infinitesimal odour of the most exquisite choice, mingled with a +floating humidity, swims in this atmosphere where the drowsing spirit is +lulled by the sensations one feels in a hothouse. + +The abundant muslin flows before the windows and the couch, and spreads +out in snowy cascades. Upon the couch lies the Idol, ruler of my dreams. +But why is she here?--who has brought her?--what magical power has +installed her upon this throne of delight and reverie? What matter--she +is there; and I recognise her. + +These indeed are the eyes whose flame pierces the twilight; the subtle +and terrible mirrors that I recognise by their horrifying malice. They +attract, they dominate, they devour the sight of whomsoever is imprudent +enough to look at them. I have often studied them; these Black Stars +that compel curiosity and admiration. + +To what benevolent demon, then, do I owe being thus surrounded with +mystery, with silence, with peace, and sweet odours? O beatitude! the +thing we name life, even in its most fortunate amplitude, has nothing in +common with this supreme life with which I am now acquainted, which I +taste minute by minute, second by second. + +Not so! Minutes are no more; seconds are no more. Time has vanished, and +Eternity reigns--an Eternity of delight. + +A heavy and terrible knocking reverberates upon the door, and, as in a +hellish dream, it seems to me as though I had received a blow from a +mattock. + +Then a Spectre enters: it is an usher who comes to torture me in the +name of the Law; an infamous concubine who comes to cry misery and to +add the trivialities of her life to the sorrow of mine; or it may be the +errand-boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder of a +manuscript. + +The chamber of paradise, the Idol, the ruler of dreams, the Sylphide, as +the great René said; all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking +of the Spectre. + +Horror; I remember, I remember! Yes, this kennel, this habitation of +eternal weariness, is indeed my own. Here is my senseless furniture, +dusty and tattered; the dirty fireplace without a flame or an ember; the +sad windows where the raindrops have traced runnels in the dust; the +manuscripts, erased or unfinished; the almanac with the sinister days +marked off with a pencil! + +And this perfume of another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a +so perfected sensitiveness; alas, its place is taken by an odour of +stale tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness. +Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation. + +In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar +object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like +all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries. + +Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the +hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories, +Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves. + +I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now; +and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable, +implacable Life!" + +There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good +news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye. + +Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me, +as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Woa, thou fool! Sweat, +then, thou slave! Live on, thou damnèd!" + + + + +AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. + + +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. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared--I +shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh +myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the +lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude +and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world. + +A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the +day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he +could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was +an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a +review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable +people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a +knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me; +and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the +precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time, +during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a +costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said: +"You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest, +foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you +will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have +boasted (why?) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and +indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy, +certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused +an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a +perfect fool. Heavens! it's well ended. + +Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I +should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the +silence and solitude. + +Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain +me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and +Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some +beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I +am not inferior to those I despise. + + + + +THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST. + + +How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough +to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose +vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen +than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns +his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the +incomparable chastity of the azure--a little sail trembling upon the +horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable +existence--the melodious monotone of the surge--all these things +thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the +reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and +picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions. + +These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external +objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within +pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too +tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations. + +And now the profundity of the sky dismays me! its limpidity exasperates +me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, +revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from +Beauty? + +Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my +desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel +where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished. + + + + +THE THYRSUS. + +TO FRANZ LISZT. + + +What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a +sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating +the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But +physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a +vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious +meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and +fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing +complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant +lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the +spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a +mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollæ, all +these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical +dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to +decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the +baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty +of the vine branches and the flowers? + +The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and +venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty. +Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over +the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles +in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm, +unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the +feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance. +Straight line and arabesque--intention and expression--the rigidity of +the will and the suppleness of the word--a variety of means united for a +single purpose--the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is +genius--what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to +separate you? + +Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the +pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your +wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City +or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles; +improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper +your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain, +philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of +immortality! + + + + +THE MARKSMAN. + + +As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the +neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a +few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most +ordinary and legitimate occupation of man?--So he gallantly offered his +hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to +whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great +part of his genius. + +Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far +into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously, +mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and +said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air, +and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, _I will +imagine to myself that it is you!_" + +He closed both eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly +decapitated. + +Then, bending towards his dear, adorable, and execrable wife, his +inevitable and pitiless muse, he kissed her respectfully upon the hand, +and added, "Ah, dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!" + + + + +THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY. + + +"Cemetery View Inn"--"A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but +it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper of this inn appreciates Horace +and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound +philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, +or some emblem of life's brevity." + +He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly +smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the +cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the +sunshine. + +The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said +the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon +the corruption beneath. + +The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life--the life of things +infinitely small--and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from +a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of +champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony. + +And then, beneath a sun which scorched the brain, and in that atmosphere +charged with the ardent perfume of death, he heard a voice whispering +out of the tomb where he sat. And this voice said: "Accursed be your +rifles and targets, you turbulent living ones, who care so little for +the dead in their divine repose! Accursed be your ambitions and +calculations, importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter near +the sanctuary of Death himself! Did you but know how easy the prize to +win, how facile the end to reach, and how all save Death is naught, not +so greatly would you fatigue yourselves, O ye laborious alive; nor would +you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago reached the End--the +only true end of life detestable!" + + + + +THE DESIRE TO PAINT. + + +Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this +desire. + +I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so +swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller +must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her. + +She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The +colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal +and profound. Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and +gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion +in the darkness. + +I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star +overthrowing light and happiness. But it is the moon that she makes one +dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with +her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a +cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the +depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet +peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from +the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly +constrain to dance upon the terrified grass. + +Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of +prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the +unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, the +smile of a large mouth; white, red, and delicious; a mouth that makes +one dream of the miracle of some superb flower unclosing in a volcanic +land. + +There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo them and win +them; but she makes one wish to die slowly beneath her steady gaze. + + + + +THE GLASS-VENDOR. + + +These 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 one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation +awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before +the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter +fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of +six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year +past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards +action, like an arrow from a bow. + +The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet +cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent +and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest +and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time +possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the +most absurd and even the most dangerous acts. + +One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one +time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether +the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His +experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only +too well. + +Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, _in order to see, to +know, to tempt Destiny_, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, +for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of +energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it +manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most +indolent and dreamy beings. + +Another so timid that he must cast down his eyes before the gaze of any +man, and summon all his poor will before he dare enter a café or pass +the pay-box of a theatre, where the ticket-seller seems, in his eyes, +invested with all the majesty of Minos, Æcus, and Rhadamanthus, will at +times throw himself upon the neck of some old man whom he sees in the +street, and embrace him with enthusiasm in sight of an astonished crowd. +Why? Because--because this countenance is irresistibly attractive to +him? Perhaps; but it is more legitimate to suppose that he himself does +not know why. + +I have been more than once a victim to these crises and outbreaks which +give us cause to believe that evil-meaning demons slip into us, to make +us the ignorant accomplices of their most absurd desires. One morning I +arose in a sullen mood, very sad, and tired of idleness, and thrust as +it seemed to me to the doing of some great thing, some brilliant +act--and then, alas, I opened the window. + +(I beg you to observe that in some people the spirit of mystification is +not the result of labour or combination, but rather of a fortuitous +inspiration which would partake, were it not for the strength of the +feeling, of the mood called hysterical by the physician and satanic by +those who think a little more profoundly than the physician; the mood +which thrusts us unresisting to a multitude of dangerous and +inconvenient acts.) + +The first person I noticed in the street was a glass-vendor whose shrill +and discordant cry mounted up to me through the heavy, dull atmosphere +of Paris. It would have been else impossible to account for the sudden +and despotic hatred of this poor man that came upon me. + +"Hello, there!" I cried, and bade him ascend. Meanwhile I reflected, not +without gaiety, that as my room was on the sixth landing, and the +stairway very narrow, the man would have some difficulty in ascending, +and in many a place would break off the corners of his fragile +merchandise. + +At length he appeared. I examined all his glasses with curiosity, and +then said to him: "What, have you no coloured glasses? Glasses of rose +and crimson and blue, magical glasses, glasses of Paradise? You are +insolent. You dare to walk in mean streets when you have no glasses that +would make one see beauty in life?" And I hurried him briskly to the +staircase, which he staggered down, grumbling. + +I went on to the balcony and caught up a little flower-pot, and when the +man appeared in the door-way beneath I let fall my engine of war +perpendicularly upon the edge of his pack, so that it was upset by the +shock and all his poor walking fortune broken to bits. It made a noise +like a palace of crystal shattered by lightning. Mad with my folly, I +cried furiously after him: "The life beautiful! the life beautiful!" + +Such nervous pleasantries are not without peril; often enough one pays +dearly for them. But what matters an eternity of damnation to him who +has found in one second an eternity of enjoyment? + + + + +THE WIDOWS. + + +Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted +principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted +glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted +souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus +betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the +well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's +cripples. + +To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their +avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there +is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the +place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions +for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn +towards all that is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft. + +An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected +lineaments; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last +fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound +wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience +deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded +effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported. + +Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor +widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. +Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; +a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is +forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who +exhibit a full complement of sorrow. + +Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the +hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I +do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours +an aged and afflicted woman of this kind: rigid and erect, wrapped in a +little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism. + +She was evidently condemned by her absolute loneliness to the habits of +an ancient celibacy; and the masculine characters of her habits added to +their austerity a piquant mysteriousness. In what miserable café she +dines I know not, nor in what manner. I followed her to a reading-room, +and for a long time watched her reading the papers, her active eyes, +that once burned with tears, seeking for news of a powerful and personal +interest. + +At length, in the afternoon, under a charming autumnal sky, one of those +skies that let fall hosts of memories and regrets, she seated herself +remotely in a garden, to listen, far from the crowd, to one of the +regimental bands whose music gratifies the people of Paris. This was +without doubt the small debauch of the innocent old woman (or the +purified old woman), the well-earned consolation for another of the +burdensome days without a friend, without conversation, without joy, +without a confidant, that God had allowed to fall upon her perhaps for +many years past--three hundred and sixty-five times a year! + +Yet one more: + +I can never prevent myself from throwing a glance, if not sympathetic at +least full of curiosity, over the crowd of outcasts who press around the +enclosure of a public concert. From the orchestra, across the night, +float songs of fête, of triumph, or of pleasure. The dresses of the +women sweep and shimmer; glances pass; the well-to-do, tired with doing +nothing, saunter about and make indolent pretence of listening to the +music. Here are only the rich, the happy; here is nothing that does not +inspire or exhale the pleasure of being alive, except the aspect of the +mob that presses against the outer barrier yonder, catching gratis, at +the will of the wind, a tatter of music, and watching the glittering +furnace within. + +There is a reflection of the joy of the rich deep in the eyes of the +poor that is always interesting. But to-day, beyond this people dressed +in blouses and calico, I saw one whose nobility was in striking contrast +with all the surrounding triviality. She was a tall, majestic woman, and +so imperious in all her air that I cannot remember having seen the like +in the collections of the aristocratic beauties of the past. A perfume +of exalted virtue emanated from all her being. Her face, sad and worn, +was in perfect keeping with the deep mourning in which she was dressed. +She also, like the plebeians she mingled with and did not see, looked +upon the luminous world with a profound eye, and listened with a toss of +her head. + +It was a strange vision. "Most certainly," I said to myself, "this +poverty, if poverty it be, ought not to admit of any sordid economy; so +noble a face answers for that. Why then does she remain in surroundings +with which she is so strikingly in contrast?" + +But in curiously passing near her I was able to divine the reason. The +tall widow held by the hand a child dressed like herself in black. +Modest as was the price of entry, this price perhaps sufficed to pay +for some of the needs of the little being, or even more, for a +superfluity, a toy. + +She will return on foot, dreaming and meditating--and alone, always +alone, for the child is turbulent and selfish, without gentleness or +patience, and cannot become, any more than another animal, a dog or a +cat, the confidant of solitary griefs. + + + + +THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY. + + +Last night two superb Satans and a She-devil not less extraordinary +ascended the mysterious stairway by which Hell gains access to the +frailty of sleeping man, and communes with him in secret. These three +postured gloriously before me, as though they had been upon a stage--and +a sulphurous splendour emanated from these beings who so disengaged +themselves from the opaque heart of the night. They bore with them so +proud a presence, and so full of mastery, that at first I took them for +three of the true Gods. + +The first Satan, by his face, was a creature of doubtful sex. The +softness of an ancient Bacchus shone in the lines of his body. His +beautiful langourous eyes, of a tenebrous and indefinite colour, were +like violets still laden with the heavy tears of the storm; his +slightly-parted lips were like heated censers, from whence exhaled the +sweet savour of many perfumes; and each time he breathed, exotic +insects drew, as they fluttered, strength from the ardours of his +breath. + +Twined about his tunic of purple stuff, in the manner of a cincture, was +an iridescent Serpent with lifted head and eyes like embers turned +sleepily towards him. Phials full of sinister fluids, alternating with +shining knives and instruments of surgery, hung from this living girdle. +He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red fluid, and +inscribed with a legend in these singular words: + +"DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE"; + +and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing his +pleasures and pains, and to spread abroad the contagion of his folly +upon the nights of the Sabbath. + +From rings upon his delicate ankles trailed a broken chain of gold, and +when the burden of this caused him to bend his eyes towards the earth, +he would contemplate with vanity the nails of his feet, as brilliant and +polished as well-wrought jewels. + +He looked at me with eyes inconsolably heartbroken and giving forth an +insidious intoxication, and cried in a chanting voice: "If thou wilt, if +thou wilt, I will make thee an overlord of souls; thou shalt be master +of living matter more perfectly than the sculptor is master of his clay; +thou shalt taste the pleasure, reborn without end, of obliterating +thyself in the self of another, and of luring other souls to lose +themselves in thine." + +But I replied to him: "I thank thee. I only gain from this venture, +then, beings of no more worth than my poor self? Though remembrance +brings me shame indeed, I would forget nothing; and even before I +recognised thee, thou ancient monster, thy mysterious cutlery, thy +equivocal phials, and the chain that imprisons thy feet, were symbols +showing clearly enough the inconvenience of thy friendship. Keep thy +gifts." + +The second Satan had neither the air at once tragical and smiling, the +lovely insinuating ways, nor the delicate and scented beauty of the +first. A gigantic man, with a coarse, eyeless face, his heavy paunch +overhung his hips and was gilded and pictured, like a tattooing, with a +crowd of little moving figures which represented the unnumbered forms of +universal misery. There were little sinew-shrunken men who hung +themselves willingly from nails; there were meagre gnomes, deformed and +under-sized, whose beseeching eyes begged an alms even more eloquently +than their trembling hands; there were old mothers who nursed clinging +abortions at their pendent breasts. And many others, even more +surprising. + +This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from whence +came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away in a +sighing made by many human voices. And he smiled unrestrainedly, showing +his broken teeth--the imbecile smile of a man who has dined too freely. +Then the creature said to me: + +"I can give thee that which gets all, which is worth all, which takes +the place of all." And he tapped his monstrous paunch, whence came a +sonorous echo as the commentary to his obscene speech. I turned away +with disgust and replied: "I need no man's misery to bring me happiness; +nor will I have the sad wealth of all the misfortunes pictured upon thy +skin as upon a tapestry." + +As for the She-devil, I should lie if I denied that at first I found in +her a certain strange charm, which to define I can but compare to the +charm of certain beautiful women past their first youth, who yet seem to +age no more, whose beauty keeps something of the penetrating magic of +ruins. She had an air at once imperious and sordid, and her eyes, though +heavy, held a certain power of fascination. I was struck most by her +voice, wherein I found the remembrance of the most delicious contralti, +as well as a little of the hoarseness of a throat continually laved with +brandy. + +"Wouldst thou know my power?" said the charming and paradoxical voice of +the false goddess. "Then listen." And she put to her mouth a gigantic +trumpet, enribboned, like a mirliton, with the titles of all the +newspapers in the world; and through this trumpet she cried my name so +that it rolled through space with the sound of a hundred thousand +thunders, and came re-echoing back to me from the farthest planet. + +"Devil!" cried I, half tempted, "that at least is worth something." But +it vaguely struck me, upon examining the seductive virago more +attentively, that I had seen her clinking glasses with certain drolls of +my acquaintance, and her blare of brass carried to my ears I know not +what memory of a fanfare prostituted. + +So I replied, with all disdain: "Get thee hence! I know better than wed +the light o' love of them that I will not name." + +Truly, I had the right to be proud of a so courageous renunciation. But +unfortunately I awoke, and all my courage left me. "In truth," I said, +"I must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have had such scruples. +Ah, if they would but return while I am awake, I would not be so +delicate." + +So I invoked the three in a loud voice, offering to dishonour myself as +often as necessary to obtain their favours; but I had without doubt too +deeply offended them, for they have never returned. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles +Baudelaire, by Charles Baudelaire + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 36287 *** diff --git a/36287-h/36287-h.htm b/36287-h/36287-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..13e27a8 --- /dev/null +++ b/36287-h/36287-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4225 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<!-- $Id: header.txt 236 2009-12-07 18:57:00Z vlsimpson $ --> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta 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+.caption {font-weight: bold;} + +.margin {margin-left: 15%;} + +.margin-b {margin-left: 30%;} + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 36287 ***</div> + + + +<h1>THE POEMS AND PROSE POEMS</h1> + +<h3>OF</h3> + +<h2>CHARLES BAUDELAIRE</h2> + + +<h4>WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE BY</h4> + +<h3>JAMES HUNEKER</h3> + + + +<h5>NEW YORK</h5> +<h5>BRENTANO'S</h5> +<h5>PUBLISHERS</h5> + +<h5>1919</h5> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p class="margin"> +<span class="caption">CONTENTS</span><br /><br /> +<a href="#CHARLES_BAUDELAIRE"><b>CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by James Huneker</b></a><br /><br /> +<a href="#THE_FLOWERS_OF_EVIL"><b>THE FLOWERS OF EVIL</b></a><br /><br /> +<a href="#THE_DANCE_OF_DEATH"><b>The Dance of Death</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_BEACONS"><b>The Beacons</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SADNESS_OF_THE_MOON"><b>The Sadness of the Moon</b></a><br /> +<a href="#EXOTIC_PERFUME"><b>Exotic Perfume</b></a><br /> +<a href="#BEAUTY"><b>Beauty</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_BALCONY"><b>The Balcony</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SICK_MUSE"><b>The Sick Muse</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_VENAL_MUSE"><b>The Venal Muse</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_EVIL_MONK"><b>The Evil Monk</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_TEMPTATION"><b>The Temptation</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_IRREPARABLE"><b>The Irreparable</b></a><br /> +<a href="#A_FORMER_LIFE"><b>A Former Life</b></a><br /> +<a href="#DON_JUAN_IN_HADES"><b>Don Juan in Hades</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_LIVING_FLAME"><b>The Living Flame</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CORRESPONDENCES"><b>Correspondences</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_FLASK"><b>The Flask</b></a><br /> +<a href="#REVERSIBILITY"><b>Reversibility</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_EYES_OF_BEAUTY"><b>The Eyes of Beauty</b></a><br /> +<a href="#SONNET_OF_AUTUMN"><b>Sonnet of Autumn</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_REMORSE_OF_THE_DEAD"><b>The Remorse of the Dead</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_GHOST"><b>The Ghost</b></a><br /> +<a href="#TO_A_MADONNA"><b>To a Madonna</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SKY"><b>The Sky</b></a><br /> +<a href="#SPLEEN"><b>Spleen</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_OWLS"><b>The Owls</b></a><br /> +<a href="#BIEN_LOIN_DICI"><b>Bien Loin D'Ici</b></a><br /> +<a href="#MUSIC"><b>Music</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CONTEMPLATION"><b>Contemplation</b></a><br /> +<a href="#TO_A_BROWN_BEGGAR-MAID"><b>To a Brown Beggar-maid</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SWAN"><b>The Swan</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SEVEN_OLD_MEN"><b>The Seven Old Men</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_LITTLE_OLD_WOMEN"><b>The Little Old Women</b></a><br /> +<a href="#A_MADRIGAL_OF_SORROW"><b>A Madrigal of Sorrow</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_IDEAL"><b>The Ideal</b></a><br /> +<a href="#MIST_AND_RAIN"><b>Mist and Rain</b></a><br /> +<a href="#SUNSET"><b>Sunset</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_CORPSE"><b>The Corpse</b></a><br /> +<a href="#AN_ALLEGORY"><b>An Allegory</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_ACCURSED"><b>The Accursed</b></a><br /> +<a href="#LA_BEATRICE"><b>La Beatrice</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SOUL_OF_WINE"><b>The Soul of Wine</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_WINE_OF_LOVERS"><b>The Wine of Lovers</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_DEATH_OF_LOVERS"><b>The Death of Lovers</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_DEATH_OF_THE_POOR"><b>The Death of The Poor</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_BENEDICTION"><b>The Benediction</b></a><br /> +<a href="#GYPSIES_TRAVELLING"><b>Gypsies Travelling</b></a><br /> +<a href="#FRANCISCAE_MEAE_LAUDES"><b>Franciscæ Meæ Laudes</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ROBED_IN_A_SILKEN_ROBE"><b>Robed in a Silken Robe</b></a><br /> +<a href="#A_LANDSCAPE"><b>A Landscape</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_VOYAGE"><b>The Voyage</b></a><br /><br /> +<a href="#LITTLE_POEMS_IN_PROSE"><b>LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE</b></a><br /><br /> +<a href="#THE_STRANGER"><b>The Stranger</b></a><br /> +<a href="#EVERY_MAN_HIS_CHIMAERA"><b>Every Man His Chimæra</b></a><br /> +<a href="#VENUS_AND_THE_FOOL"><b>Venus and the Fool</b></a><br /> +<a href="#INTOXICATION"><b>Intoxication</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_GIFTS_OF_THE_MOON"><b>The Gifts of the Moon</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_INVITATION_TO_THE_VOYAGE"><b>The Invitation to the Voyage</b></a><br /> +<a href="#WHAT_IS_TRUTH"><b>What Is Truth?</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ALREADY"><b>Already!</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_DOUBLE_CHAMBER"><b>The Double Chamber</b></a><br /> +<a href="#AT_ONE_OCLOCK_IN_THE_MORNING"><b>At One O'clock in the Morning</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_CONFITEOR_OF_THE_ARTIST"><b>The Confiteor of the Artist</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_THYRSUS"><b>The Thyrsus</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_MARKSMAN"><b>The Marksman</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SHOOTING-RANGE_AND_THE_CEMETERY"><b>THe Shooting-range and the Cemetery</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_DESIRE_TO_PAINT"><b>The Desire to Paint</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_GLASS-VENDOR"><b>The Glass-Vendor</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_WIDOWS"><b>The Widows</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_TEMPTATIONS_OR_EROS_PLUTUS_AND_GLORY"><b>The Temptations; or, Eros, Plutus, and Glory</b></a><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHARLES_BAUDELAIRE" id="CHARLES_BAUDELAIRE"></a>CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.</h2> + +<h4>BY JAMES HUNEKER.</h4> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>For the sentimental no greater foe exists than the iconoclast who +dissipates literary legends. And he is abroad nowadays. Those golden +times when they gossiped of De Quincey's enormous opium consumption, of +the gin absorbed by gentle Charles Lamb, of Coleridge's dark ways, +Byron's escapades, and Shelley's atheism—alas! into what faded limbo +have they vanished. Poe, too, whom we saw in fancy reeling from Richmond +to Baltimore, Baltimore to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to New York. Those +familiar fascinating anecdotes have gone the way of all such jerry-built +spooks. We now know Poe to have been a man suffering at the time of his +death from cerebral lesion, a man who drank at intervals and little. Dr. +Guerrier of Paris has exploded a darling superstition about De Quincey's +opium-eating. He has demonstrated that no man could have lived so +long—De Quincey was nearly seventy-five at his death—and worked so +hard, if he had consumed twelve thousand drops of laudanum as often as +he said he did. Furthermore, the English essayist's description of the +drug's effects is inexact. He was seldom sleepy—a sure sign, asserts +Dr. Guerrier, that he was not altogether enslaved by the drug habit. +Sprightly in old age, his powers of labour were prolonged until past +three-score and ten. His imagination needed little opium to produce the +famous Confessions. Even Gautier's revolutionary red waistcoat worn at +the première of Hernani was, according to Gautier, a pink doublet. And +Rousseau has been whitewashed. So they are disappearing, those literary +legends, until, disheartened, we cry out: Spare us our dear, +old-fashioned, disreputable men of genius!</p> + +<p>But the legend of Charles Baudelaire is seemingly indestructible. This +French poet has suffered more from the friendly malignant biographer and +chroniclers than did Poe. Who shall keep the curs out of the cemetery? +asked Baudelaire after he had read Griswold on Poe. A few years later +his own cemetery was invaded and the world was put into possession of +the Baudelaire legend; that legend of the atrabilious, irritable poet, +dandy, maniac, his hair dyed green, spouting blasphemies; that grim, +despairing image of a diabolic, a libertine, saint, and drunkard. Maxime +du Camp was much to blame for the promulgation of these tales—witness +his Souvenirs littéraires. However, it may be confessed that part of the +Baudelaire legend was created by Charles Baudelaire. In the history of +literature it is difficult to parallel such a deliberate piece of +self-stultification. Not Villon, who preceded him, not Verlaine, who +imitated him, drew for the astonishment or disedification of the world a +like unflattering portrait. Mystifier as he was, he must have suffered +at times from acute cortical irritation. And, notwithstanding his +desperate effort to realize Poe's idea, he only proved Poe correct, who +had said that no man can bare his heart quite naked; there always will +be something held back, something false ostentatiously thrust forward. +The grimace, the attitude, the pomp of rhetoric are so many buffers +between the soul of man and the sharp reality of published confessions. +Baudelaire was no more exception to this rule than St. Augustine, +Bunyan, Rousseau, or Huysmans; though he was as frank as any of them, as +we may see in the printed diary, Mon cÅ“ur mis à nu (Posthumous Works, +Société du Mercure de France); and in the Journal, Fusées, Letters, and +other fragments exhumed by devoted Baudelarians.</p> + +<p>To smash legends, Eugène Crépet's biographical study, first printed in +1887, has been republished with new notes by his son, Jacques Crépet. +This is an exceedingly valuable contribution to Baudelaire lore; a +dispassionate life, however, has yet to be written, a noble task for +some young poet who will disentangle the conflicting lies originated by +Baudelaire—that tragic comedian—from the truth and thus save him from +himself. The Crépet volume is really but a series of notes; there are +some letters addressed to the poet by the distinguished men of his day, +supplementing the rather disappointing volume of Letters, 1841-1866, +published in 1908. There are also documents in the legal prosecution of +Baudelaire, with memories of him by Charles Asselineau, Léon Cladel, +Camille Lemonnier, and others.</p> + +<p>In November, 1850, Maxime du Camp and Gustave Flaubert found themselves +at the French Ambassador's, Constantinople. The two friends had taken a +trip in the Orient which later bore fruit in Salammbô. General Aupick, +the representative of the French Government, cordially the young men +received; they were presented to his wife, Madame Aupick. She was the +mother of Charles Baudelaire, and inquired rather anxiously of Du Camp: +"My son has talent, has he not?" Unhappy because her second marriage, a +brilliant one, had set her son against her, the poor woman welcomed from +such a source confirmation of her eccentric boy's gifts. Du Camp tells +the much-discussed story of a quarrel between the youthful Charles and +his stepfather, a quarrel that began at table. There were guests +present. After some words Charles bounded at the General's throat and +sought to strangle him. He was promptly boxed on the ears and succumbed +to a nervous spasm. A delightful anecdote, one that fills with joy +psychiatrists in search of a theory of genius and degeneration. Charles +was given some money and put on board a ship sailing to East India. He +became a cattle-dealer in the British army, and returned to France +years afterward with a Vénus noire, to whom he addressed extravagant +poems! All this according to Du Camp. Here is another tale, a comical +one. Baudelaire visited Du Camp in Paris, and his hair was violently +green. Du Camp said nothing. Angered by this indifference, Baudelaire +asked: "You find nothing abnormal about me?" "No," was the answer. "But +my hair—it is green!" "That is not singular, mon cher Baudelaire; every +one has hair more or less green in Paris." Disappointed in not creating +a sensation, Baudelaire went to a café, gulped down two large bottles of +Burgundy, and asked the waiter to remove the water, as water was a +disagreeable sight; then he went away in a rage. It is a pity to doubt +this green hair legend; presently a man of genius will not be able to +enjoy an epileptic fit in peace—as does a banker or a beggar. We are +told that St. Paul, Mahomet, Handel, Napoleon, Flaubert, Dostoiëvsky +were epileptoids; yet we do not encounter men of this rare kind among +the inmates of asylums. Even Baudelaire had his sane moments.</p> + +<p>The joke of the green hair has been disposed of by Crépet. Baudelaire's +hair thinning after an illness, he had his head shaved and painted with +salve of a green hue, hoping thereby to escape baldness. At the time +when he had embarked for Calcutta (May, 1841), he was not seventeen, but +twenty years of age. Du Camp said he was seventeen when he attacked +General Aupick. The dinner could not have taken place at Lyons because +the Aupick family had left that city six years before the date given by +Du Camp. Charles was provided with five thousand francs for his +expenses, instead of twenty—Du Camp's version—and he never was a +beef-drover in the British army, for a good reason—he never reached +India. Instead, he disembarked at the Isle of Bourbon, and after a short +stay suffered from homesickness and returned to France, after being +absent about ten months. But, like Flaubert, on his return home +Baudelaire was seized with the nostalgia of the East; over there he had +yearned for Paris. Jules Claretie recalls Baudelaire saying to him with +a grimace: "I love Wagner; but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung +up by his tail outside of a window, and trying to stick to the panes of +glass with its claws. There is an odd grating on the glass which I find +at the same time strange, irritating, and singularly harmonious." Is it +necessary to add that Baudelaire, notorious in Paris for his love of +cats, dedicating poems to cats, would never have perpetrated such +revolting cruelty?</p> + +<p>Another misconception, a critical one, is the case of Poe and +Baudelaire. The young Frenchman first became infatuated with Poe's +writings in 1846 or 1847—he gave these two dates, though several +stories of Poe had been translated into French as early as 1841 or 1842; +L'Orang-Outang was the first, which we know as The Murders in the Rue +Morgue; Madame Meunier also adapted several Poe stories for the reviews. +Baudelaire's labours as a translator lasted over ten years. That he +assimilated Poe, that he idolized Poe, is a commonplace of literary +gossip. But that Poe had overwhelming influence in the formation of his +poetic genius is not the truth. Yet we find such an acute critic as the +late Edmund Clarence Stedman writing, "Poe's chief influence upon +Baudelaire's own production relates to poetry." It is precisely the +reverse. Poe's influence affected Baudelaire's prose, notably in the +disjointed confessions, Mon cÅ“ur mis à nu, which vaguely recall the +American writer's Marginalia. The bulk in the poetry in Les Fleurs du +Mal was written before Baudelaire had read Poe, though not published in +book form until 1857. But in 1855 some of the poems saw the light in the +Revue des deux Mondes, while many of them had been put forth a decade or +fifteen years before as fugitive verse in various magazines. Stedman was +not the first to make this mistake. In Bayard Taylor's The Echo Club we +find on page 24 this criticism: "There was a congenital twist about Poe +... Baudelaire and Swinburne after him have been trying to surpass him +by increasing the dose; but his muse is the natural Pythia inheriting +her convulsions, while they eat all sorts of insane roots to produce +theirs." This must have been written about 1872, and after reading it +one would fancy that Poe and Baudelaire were rhapsodic wrigglers on the +poetic tripod, whereas their poetry is often reserved, even glacial. +Baudelaire, like Poe, sometimes "built his nests with the birds of +Night," and that was enough to condemn the work of both men by critics +of the didactic school.</p> + +<p>Once, when Baudelaire heard that an American man of letters(?) was in +Paris, he secured an introduction and called on him. Eagerly inquiring +after Poe, he learned that he was not considered a genteel person in +America, Baudelaire withdrew, muttering maledictions. Enthusiastic poet! +Charming literary person! Yet the American, whoever he was, represented +public opinion at the time. To-day criticisms of Poe are vitiated by the +desire to make him an angel. It is to be doubted whether without his +barren environment and hard fortunes we should have had Poe at all. He +had to dig down deep into the pit of his personality to reach the +central core of his music. But every ardent young soul entering +"literature" begins by a vindication of Poe's character. Poe was a man, +and he is now a classic. He was a half-charlatan as was Baudelaire. In +both the sublime and the sickly were never far asunder. The pair loved +to mystify, to play pranks on their contemporaries. Both were implacable +pessimists. Both were educated in affluence, and both had to face +unprepared the hardships of life. The hastiest comparison of their +poetic work will show that their only common ideal was the worship of an +exotic beauty. Their artistic methods of expression were totally +dissimilar. Baudelaire, like Poe, had a harp-like temperament which +vibrated in the presence of strange subjects. Above all, he was obsessed +by sex. Women, as angel of destruction, is the keynote of his poems. Poe +was almost sexless. His aerial creatures never footed the dusty highways +of the world. His lovely lines, "Helen, thy beauty is to me," could +never have been written by Baudelaire; while Poe would never have +pardoned the "fulgurant" grandeur, the Beethoven-like harmonies, the +Dantesque horrors of that "deep wide music of lost souls" in "Femmes +Damnées":</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Descendes, descendes, lamentable victimes."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or this, which might serve as a text for one of John Martin's vast +sinister mezzotints:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Une miraculeuse aurore;</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Un être, qui n'était que lumière, or et gaze,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Terrasser rénorme Satan;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Mais mon cÅ“ur que jamais ne visite l'extase,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Est un théâtre où l'on attend</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Toujours, toujours en vain l'Etre aux ailes de gaze.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>George Saintsbury thus sums up the differences between Poe and +Baudelaire: "Both authors—Poe and De Quincey—fell short of Baudelaire +himself as regards depth and fulness of passion, but both have a +superficial likeness to him in eccentricity of temperameut and affection +for a certain peculiar mixture of grotesque and horror." Poe is without +passion, except a passion for the macabre; what Huysmans calls "The +October of the sensations"; whereas, there is a gulf of despair and +terror and humanity in Baudelaire, which shakes your nerves, yet +stimulates the imagination. However, profounder as a poet, he was no +match for Poe in what might be termed intellectual prestidigitation. The +mathematical Poe, the Poe of the ingenious detective tales, tales +extraordinary, the Poe of the swift flights into the cosmic blue, the +Poe the prophet and mystic—in these the American was more versatile +than his French translator. That Baudelaire said, "Evil be thou my +good," is doubtless true. He proved all things and found them vanity. He +is the poet of original sin, a worshipper of Satan for the sake of +paradox; his Litanies to Satan ring childish to us—in his heart he was +a believer. His was "an infinite reverse aspiration," and mixed up with +his pose was a disgust for vice, for life itself. He was the last of the +Romanticists; Sainte-Beuve called him the Kamchatka of Romanticism; its +remotest hyperborean peak. Romanticism is dead to-day, as dead as +Naturalism; but Baudelaire is alive, and read. His glistening +phosphorescent trail is over French poetry and he is the begetter of a +school:—Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Carducci, Arthur Rimbaud, +Jules Laforgue, Gabriel D'Annunzio, Aubrey Beardsley, Verhaeren, and +many of the youthful crew. He affected Swinburne, and in Huysmans, who +was not a poet, his splenetic spirit lives. Baudelaire's motto might be +the obverse of Browning's lines: "The Devil is in heaven. All's wrong +with the world."</p> + +<p>When Goethe said of Hugo and the Romanticists that they came from +Chateaubriand, he should have substituted the name of +Rousseau—"Romanticism, it is Rousseau," exclaims Pierre Lasserre. But +there is more of Byron and Petrus Borel—a forgotten half-mad poet—in +Baudelaire; though, for a brief period, in 1848, he became a Rousseau +reactionary, sported the workingman's blouse, cut his hair, shouldered a +musket, went to the barricades, wrote inflammatory editorials calling +the proletarian "Brother!" (oh, Baudelaire!) and, as the Goncourts +recorded in their diary, had the head of a maniac. How seriously we may +take this swing of the pendulum is to be noted in a speech of the poet's +at the time of the Revolution: "Come," he said, "let us go shoot General +Aupick!" It was his stepfather that he thought of, not the eternal +principles of Liberty. This may be a false anecdote; many such were +foisted upon Baudelaire. For example, his exclamations at cafés or in +public places, such as: "Have you ever eaten a baby? I find it pleasing +to the palate!" or, "The night I killed my father!" Naturally, people +stared and Baudelaire was happy—he had startled a bourgeois. The +cannibalistic idea he may have borrowed from Swift's amusing pamphlet, +for this French poet knew English literature.</p> + +<p>Gautier compares the poems to a certain tale of Hawthorne's in which +there is a garden of poisoned flowers. But Hawthorne worked in his +laboratory of evil wearing mask and gloves; he never descended into the +mud and sin of the street. Baudelaire ruined his health, smudged his +soul, yet remained withal, as Anatole France says, "a divine poet." How +childish, yet how touching is his resolution—he wrote in his diary of +prayer's dynamic force—when he was penniless, in debt, threatened with +imprisonment, sick, nauseated with sin: "To make every morning my prayer +to God, the reservoir of all force, and all justice; to my father, to +Mariette, and to Poe as intercessors." (Evidently, Maurice Barrès +encountered here his theory of Intercessors.) Baudelaire loved the +memory of his father as much as Stendhal hated his own. He became +reconciled with his mother after the death of General Aupick, in 1857. +He felt in 1862 that his own intellectual eclipse was approaching, for +he wrote: "I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror. To-day +imbecility's wing fanned me as it passed." The sense of the vertiginous +gulf was abiding with him; read his poem, "Pascal avait son gouffre."</p> + +<p>In preferring the Baudelaire translations of Poe to the original—and +they give the impression of being original works—Stedman agreed with +Asselineau that the French is more concise than the English. The prose +of Poe and Baudelaire is clear, sober, rhythmic; Baudelaire's is more +lapidary, finer in contour, richer coloured, more supple, though without +the "honey and tiger's blood" of Barbey d'Aurevilly. Baudelaire's soul +was patiently built up as a fabulous bird might build its nest—bits of +straw, the sobbing of women, clay, cascades of black stars, rags, +leaves, rotten wood, corroding dreams, a spray of roses, a sparkle of +pebble, a gleam of blue sky, arabesques of incense and verdigris, +despairing hearts and music and the abomination of desolation, for its +ground-tones. But this soul-nest is also a cemetery of the seven +sorrows. He loves the clouds ... les nuages ... là bas.... It was là bas +with him even in the tortures of his wretched love-life. Corruption and +death were ever floating in his consciousness. He was like Flaubert, who +saw everywhere the hidden skeleton. Félicien Hops has best interpreted +Baudelaire; the etcher and poet were closely knit spirits. Rodin, too, +is a Baudelarian. If there could be such an anomaly as a native +wood-note wildly evil, it would be the lyric and astringent voice of +this poet. His sensibility was both catholic and morbid, though he could +be frigid in the face of the most disconcerting misfortunes. He was a +man for whom the invisible word existed; if Gautier was pagan, +Baudelaire was a strayed spirit from mediæval days. The spirit rules, +and, as Paul Bourget said, "he saw God." A Manichean in his worship of +evil, he nevertheless abased his soul: "Oh! Lord God! Give me the force +and courage to contemplate my heart and my body without disgust," he +prays: but as some one remarked to Rochefoucauld, "Where you end, +Christianity begins."</p> + +<p>Baudelaire built his ivory tower on the borders of a poetic Maremma, +which every miasma of the spirit pervaded, every marsh-light and +glow-worm inhabited. Like Wagner, Baudelaire painted in his sultry music +the profundities of abysms, the vastness of space. He painted, too, the +great nocturnal silences of the soul.</p> + +<p>Pacem summum tenent! He never reached peace on the heights. Let us +admit that souls of his kind are encased in sick frames; their steel is +too shrewd for the scabbard; yet the enigma for us is none the less +unfathomable. Existence for such natures is a sort of muffled delirium. +To affiliate him with Poe, De Quincey, Hoffman, James Thomson, +Coleridge, and the rest of the sombre choir does not explain him; he is, +perhaps, nearer Donne and Villon than any of the others—strains of the +metaphysical and sinister and supersubtle are to be discovered in him. +The disharmony of brain and body, the spiritual bilocation, are only too +easy to diagnose; but the remedy? Hypocrite lecteur—mon semblable—mon +frère! When the subtlety, force, grandeur, of his poetic production be +considered, together with its disquieting, nervous, vibrating qualities, +it is not surprising that Victor Hugo wrote to the poet: "You invest the +heaven of art with we know not what deadly rays; you create a new +shudder." Hugo might have said that he turned Art into an Inferno. +Baudelaire is the evil archangel of poetry. In his heaven of fire, glass +and ebony he is the blazing Lucifer. "A glorious devil, large in heart +and brain, that did love beauty only..." once sang Tennyson, though not +of the Frenchman.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>II</h3> + + +<p>As long ago as 1869, and in our "barbarous gas-lit country," as +Baudelaire named the land of Poe, an unsigned review appeared in which +this poet was described as "unique and as interesting as Hamlet. He is +that rare and unknown being, a genuine poet—a poet in the midst of +things that have disordered his spirit—a poet excessively developed in +his taste for and by beauty ... very responsive to the ideal, very +greedy of sensation." A better description of Baudelaire does not exist +The Hamlet-motive, particularly, is one that sounded throughout the +disordered symphony of the poet's life.</p> + +<p>He was, later, revealed—also reviled—to American readers by Henry +James, who completely missed his significance. This was in 1878, when +appeared the first edition of French Poets and Novelists. Previous to +that there had been some desultory discussion, a few essays in the +magazines, and in 1875 a sympathetic paper by Professor James Albert +Harrison of the University of Virginia. He denounced the Frenchman for +his reprehensible taste, though he did not mention his beautiful verse +nor his originality in the matter of criticism. Baudelaire, in his eyes, +was not only immoral, but he had, with the approbation of Sainte-Beuve, +introduced Poe as a great man to the French nation. (See Baudelaire's +letter to Sainte-Beuve in the newly published Letters, 1841-1866.) +Perhaps "Mr. Dick Minim" and his projected Academy of Criticism might +make clear these devious problems.</p> + +<p>The Etudes Critiques of Edmond Schérer were collected in 1863. In them +we find this unhappy, uncritical judgment: "Baudelaire, lui, n'a rien, +ni le cÅ“ur, ni l'esprit, ni l'idée, ni le mot, ni la raison, ni la +fantaisie, ni la verve, ni même la facture ... son unique titre c'est +d'avoir contribué à créer l'esthétique de la débauche." It is not our +intention to dilate upon the injustice of this criticism. It is +Baudelaire the critic of æsthetics in whom we are interested. Yet I +cannot forbear saying that if all the negations of Schérer had been +transformed into affirmations, only justice would have been accorded +Baudelaire, who was not alone a poet, the most original of his century, +but also a critic of the first rank, one who welcomed Richard Wagner +when Paris hooted him and his fellow composer, Hector Berlioz, played +the rôle of the envious; one who fought for Edouard Manet, Leconte de +Lisle, Gustave Flaubert, Eugène Delacroix; fought with pen for the +modern etchers, illustrators, Meryon, Daumier, Félicien Rops, Gavarni, +and Constantin Guys. He literally identified himself with De Quincey and +Poe, translating them so wonderfully well that some unpatriotic persons +like the French better than the originals. So much was Baudelaire +absorbed in Poe that a writer of his times asserted that the translator +would meet the same fate as the American poet. A singular, vigorous +spirit is Baudelaire's, whose poetry with its "icy ecstasy" is profound +and harmonious, whose criticism is penetrated by a catholic quality, who +anticipated modern critics in his abhorrence of schools and +environments, preferring to isolate the man and uniquely study him. He +would have subscribed to Swinburne's generous pronouncement: "I have +never been able to see what should attract man to the profession of +criticism but the noble pleasure of praising." The Frenchman has said +that it would be impossible for a critic to become a poet; and it is +impossible for a poet not to contain a critic.</p> + +<p>Théophile Gautier's study prefixed to the definitive edition of Les +Fleurs du Mal is not only the most sympathetic exposition of Baudelaire +as man and genius, but it is also the high-water mark of Gautier's gifts +as a critical essayist. We learn therein how the young Charles, an +incorrigible dandy, came to visit Hôtel Pimodan about 1844. In this +Hôtel Pimodan a dilettante, Ferdinand Boissard, held high revel. His +fantastically decorated apartments were frequented by the painters, +poets, sculptors, romancers, of the day—that is, carefully selected +ones such as Liszt, George Sand, Mérimée, and others whose verve or +genius gave them the privilege of saying Open Sesame! to this cave of +forty Supermen. Balzac has in his Peau de Chagrin pictured the same sort +of scenes which were supposed to occur weekly at the Pimodan. Gautier +eloquently describes the meeting of these kindred artistic souls, where +the beautiful Jewess, Maryx, who had posed for Ary Scheffer's Mignon +and for Paul Delaroche's La Gloire, met the superb Madame Sabatier, the +only woman that Baudelaire loved, and the original of that extraordinary +group of Clésinger's—the sculptor and son-in-law of George Sand—la +Femme au Serpent, a Salammbô à la mode in marble. Hasheesh was eaten, so +Gautier writes, by Boissard and Baudelaire. As for the creator of +Mademoiselle Maupin, he was too robust for such nonsense. He had to work +for his living at journalism, and he died in harness, an irreproachable +father, while the unhappy Baudelaire, the inheritor of an intense, +unstable temperament, soon devoured his patrimony of 75,000 francs, and +for the remaining years of his life was between the devil of his dusky +Jenny Duval and the deep sea of hopeless debt.</p> + +<p>It was at these Pimodan gatherings, which were no doubt much less wicked +than the participants would have us believe, that Baudelaire encountered +Emile Deroy, a painter of skill, who made his portrait, and encouraged +the fashionable young fellow to continue his art studies. We have seen +an album containing sketches by the poet. They betray talent of about +the same order as Thackeray's, with a superadded note of the +"horrific"—that favourite epithet of the early Poe critics. Baudelaire +admired Thackeray, and when the Englishman praised the illustrations of +Guys, he was delighted. Deroy taught his pupil the commonplaces of a +painter's technique; also how to compose a palette—a rather meaningless +phrase nowadays. At least, he did not write of the arts without some +technical experience. Delacroix took up his enthusiastic disciple, and +when the Salons of Baudelaire appeared in 1845, 1846, 1855, and 1859, +the praise and blame they evoked were testimonies to the training and +knowledge of their author. A new spirit had been born.</p> + +<p>The names of Diderot and Baudelaire were coupled. Neither academic nor +spouting the jargon of the usual critic, the Salons of Baudelaire are +the production of a humanist. Some would put them above Diderot's. Mr. +Saintsbury, after Swinburne the warmest advocate of Baudelaire among the +English, thinks that the French poet in his picture criticism observed +too little and imagined too much. "In other words," he adds, "to read a +criticism of Baudelaire's without the title affixed is by no means a +sure method of recognizing the picture afterward." Now, word-painting +was the very thing that Baudelaire avoided. It was his friend Gautier, +with the plastic style, who attempted the well-nigh impossible feat of +competing in his verbal descriptions with the certitudes of canvas and +marble. And, if he with his verbal imagination did not entirely succeed, +how could a less adept manipulator of the vocabulary? We do not agree +with Mr. Saintsbury. No one can imagine too much when the imagination is +that of a poet. Baudelaire divined the work of the artist and set it +down scrupulously in a prose of exceeding rectitude. He did not paint +pictures in prose. He did not divagate. He did not overburden his pages +with technical terms. But the spirit of his subject he did disengage in +a few swift phrases. The polemics of historical schools were a cross for +him to bear, and he wore his prejudices lightly. Like a true critic, he +judged more by form than theme. There are no types; there is only life, +he asserted, and long before Jules Laforgue. He was ever art-for-art, +yet, having breadth of comprehension and a Heine-like capacity for +seeing both sides of his own nature with its idiosyncrasies, he could +write: "The puerile utopia of the school of art-for-art, in excluding +morality, and often even passion, was necessarily sterile. All +literature which refuses to advance fraternally between science and +philosophy is a homicidal and a suicidal literature."</p> + +<p>Baudelaire, then, was no less sound a critic of the plastic arts than of +music and literature. Like his friend Flaubert, he had a horror of +democracy, of the democratisation of the arts, of all the sentimental +fuss and fuddle of a pseudo-humanitarianism. During the 1848 agitation +the former dandy of 1840 put on a blouse and spoke of barricades. Those +things were in the air. Wagner rang the alarm-bells during the Dresden +uprising. Chopin wrote for the pianoforte a revolutionary étude. Brave +lads! Poets and musicians fight their battles best in the region of the +ideal. Baudelaire's little attack of the equality-measles soon vanished. +He lectured his brother poets and artists on the folly and injustice of +abusing or despising the bourgeois (being a man of paradox, he dedicated +a volume of his Salons to the bourgeois), but he would not have +contradicted Mr. George Moore for declaring that "in art the democrat +is always reactionary. In 1830 the democrats were against Victor Hugo +and Delacrois." And Les Fleurs du Mal, that book of opals, blood, and +evil swamp-flowers, will never be savoured by the mob.</p> + +<p>In his Souvenirs de Jeunesse, Champfleury speaks of the promenades in +the Louvre he enjoyed the company with Baudelaire. Bronzino was one of +the poet's preferences. He was also attracted by El Greco—not an +unnatural admiration, considering the sombre extravagance of his own +genius. Of Goya he has written in exalted phrases. Velasquez was his +touchstone. Being of a perverse nature, his Derves ruined by abuse of +drink and drugs, the landscapes of his imagination were more beautiful +than Nature herself. The country itself, he declared, was odious. Like +Whistler, whom he often met—see the Hommage à Delacrois by +Fantin-Latour, with its portraits of Whistler, Baudelaire, Manet, +Bracquemond the etcher, Legros, Delacrois, Cordier, Duranty the critic, +and De Balleroy—he could not help showing his aversion to "foolish +sunsets." In a word, Baudelaire, into whose brain had entered too much +moonlight, was the father of a lunar school of poetry, criticism and +fiction. His Samuel Cramer, in La Fanfarlo, is the literary progenitor +of Jean, Duc d'Esseintes, in Huysmans's <i>A Rebours</i>. Huysmans at first +modelled himself upon Baudelaire. His Le Drageoir aux Epices is a +continuation of Petits Poèmes en Prose. And to Baudelaire's account must +be laid much artificial morbid writing. Despite his pursuit of +perfection in form, his influence has been too often baneful to +impressionable artists in embryo. A lover of Gallic Byronism, and +high-priest of the Satanic school, there was no extravagance, absurd or +terrible, that he did not commit, from etching a four-part fugue on ice +to skating hymns in honour of Lucifer. In his criticism alone was he the +sane logical Frenchman. And while he did not live to see the success of +the Impressionist group, he surely would have acclaimed their theory and +practice. Was he not an impressionist himself?</p> + +<p>As Richard Wagner was his god in music, so Delacroix quite overflowed +his æsthetic consciousness. Read Volume II of his collected works, +<i>Curiosités Esthétiques</i>, which contains his Salons; also his essay, <i>De +l'Essence du Rire</i> (worthy to be placed side by side with George +Meredith's essay on Comedy). Caricaturists, French and foreign, are +considered in two chapters at the close of the volume. Baudelaire was as +conscientious as Gautier. He trotted around miles of mediocre canvas, +saying an encouraging word to the less talented, boiling over with holy +indignation or indulging in glacial irony, before the rash usurpers +occupying the seats of the mighty, and pouncing on new genius with +promptitude. Upon Delacroix he lavished the largesse of his admiration. +He smiled at the platitudes of Horace Vernet, and only shook his head +over the Schnetzes and other artisans of the day. He welcomed William +Hausollier, now so little known. He praised Devéria, Chasseriau—who +waited years before he came into his own; his preferred landscapists +were Corot, Rousseau and Troyon. He impolitely spoke of Ary Scheffer and +the "apes of sentiment"; while his discussions of Hogarth, Cruikshank, +Pinelli and Breughel proclaims his versatility of vision. In his essay +Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne he was the first among critics to recognize +the peculiar quality called "modernity," that naked vibration which +informs the novels of Goncourt, Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale, +and the pictures of Manet, Monet, Degas and Raffaelli with their +evocations of a new, nervous Paris. It is in his Volume III, entitled +L'Art Romantique, that so many things dear to the new century were then +subjects of furious quarrels. This book contains much just and brilliant +writing. It was easy for Nietzsche to praise Wagner in Germany in 1876, +but dangerous at Paris in 1861 to declare war on Wagner's adverse +critics. This Baudelaire did.</p> + +<p>The relations of Baudelaire and Edouard Manet were exceedingly cordial. +In a letter to Théophile Thoré, the art critic (Letters, p. 361), we +find Baudelaire defending his friend from the accusation that his +pictures were pastiches of Goya. He wrote: "Manet has never seen Goya, +never El Greco; he was never in the Pourtalés Gallery." Which may have +been true at the time, 1864, nevertheless Manet had visited Madrid and +spent much time studying Velasquez and abusing Spanish cookery. +(Consider, too, Goya's Balcony with Girls and Manet's famous Balcony.) +Raging at the charge of imitation, Baudelaire said in this same epistle: +"They accuse even me of imitating Edgar Poe.... Do you know why I so +patiently translated Poe? Because he resembled me." The poet italicized +these words. With stupefaction, therefore, he admired the mysterious +coincidences of Manet's work with that of Goya and El Greco.</p> + +<p>He took Manet seriously. He wrote to him in a paternal and severe tone. +Recall his reproof when urging the painter to exhibit his work. "You +complain about attacks, but are you the first to endure them? Have you +more genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by +derision. And in order not to make you too proud I must tell you that +they are models, each in his way, and in a very rich world, while you +are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." (Letters, p. 436.)</p> + +<p>Would Baudelaire recall these prophetic words if he were able to revisit +the glimpses of the Champs Elysées at the Autumn Salons? What would he +think of Cézanne? Odilon Redon he would understand, for he is the +transposer of Baudelairianism to terms of design and colour. And perhaps +the poet whose verse is saturated with tropical hues—he, when young, +sailed in southern seas—might appreciate the monstrous debauch of form +and colour in the Tahitian canvases of Paul Gauguin.</p> + +<p>Baudelaire's preoccupation with pictorial themes may be noted in his +verse. He is par excellence the poet of æsthetics. To Daumier he +inscribed a poem; and to the sculptor Ernest Christophe, to Delacroix +(Sur Tasse en Prison), to Manet, to Guys (Rêve Parisien), to an unknown +master (Une Martyre); and Watteau, a Watteau à rebours, is seen in Un +Voyage à Cythère; while in Les Phares this poet of the ideal, spleen +music, and perfume, shows his adoration for Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci, +Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Puget, Goya, Delacroix—"Delacroix, lac de sang +hanté des mauvais anges." And what is more exquisite than his quatrain +to Lola de Valence, a poetic inscription for the picture of Edouard +Manet, with its last line as vaporous, as subtle as Verlaine: "Le charme +inattendu d'un bijou rose et noir!" Heine called himself the last of the +Romantics. The first of the "Moderns" and the last of the Romantics was +the many-sided Charles Baudelaire.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>III</h3> + + +<p>He was born at Paris, April 9, 1821 (Flaubert's birth year), and not +April 21, as Gautier has it. His father was Joseph Francis Baudelaire, +or Baudelaire, who occupied a government position. A cultivated art +lover, his taste was apparent in the home he made for his second wife, +Caroline Archimbaut-Dufays, an orphan and the daughter of a military +officer. There was a considerable difference in the years of this pair; +the mother was twenty-seven, the father sixty-two, at the birth of their +only child. By his first marriage the elder Baudelaire had one son, +Claude, who, like his half-brother Charles, died of paralysis, though a +steady man of business. That great modern neurosis, called Commerce, has +its mental wrecks, too, and no one pays attention; but when a poet falls +by the wayside is the chase begun by neurologists and other soul-hunters +seeking victims. After the death of Baudelaire's father, the widow, +within a year, married the handsome, ambitious Aupick, then chef de +bataillon, lieutenant-colonel, decorated with the Legion of Honour, and +later general and ambassador to Madrid, Constantinople, and London. +Charles was a nervous, frail youth, but unlike most children of genius, +he was a scholar and won brilliant honours at school. His stepfather was +proud of him. From the Royal College of Lyons, Charles went to the Lycée +Louis-le-Grand, Paris, but was expelled in 1839, on various +discreditable charges. Troubles soon began at home. He was irascible, +vain, precocious, and given to dissipation. He quarreled with General +Aupick, and disdained his mother. But she was to blame, she has +confessed; she had quite forgotten the boy in the flush of her second +love. He could not forget, or forgive what he called her infidelity to +the memory of his father. Hamlet-like, he was inconsolable. The good +Bishop of Montpellier, who knew the family, said that Charles was a +little crazy—second marriages usually bring woe in their train. "When a +mother has such a son, she doesn't re-marry," said the young poet +Charles signed himself Baudelaire-Dufays, or sometimes Dufais. He wrote +in his journal: "My ancestors, idiots or maniacs ... all victims of +terrible passions"; which was one of his exaggerations. His grandfather +on the paternal side was a Champenois peasant, his mother's family +presumably Norman, but not much is known of her forbears. Charles +believed himself lost from the time his half-brother was stricken. He +also believed that his instability of temperament—and he studied his +"case" as would a surgeon—was the result of his parents' disparity in +years.</p> + +<p>After his return from the East, where he did not learn English as has +been said—his mother taught him as a boy to converse in and write the +language—he came into his little inheritance, about fifteen thousand +dollars. Two years later he was so heavily in debt that his family asked +for a guardian on the ground of incompetency. He had been swindled, +being young and green. How had he squandered his money? Not exactly on +opera-glasses, like Gérard de Nerval, but on clothes, pictures, +furniture, books. The remnant was set aside to pay his debts. Charles +would be both poet and dandy. He dressed expensively but soberly, in the +English fashion; his linen dazzling, the prevailing hue of his +habiliments black. In height he was medium, his eyes brown, searching, +luminous, the eye of a nyctalops, "eyes like ravens"; nostrils +palpitating, cleft chin, mouth expressive, sensual jaw, strong and +square. His hair was black, curly, glossy, his forehead high, square and +white. In the Deroy portrait he wears a beard; he is there what Catulle +Mendès nicknamed him: "His Excellence, Monseigneur Brummel!" Later he +was the elegiac Satan, the author of L'Imitation de N.S. le Diable; or +the Baudelaire of George Moore: "the clean-shaven face of the mock +priest, the slow cold eyes and the sharp cunning sneer of the cynical +libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness +of temptation." In the heyday of his blood he was perverse and +deliberate. Let us credit him with contradicting the Byronic notion that +ennui could best be cured by dissipation; in sin Baudelaire found the +saddest of all consolations. Mendès laughs at the legend of Baudelaire's +violence, of his being given to explosive phrases. Despite Gautier's +stories about the Hôtel Pimodan and its club of hasheesh-eaters, M. +Mendès denies that Baudelaire was a victim of the hemp. What the +majority of mankind does not know concerning the habits of literary +workers is this prime fact: men who work hard, writing verse—and there +is no mental toil comparable to it—cannot drink, or indulge in opium, +without inevitable collapse. The old-fashioned ideas of "inspiration," +spontaneity, easy improvisation, the sudden bolt from heaven, are +delusions still hugged by the world. To be told that Chopin filed at his +music for years, that Beethoven in his smithy forged his thunderbolts by +the sweat of his brow, that Manet toiled like a labourer on the dock, +that Baudelaire was a mechanic in his devotion to poetic work, that +Gautier was a hard-working journalist, are disillusions for the +sentimental. Minerva springing full-fledged from Jupiter's skull to the +desk of the poet is a pretty fancy; but Balsac and Flaubert did not +encourage this fancy. Work literally killed Poe, as it killed Jules de +Goncourt, Flaubert and Daudet. Maupassant went insane because he would +work and he would play the same day. Baudelaire worked and worried. His +debts haunted him his life long. His constitution was +flawed—Sainte-Beuve told him that he had worn out his nerves—from the +start, he was détraqué; but that his entire life was one huge debauch is +a nightmare of the moral police in some red cotton nightcap country.</p> + +<p>His period of mental production was not brief nor barren. He was a +student. Du Camp's charge that he was an ignorant man is disproved by +the variety and quality of his published work. His range of sympathies +was large. His mistake, in the eyes of his colleagues, was to write so +well about the seven arts. Versatility is seldom given its real +name—which is protracted labour. Baudelaire was one of the elect, an +aristocrat, who dealt with the quintessence of art; his delicate air of +a bishop, his exquisite manners, his modulated voice, aroused unusual +interest and admiration. He was a humanist of distinction; he has left a +hymn to Saint Francis in the Latin of the decadence. Baudelaire, like +Chopin, made more poignant the phrase, raised to a higher intensity the +expressiveness of art.</p> + +<p>Women played a commanding rôle in his life. They always do with any poet +worthy of the name, though few have been so frank in acknowledging this +as Baudelaire. Yet he was in love more with Woman than the individual. +The legend of the beautiful creature he brought from the East resolves +itself into the dismal affair with Jeanne Duval. He met her in Paris, +after he had been in the East. She sang at a café concert in Paris. She +was more brown than black. She was not handsome, not intelligent, not +good; yet he idealized her, for she was the source of half his +inspiration. To her were addressed those marvellous evocations of the +Orient, of perfume, tresses, delicious dawns on strange far-away seas +and "superb Byzant," domes that devils built. Baudelaire is the poet of +perfumes; he is also the patron saint of ennui. No one has so chanted +the praise of odours. His soul swims on perfume as do other souls on +music, he has sung. As he grew older he seemed to hunt for more acrid +odours; he often presents an elaborately chased vase the carving of +which transports us, but from which the head is quickly averted. Jeanne, +whom he never loved, no matter what may be said, was a sorceress. But +she was impossible; she robbed, betrayed him; he left her a dozen times +only to return. He was a capital draughtsman with a strong nervous line +and made many pen-and-ink drawings of her. They are not prepossessing. +In her rapid decline she was not allowed to want. Madame Aupick paid her +expenses in the hospital. A sordid history. She was a veritable flower +of evil for Baudelaire. Yet poetry, like music, would be colourless, +scentless, if it sounded no dissonances. Fancy art reduced to the +beatific and banal chord of C major!</p> + +<p>He fell in love with the celebrated Madame Sabatier, a reigning beauty, +at whose salon artistic Paris assembled. She had been christened by +Gautier Madame la Présidente, and her sumptuous beauty was portrayed by +Ricard in his La Femme au Chien. She returned Baudelaire's love. They +soon parted. Again a riddle which the published letters hardly solve. +One letter, however, does show that Baudelaire had tried to be faithful, +and failed. He could not extort from his exhausted soul the sentiment; +but he put its music on paper. His most seductive lyrics were addressed +to Madame Sabatier: "A la très chère, à la très-belle," a hymn saturated +with love. Music, spleen, perfumes—"colour, sound, perfumes call to +each other as deep to deep; perfumes like the flesh of children, soft as +hautboys, green as the meadows" —criminals, outcasts, the charm of +childhood, the horrors of love, pride, and rebellion, Eastern +landscapes, cats, soothing and false; cats, the true companions of +lonely poets; haunted clocks, shivering dusks, and gloomier +dawns—Paris in a hundred phases—these and many other themes this +strange-souled poet, this "Dante, pacer of the shore," of Paris has +celebrated in finely wrought verse and profound phrases. In a single +line he contrives atmosphere; the very shape of his sentence, the ring +of the syllables, arouse the deepest emotion. A master of harmonic +undertones is Baudelaire. His successors have excelled him in making +their music more fluid, more lyrical, more vapourous—many young French +poets pass through their Baudelarian green-sickness—but he alone knows +the secrets of moulding those metallic, free sonnets, which have the +resistance of bronze; and of the despairing music that flames from the +mouths of lost souls trembling on the wharves of hell. He is the supreme +master of irony and troubled voluptuousness.</p> + +<p>Baudelaire is a masculine poet. He carved rather than sang; the plastic +arts spoke to his soul. A lover and maker of images. Like Poe, his +emotions transformed themselves into ideas. Bourget classified him as +mystic, libertine, and analyst. He was born with a wound in his soul, to +use the phrase of Père Lacordaire. (Curiously enough, he actually +contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat +in the French Academy. Sainte-Beuve dissuaded him from this folly.) +Recall Baudelaire's prayer: "Thou, O Lord, my God, grant me the grace to +produce some fine lines which will prove to myself that I am not the +last of men, that I am not inferior to those I contemn." Individualist, +egoist, anarchist, his only thought was letters. Jules Laforgue thus +described Baudelaire: "Cat, Hindoo, Yankee, Episcopal, Alchemist." Yes, +an alchemist who suffocated in the fumes he created. He was of Gothic +imagination, and could have said with Rolla: "Je suis venu trop tard +dans un monde trop vieux." He had an unassuaged thirst for the absolute. +The human soul was his stage, he its interpreting orchestra.</p> + +<p>In 1857 The Flowers of Evil was published by Poulet-Malassis, who +afterward went into bankruptcy—a warning to publishers with a taste for +fine literature. The titles contemplated were Limbes, or Lesbiennes. +Hippolyte Babou suggested the one we know. These poems were suppressed +on account of six, and poet and publisher summoned. As the municipal +government had made a particular ass of itself in the prosecution of +Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary, the Baudelaire matter was +disposed of in haste. He was condemned to a fine of three hundred +francs, a fine which was never paid, as the objectionable poems were +removed. They were printed in the Belgian edition, and may be read in +the new volume, Å’uvres. Posthumes.</p> + +<p>Baudelaire was infuriated over the judgment, for he knew that his book +was dramatic in expression. He had expected, like Flaubert, to emerge +from the trial with flying colours; therefore to be classed as one who +wrote objectionable literature was a shock. "Flaubert had the Empress +back of him," he complained; which was true; the Empress Eugénie, also +the Princess Mathilde. But he worked as ever and put forth those +polished intaglios called Poems in Prose, for the form of which he had +taken a hint from Aloys Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit. He filled this +form with a new content; not alone pictures, but moods, are to be found +in those miniatures. Pity is their keynote, a tenderness for the abject +and lowly, a revelation of sensibility that surprised those critics who +had discerned in Baudelaire only a sculptor of evil. In one of his poems +he described a landscape of metal, of marble and water; a babel of +staircases and arcades, a palace of infinity, surrounded by the silence +of eternity. This depressing yet magical dream was utilized by Huysmans +in his A Rebours. But in the tiny landscapes of the Prose Poems there is +nothing rigid or artificial. Indeed, the poet's deliberate attitude of +artificiality is dropped. He is human. Not that the deep fundamental +note of humanity is ever absent in his poems; the eternal diapason is +there even when least overheard. Baudelaire is more human than Poe. His +range of sympathy is wider. In this he transcends him as a poet, though +his subject-matter often issues from the very dregs of life. Brother to +pitiable wanderers, there are, nevertheless, no traces of cant, no +"Russian pity" à la Dostoiëvsky, no humanitarian or socialistic +rhapsodies in his work. Baudelaire is an egoist He hated the sentimental +sapping of altruism. His prose-poem, Crowds, with its "bath of +multitude," may have been suggested by Poe; but in Charles Lamb we find +the idea: "Are there no solitudes out of caves and the desert? or +cannot the heart, in the midst of crowds, feel frightfully alone?"</p> + +<p>His best critical work is the Richard Wagner and Tannhauser, as +significant an essay as Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. And +Baudelaire's polemic appeared at a more critical period in Wagner's +career. Wagner sent a brief hearty letter of thanks to the critic, and +later made his acquaintance. To Wagner, Baudelaire introduced a young +Wagnerian, Villiers de l'Isle Adam. This Wagner letter is included in +the volume of Crépet; but there are no letters published from Baudelaire +to Franz Liszt, though they were friends. In Weimar I saw at the Liszt +Museum several from Baudelaire which should have been included in the +Letters. The poet understood Liszt and his reforms as he understood +Wagner. The German composer admired the French poet, and his Kundry, in +the sultry second act of Parsifal, has a Baudelairian hue, especially in +the temptation scene.</p> + +<p>The end was at hand. Baudelaire had been steadily, rather, unsteadily, +going downhill; a desperate figure, a dandy in shabby attire. He went +out only after dark, he haunted the exterior boulevards, associated +with birds of nocturnal plumage. He drank without thirst, ate without +hunger, as he has said. A woeful decadence for this aristocrat of life +and letters. Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged +his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre. He fled to +Brussels, there to rehabilitate his dwindling fortunes. He gave a few +lectures, and met Rops, Lemonnier, drank to forget, and forgot to work. +He abused Brussels, Belgium, its people. A country, he cried, where the +trees are black, the flowers without odour, and where there is no +conversation! He, the brilliant causeur, the chief blaguer of a circle +in which young James McNeill Whistler was reduced to the rôle of a +listener—this most spiritual among artists, found himself a failure in +the Belgian capital. It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that +Baudelaire was the creator of many of the paradoxes attributed, not only +to Whistler, but to an entire school—if one may employ such a phrase. +The frozen imperturbability of the poet, his cutting enunciation, his +power of blasphemy, his hatred of Nature, his love of the artificial, +have been copied by the æsthetic blades of our day. He it was who first +taunted Nature with being an imitator of art, with always being the +same. Oh, the imitative sunsets! Oh, the quotidian eating and drinking! +And as pessimist, too, he led the mode. Baudelaire, like Flaubert, +grasped the murky torch of pessimism once held by Chateaubriand, +Benjamin Constant, and Senancour. Doubtless, all this stemmed from +Byronism. And now it is as stale as Byronism.</p> + +<p>His health failed, and he lacked money enough to pay for doctor's +prescriptions; he even owed for the room in his hotel. At Namur, where +he was visiting the father-in-law of Felician Rops (March, 1866), he +suffered from an attack of paralysis. He was removed to Brussels. His +mother, who lived at Honneur, in mourning for her husband, came to his +aid. Taken to France, he was placed in a sanatorium. Aphasia set in. He +could only ejaculate a mild oath, and when he caught sight of himself in +the mirror he would bow pleasantly as if to a stranger. His friends +rallied, and they were among the most distinguished people in Paris, the +élite of souls. Ladies visited him, one or two playing Wagner on the +piano—which must have added a fresh nuance to death—and they brought +him flowers. He expressed his love for flowers and music to the last. He +could not bear the sight of his mother; she revived in him some painful +memories, but that passed, and he clamoured for her when she was absent. +If anyone mentioned the names of Wagner or Manet, he smiled. And with a +fixed stare, as if peering through some invisible window opening upon +eternity, he died, August 31, 1867, aged forty-six.</p> + +<p>Barbey d'Aurevilly himself a Satanist and dandy (oh, those comical old +attitudes of literature), had prophesied that the author of Fleurs du +Mal would either blow out his brains or prostrate himself at the foot of +the cross. (Later he said the same of Huysmans.) Baudelaire had the +alternative course forced upon him by fate after he had attempted +spiritual suicide for how many years? (He once tried actual suicide, but +the slight cut in his throat looked so ugly to him that he went no +farther.) His soul had been a battle-field for the powers of good and +evil. That at the end he brought the wreck of both soul and body to his +God should not be a subject for comment. He was an extraordinary poet +with a bad conscience, who lived miserably and was buried with honours. +Then it was that his worth was discovered (funeral orations over a +genius are a species of public staircase-wit). His reputation waxes with +the years. He is an exotic gem in the crown of French poetry. Of him +Swinburne has chanted Ave Atque Vale:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_FLOWERS_OF_EVIL" id="THE_FLOWERS_OF_EVIL"></a>THE FLOWERS OF EVIL</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_DANCE_OF_DEATH" id="THE_DANCE_OF_DEATH"></a>THE DANCE OF DEATH.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves,<br /> +Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves<br /> +With all the careless and high-stepping grace,<br /> +And the extravagant courtesan's thin face.<br /> +<br /> +Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed?<br /> +Her floating robe, in royal amplitude,<br /> +Palls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod<br /> +With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod.<br /> +<br /> +The swarms that hum about her collar-bones<br /> +As the lascivious streams caress the stones,<br /> +Conceal from every scornful jest that flies,<br /> +Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes<br /> +<br /> +Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays<br /> +Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways,<br /> +Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebræ.<br /> +O charm of nothing decked in folly! they<br /> +<br /> +Who laugh and name you a Caricature,<br /> +They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure,<br /> +The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone<br /> +That is most dear to me, tall skeleton!<br /> +<br /> +Come you to trouble with your potent sneer<br /> +The feast of Life! or are you driven here,<br /> +To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir<br /> +And goad your moving corpse on with a spur?<br /> +<br /> +Or do you hope, when sing the violins,<br /> +And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins,<br /> +To drive some mocking nightmare far apart,<br /> +And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart?<br /> +<br /> +Fathomless well of fault and foolishness!<br /> +Eternal alembic of antique distress!<br /> +Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides<br /> +The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides.<br /> +<br /> +And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find,<br /> +Among us here, no lover to your mind;<br /> +Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave?<br /> +The charms of horror please none but the brave.<br /> +<br /> +Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir,<br /> +Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller<br /> +Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath,<br /> +The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth.<br /> +<br /> +For he who has not folded in his arms<br /> +A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms,<br /> +Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent,<br /> +When Horror comes the way that Beauty went.<br /> +<br /> +O irresistible, with fleshless face,<br /> +Say to these dancers in their dazzled race:<br /> +"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones,<br /> +Ye shall taste death, musk-scented skeletons!<br /> +<br /> +Withered Antinous, dandies with plump faces,<br /> +Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces,<br /> +Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath,<br /> +Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death.<br /> +<br /> +From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream,<br /> +The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream;<br /> +They do not see, within the opened sky,<br /> +The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high.<br /> +<br /> +In every clime and under every sun,<br /> +Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run;<br /> +And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye<br /> +And mingles with your madness, irony!"<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_BEACONS" id="THE_BEACONS"></a>THE BEACONS.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +RUBENS, oblivious garden of indolence,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love,</span><br /> +Where life flows forth in troubled opulence,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As airs in heaven and seas in ocean move,</span><br /> +<br /> +LEONARD DA VINCI, sombre and fathomless glass,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile,</span><br /> +Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Among the ice and pines that guard some isle.</span><br /> +<br /> +REMBRANDT, sad hospital that a murmuring fills,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls,</span><br /> +Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls.</span><br /> +<br /> +Strong MICHELANGELO, a vague far place<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules;</span><br /> +Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease.</span><br /> +<br /> +The fighter's anger, the faun's impudence,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thou makest of all these a lovely thing;</span><br /> +Proud heart, sick body, mind's magnificence:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">PUGET, the convict's melancholy king.</span><br /> +<br /> +WATTEAU, the carnival of illustrious hearts,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fluttering like moths upon the wings of chance;</span><br /> +Bright lustres light the silk that flames and darts,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And pour down folly on the whirling dance.</span><br /> +<br /> +GOYA, a nightmare full of things unknown;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The fÅ“tus witches broil on Sabbath night;</span><br /> +Old women at the mirror; children lone<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who tempt old demons with their limbs delight.</span><br /> +<br /> +DELACROIX, lake of blood ill angels haunt,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where ever-green, o'ershadowing woods arise;</span><br /> +Under the surly heaven strange fanfares chaunt<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And pass, like one of Weber's strangled sighs.</span><br /> +<br /> +And malediction, blasphemy and groan,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ecstasies, cries, Te Deums, and tears of brine,</span><br /> +Are echoes through a thousand labyrinths flown;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For mortal hearts an opiate divine;</span><br /> +<br /> +A shout cried by a thousand sentinels,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">An order from a thousand bugles tossed,</span><br /> +A beacon o'er a thousand citadels,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A call to huntsmen in deep woodlands lost.</span><br /> +<br /> +It is the mightiest witness that could rise<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To prove our dignity, O Lord, to Thee;</span><br /> +This sob that rolls from age to age, and dies<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon the verge of Thy Eternity!</span><br /> +</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="THE_SADNESS_OF_THE_MOON" id="THE_SADNESS_OF_THE_MOON"></a>THE SADNESS OF THE MOON.</h3> + +<p class="margin-b"> +The Moon more indolently dreams to-night<br /> +Than a fair woman on her couch at rest.<br /> +Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,<br /> +Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.<br /> +<br /> +Upon her silken avalanche of down,<br /> +Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh;<br /> +And watches the white visions past her flown,<br /> +Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.<br /> +<br /> +And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep,<br /> +Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow,<br /> +Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,<br /> +<br /> +Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow<br /> +Whence gleams of iris and of opal start,<br /> +And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="EXOTIC_PERFUME" id="EXOTIC_PERFUME"></a>EXOTIC PERFUME.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +When with closed eyes in autumn's eves of gold<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I breathe the burning odours of your breast,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Before my eyes the hills of happy rest</span><br /> +Bathed in the sun's monotonous fires, unfold.<br /> +<br /> +Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where men are upright, maids have never grown</span><br /> +Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows.<br /> +<br /> +Led by that perfume to these lands of ease,<br /> +I see a port where many ships have flown<br /> +With sails outwearied of the wandering seas;<br /> +<br /> +While the faint odours from green tamarisks blown,<br /> +Float to my soul and in my senses throng,<br /> +And mingle vaguely with the sailor's song.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="BEAUTY" id="BEAUTY"></a>BEAUTY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +I am as lovely as a dream in stone,<br /> +And this my heart where each finds death in turn,<br /> +Inspires the poet with a love as lone<br /> +As clay eternal and as taciturn.<br /> +<br /> +Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,<br /> +My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;<br /> +I hate all movements that disturb my pose,<br /> +I smile not ever, neither do I weep.<br /> +<br /> +Before my monumental attitudes,<br /> +That breathe a soul into the plastic arts,<br /> +My poets pray in austere studious moods,<br /> +<br /> +For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,<br /> +Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,<br /> +The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_BALCONY" id="THE_BALCONY"></a>THE BALCONY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire,</span><br /> +Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The charm of evenings by the gentle fire,</span><br /> +Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses!<br /> +<br /> +The eves illumined by the burning coal,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings—</span><br /> +How soft your breast was then, how sweet your soul!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ah, and we said imperishable things,</span><br /> +Those eves illumined by the burning coal.<br /> +<br /> +Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And space profound, and strong life's pulsing flood,</span><br /> +In bending o'er you, queen of every charm,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood.</span><br /> +The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm.<br /> +<br /> +The film of night flowed round and over us,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet;</span><br /> +I drank your breath, ah! sweet and poisonous,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And in my hands fraternal slept your feet—</span><br /> +Night, like a film, flowed round and over us.<br /> +<br /> +I can recall those happy days forgot,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past.</span><br /> +Your languid beauties now would move me not<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Did not your gentle heart and body cast</span><br /> +The old spell of those happy days forgot.<br /> +<br /> +Can vows and perfumes, kisses infinite,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Be reborn from the gulf we cannot sound;</span><br /> +As rise to heaven suns once again made bright<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">After being plunged in deep seas and profound?</span><br /> +Ah, vows and perfumes, kisses infinite!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SICK_MUSE" id="THE_SICK_MUSE"></a>THE SICK MUSE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day?<br /> +Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn,<br /> +Upon thy brow in alternation play,<br /> +Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn.<br /> +<br /> +Have the green lemure and the goblin red,<br /> +Poured on thee love and terror from their urn?<br /> +Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread<br /> +Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne?<br /> +<br /> +Would that thy breast where so deep thoughts arise,<br /> +Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs;<br /> +Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave<br /> +<br /> +In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave,<br /> +When PhÅ“bus shared his alternating reign<br /> +With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_VENAL_MUSE" id="THE_VENAL_MUSE"></a>THE VENAL MUSE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Muse of my heart, lover of palaces,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When January comes with wind and sleet,</span><br /> +During the snowy eve's long wearinesses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet?</span><br /> +<br /> +Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shoulders<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the moon-beams that through the window fly?</span><br /> +Or when thy purse dries up, thy palace moulders,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reap the far star-gold of the vaulted sky?</span><br /> +<br /> +For thou, to keep thy body to thy soul,<br /> +Must swing a censer, wear a holy stole,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And chaunt Te Deums with unbelief between.</span><br /> +<br /> +Or, like a starving mountebank, expose<br /> +Thy beauty and thy tear-drowned smile to those<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who wait thy jeste to drive away thy spleen.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_EVIL_MONK" id="THE_EVIL_MONK"></a>THE EVIL MONK.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +The ancient cloisters on their lofty walls<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had holy Truth in painted frescoes shown,</span><br /> +And, seeing these, the pious in those halls<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Felt their cold, lone austereness less alone.</span><br /> +<br /> +At that time when Christ's seed flowered all around,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">More than one monk, forgotten in his hour,</span><br /> +Taking for studio the burial-ground,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Glorified Death with simple faith and power.</span><br /> +<br /> +And my soul is a sepulchre where I,<br /> +Ill cenobite, have spent eternity:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the vile cloister walls no pictures rise.</span><br /> +<br /> +O when may I cast off this weariness,<br /> +And make the pageant of my old distress<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For these hands labour, pleasure for these eyes?</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_TEMPTATION" id="THE_TEMPTATION"></a>THE TEMPTATION.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +The Demon, in my chamber high.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This morning came to visit me,</span><br /> +And, thinking he would find some fault,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He whispered: "I would know of thee</span><br /> +<br /> +Among the many lovely things<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That make the magic of her face,</span><br /> +Among the beauties, black and rose,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That make her body's charm and grace,</span><br /> +<br /> +Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To the Abhorred, O soul of mine:</span><br /> +"No single beauty is the best<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When she is all one flower divine.</span><br /> +<br /> +When all things charm me I ignore<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which one alone brings most delight;</span><br /> +She shines before me like the dawn,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And she consoles me like the night.</span><br /> +<br /> +The harmony is far too great,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That governs all her body fair,</span><br /> +For impotence to analyse<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And say which note is sweetest there.</span><br /> +<br /> +O mystic metamorphosis!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My senses into one sense flow—</span><br /> +Her voice makes perfume when she speaks,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her breath is music faint and low!"</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_IRREPARABLE" id="THE_IRREPARABLE"></a>THE IRREPARABLE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Can we suppress the old Remorse<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who bends our heart beneath his stroke,</span><br /> +Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or as the acorn on the oak?</span><br /> +Can we suppress the old Remorse!<br /> +<br /> +Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">May we drown this our ancient foe,</span><br /> +Destructive glutton, gorging well,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Patient as the ants, and slow?</span><br /> +What wine, what philtre, or what spell?<br /> +<br /> +Tell it, enchantress, if you can,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tell me, with anguish overcast,</span><br /> +Wounded, as a dying man,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past.</span><br /> +Tell it, enchantress, if you can,<br /> +<br /> +To him the wolf already tears<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who sees the carrion pinions wave,</span><br /> +This broken warrior who despairs<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To have a cross above his grave—</span><br /> +This wretch the wolf already tears.<br /> +<br /> +Can one illume a leaden sky,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or tear apart the shadowy veil</span><br /> +Thicker than pitch, no star on high,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not one funereal glimmer pale</span><br /> +Can one illume a leaden sky?<br /> +<br /> +Hope lit the windows of the Inn,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But now that shining flame is dead;</span><br /> +And how shall martyred pilgrims win<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Along the moonless road they tread?</span><br /> +Satan has darkened all the Inn!<br /> +<br /> +Witch, do you love accursèd hearts?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Say, do you know the reprobate?</span><br /> +Know you Remorse, whose venomed darts<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Make souls the targets for their hate?</span><br /> +Witch, do you know accursèd hearts?<br /> +<br /> +The Might-have-been with tooth accursed<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gnaws at the piteous souls of men,</span><br /> +The deep foundations suffer first,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And all the structure crumbles then</span><br /> +Beneath the bitter tooth accursed. +</p> + +<h4>II.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +Often, when seated at the play,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And sonorous music lights the stage,</span><br /> +I see the frail hand of a Fay<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With magic dawn illume the rage</span><br /> +Of the dark sky. Oft at the play<br /> +<br /> +A being made of gauze and fire<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Casts to the earth a Demon great.</span><br /> +And my heart, whence all hopes expire,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is like a stage where I await,</span><br /> +In vain, the Fay with wings of fire!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="A_FORMER_LIFE" id="A_FORMER_LIFE"></a>A FORMER LIFE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes,<br /> +By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired,<br /> +Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows,<br /> +Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired.<br /> +<br /> +The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies<br /> +Mingled its music, turbulent and rich,<br /> +Solemn and mystic, with the colours which<br /> +The setting sun reflected in my eyes.<br /> +<br /> +And there I lived amid voluptuous calms,<br /> +In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave,<br /> +Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave,<br /> +<br /> +Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms.<br /> +They were my slaves—the only care they had<br /> +To know what secret grief had made me sad.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="DON_JUAN_IN_HADES" id="DON_JUAN_IN_HADES"></a>DON JUAN IN HADES.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +When Juan sought the subterranean flood.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore.</span><br /> +Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stood<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With one strong, vengeful hand on either oar.</span><br /> +<br /> +With open robes and bodies agonised,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lost women writhed beneath that darkling sky;</span><br /> +There were sounds as of victims sacrificed:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Behind him all the dark was one long cry.</span><br /> +<br /> +And Sganarelle, with laughter, claimed his pledge;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Don Luis, with trembling finger in the air,</span><br /> +Showed to the souls who wandered in the sedge<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The evil son who scorned his hoary hair.</span><br /> +<br /> +Shivering with woe, chaste Elvira the while,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Near him untrue to all but her till now,</span><br /> +Seemed to beseech him for one farewell smile<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lit with the sweetness of the first soft vow.</span><br /> +<br /> +And clad in armour, a tall man of stone<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Held firm the helm, and clove the gloomy flood;</span><br /> +But, staring at the vessel's track alone,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bent on his sword the unmoved hero stood.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_LIVING_FLAME" id="THE_LIVING_FLAME"></a>THE LIVING FLAME.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +They pass before me, these Eyes full of light,<br /> +Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise;<br /> +The holy brothers pass before my sight,<br /> +And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes.<br /> +<br /> +They keep me from all sin and error grave,<br /> +They set me in the path whence Beauty came;<br /> +They are my servants, and I am their slave,<br /> +And all my soul obeys the living flame.<br /> +<br /> +Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light<br /> +As candles lighted at full noon; the sun<br /> +Dims not your flame phantastical and bright.<br /> +<br /> +You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done;<br /> +Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn,<br /> +Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="CORRESPONDENCES" id="CORRESPONDENCES"></a>CORRESPONDENCES.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +In Nature's temple living pillars rise,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And words are murmured none have understood.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And man must wander through a tangled wood</span><br /> +Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes.<br /> +<br /> +As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mingle to one deep sound and fade away;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vast as the night and brilliant as the day,</span><br /> +Colour and sound and perfume speak to him.<br /> +<br /> +Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green;</span><br /> +Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild,<br /> +<br /> +Have all the expansion of things infinite:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin,</span><br /> +Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_FLASK" id="THE_FLASK"></a>THE FLASK.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +There are some powerful odours that can pass<br /> +Out of the stoppered flagon; even glass<br /> +To them is porous. Oft when some old box<br /> +Brought from the East is opened and the locks<br /> +And hinges creak and cry; or in a press<br /> +In some deserted house, where the sharp stress<br /> +Of odours old and dusty fills the brain;<br /> +An ancient flask is brought to light again,<br /> +And forth the ghosts of long-dead odours creep.<br /> +There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep<br /> +A thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides,<br /> +Phantoms of old the folding darkness hides,<br /> +Who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold,<br /> +Rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold. +</p> + +<p class="margin-b"> +A memory that brings languor flutters here:<br /> +The fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear<br /> +Thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit<br /> +Where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet,<br /> +Arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost<br /> +Of an old passion, long since loved and lost.<br /> +So I, when vanished from man's memory<br /> +Deep in some dark and sombre chest I lie.<br /> +An empty flagon they have cast aside,<br /> +Broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride,<br /> +Will be your shroud, beloved pestilence!<br /> +The witness of your might and virulence,<br /> +Sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup<br /> +Of life and death my heart has drunken up!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="REVERSIBILITY" id="REVERSIBILITY"></a>REVERSIBILITY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the vague terrors of the fearful night</span><br /> +That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf?<br /> +Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief?<br /> +<br /> +Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With hands clenched in the shade and tears of gall,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When Vengeance beats her hellish battle-call,</span><br /> +And makes herself the captain of our fate,<br /> +Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate?<br /> +<br /> +Angel of health, did ever you know pain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which like an exile trails his tired footfalls</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The cold length of the white infirmary walls,</span><br /> +With lips compressed, seeking the sun in vain?<br /> +Angel of health, did ever you know pain?<br /> +<br /> +Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Know you the fear of age, the torment vile</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of reading secret horror in the smile</span><br /> +Of eyes your eyes have loved since long ago?<br /> +Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know?<br /> +<br /> +Angel of happiness, and joy, and light,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Old David would have asked for youth afresh</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the pure touch of your enchanted flesh;</span><br /> +I but implore your prayers to aid my plight,<br /> +Angel of happiness, and joy, and light.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_EYES_OF_BEAUTY" id="THE_EYES_OF_BEAUTY"></a>THE EYES OF BEAUTY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose;<br /> +But all the sea of sadness in my blood<br /> +Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose,<br /> +Salt with the memory of the bitter flood.<br /> +<br /> +In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er,<br /> +That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate<br /> +By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more<br /> +Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate.<br /> +<br /> +It is a ruin where the jackals rest,<br /> +And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay—<br /> +A perfume swims about your naked breast!<br /> +<br /> +Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way!<br /> +With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared<br /> +Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="SONNET_OF_AUTUMN" id="SONNET_OF_AUTUMN"></a>SONNET OF AUTUMN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?"</span><br /> +Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All save that antique brute-like faith of thine;</span><br /> +<br /> +And will not bare the secret of their shame<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long,</span><br /> +Nor their black legend write for thee in flame!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Passion I hate, a spirit does me wrong.</span><br /> +<br /> +Let us love gently. Love, from his retreat,<br /> +Ambushed and shadowy, bends his fatal bow,<br /> +And I too well his ancient arrows know:<br /> +<br /> +Crime, horror, folly. O pale marguerite,<br /> +Thou art as I, a bright sun fallen low,<br /> +O my so white, my so cold Marguerite.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_REMORSE_OF_THE_DEAD" id="THE_REMORSE_OF_THE_DEAD"></a>THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the deep heart of a black marble tomb;</span><br /> +When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom;</span><br /> +<br /> +And when the stone upon thy trembling breast,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace,</span><br /> +Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And holds those feet from their adventurous race;</span><br /> +<br /> +Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie,<br /> +(For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend)<br /> +During long nights when sleep is far from thee,<br /> +<br /> +Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend<br /> +The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"—<br /> +And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_GHOST" id="THE_GHOST"></a>THE GHOST.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove<br /> +I will return to thy alcove.<br /> +And glide upon the night to thee,<br /> +Treading the shadows silently.<br /> +<br /> +And I will give to thee, my own,<br /> +Kisses as icy as the moon,<br /> +And the caresses of a snake<br /> +Cold gliding in the thorny brake.<br /> +<br /> +And when returns the livid morn<br /> +Thou shalt find all my place forlorn<br /> +And chilly, till the falling night.<br /> +<br /> +Others would rule by tenderness<br /> +Over thy life and youthfulness,<br /> +But I would conquer thee by fright!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="TO_A_MADONNA" id="TO_A_MADONNA"></a>TO A MADONNA.</h3> + +<p>(<i>An Ex-Voto in the Spanish taste</i>.)</p> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Madonna, mistress. I would build for thee<br /> +An altar deep in the sad soul of me;<br /> +And in the darkest corner of my heart,<br /> +From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart,<br /> +Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine<br /> +For thee to stand erect in, Image divine!<br /> +And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crowned<br /> +Wrought of the gold of my smooth Verse, set round<br /> +With starry crystal rhymes; and I will make,<br /> +O mortal maid, a Mantle for thy sake,<br /> +And weave it of my jealousy, a gown<br /> +Heavy, barbaric, stiff, and weighted down<br /> +With my distrust, and broider round the hem<br /> +Not pearls, but all my tears in place of them.<br /> +And then thy wavering, trembling robe shall be<br /> +All the desires that rise and fall in me<br /> +From mountain-peaks to valleys of repose,<br /> +Kissing thy lovely body's white and rose.<br /> +For thy humiliated feet divine,<br /> +Of my Respect I'll make thee Slippers fine<br /> +Which, prisoning them within a gentle fold,<br /> +<br /> +Shall keep their imprint like a faithful mould.<br /> +And if my art, unwearying and discreet,<br /> +Can make no Moon of Silver for thy feet<br /> +To have for Footstool, then thy heel shall rest<br /> +Upon the snake that gnaws within my breast,<br /> +Victorious Queen of whom our hope is born!<br /> +And thou shalt trample down and make a scorn<br /> +Of the vile reptile swollen up with hate.<br /> +And thou shalt see my thoughts, all consecrate,<br /> +Like candles set before thy flower-strewn shrine,<br /> +O Queen of Virgins, and the taper-shine<br /> +Shall glimmer star-like in the vault of blue,<br /> +With eyes of flame for ever watching you.<br /> +While all the love and worship in my sense<br /> +Will be sweet smoke of myrrh and frankincense.<br /> +Ceaselessly up to thee, white peak of snow,<br /> +My stormy spirit will in vapours go!<br /> +<br /> +And last, to make thy drama all complete,<br /> +That love and cruelty may mix and meet,<br /> +I, thy remorseful torturer, will take<br /> +All the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them make<br /> +In darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen,<br /> +And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen,<br /> +That spot profound whence love and mercy start,<br /> +I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SKY" id="THE_SKY"></a>THE SKY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Where'er he be, on water or on land,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold;</span><br /> +One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shadowy beggar or CrÅ“sus rich with gold;</span><br /> +<br /> +Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His little brain may be, alive or dead;</span><br /> +Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead.</span><br /> +<br /> +The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall;<br /> +The lighted ceiling of a music-hall<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where every actor treads a bloody soil—</span><br /> +<br /> +The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot;<br /> +The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where the vast human generations boil!</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="SPLEEN" id="SPLEEN"></a>SPLEEN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins<br /> +Flows aged blood; who rules a land of rains;<br /> +Who, young in years, is old in all distress;<br /> +Who flees good counsel to find weariness<br /> +Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred<br /> +Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird;<br /> +Whose weary face emotion moves no more<br /> +E'en when his people die before his door.<br /> +His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile<br /> +Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile;<br /> +The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good,<br /> +Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood<br /> +No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom<br /> +Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb.<br /> +The sage who takes his gold essays in vain<br /> +To purge away the old corrupted strain,<br /> +His baths of blood, that in the days of old<br /> +The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold,<br /> +Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains,<br /> +For green Lethean water fills his veins.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_OWLS" id="THE_OWLS"></a>THE OWLS.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Under the overhanging yews,<br /> +The dark owls sit in solemn state.<br /> +Like stranger gods; by twos and twos<br /> +Their red eyes gleam. They meditate.<br /> +<br /> +Motionless thus they sit and dream<br /> +Until that melancholy hour<br /> +When, with the sun's last fading gleam,<br /> +The nightly shades assume their power.<br /> +<br /> +From their still attitude the wise<br /> +Will learn with terror to despise<br /> +All tumult, movement, and unrest;<br /> +<br /> +For he who follows every shade,<br /> +Carries the memory in his breast,<br /> +Of each unhappy journey made.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="BIEN_LOIN_DICI" id="BIEN_LOIN_DICI"></a>BIEN LOIN D'ICI.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Here is the chamber consecrate,<br /> +Wherein this maiden delicate,<br /> +And enigmatically sedate,<br /> +<br /> +Fans herself while the moments creep,<br /> +Upon her cushions half-asleep,<br /> +And hears the fountains plash and weep.<br /> +<br /> +Dorothy's chamber undefiled.<br /> +The winds and waters sing afar<br /> +Their song of sighing strange and wild<br /> +To lull to sleep the petted child.<br /> +<br /> +From head to foot with subtle care,<br /> +Slaves have perfumed her delicate skin<br /> +With odorous oils and benzoin.<br /> +And flowers faint in a corner there.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="MUSIC" id="MUSIC"></a>MUSIC.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Music doth oft uplift me like a sea<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Towards my planet pale,</span><br /> +Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinity<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I lift my wandering sail.</span><br /> +<br /> +With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And through the cordage wail,</span><br /> +I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beneath her sombre veil.</span><br /> +<br /> +I feel the tremblings of all passions known<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To ships before the breeze;</span><br /> +Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I pass the abysmal seas</span><br /> +That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of my despair!</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="CONTEMPLATION" id="CONTEMPLATION"></a>CONTEMPLATION.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Thou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still,<br /> +The eve is thine which even now drops down,<br /> +To carry peace or care to human will,<br /> +And in a misty veil enfolds the town.<br /> +<br /> +While the vile mortals of the multitude,<br /> +By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on,<br /> +Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood—<br /> +Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone<br /> +<br /> +Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years,<br /> +In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim;<br /> +And from the water, smiling through her tears,<br /> +<br /> +Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim;<br /> +And in the east, her long shroud trailing light,<br /> +List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="TO_A_BROWN_BEGGAR-MAID" id="TO_A_BROWN_BEGGAR-MAID"></a>TO A BROWN BEGGAR-MAID.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +White maiden with the russet hair,<br /> +Whose garments, through their holes, declare<br /> +That poverty is part of you,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And beauty too.</span><br /> +<br /> +To me, a sorry bard and mean,<br /> +Your youthful beauty, frail and lean,<br /> +With summer freckles here and there,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Is sweet and fair.</span><br /> +<br /> +Your sabots tread the roads of chance,<br /> +And not one queen of old romance<br /> +Carried her velvet shoes and lace<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With half your grace.</span><br /> +<br /> +In place of tatters far too short<br /> +Let the proud garments worn at Court<br /> +Fall down with rustling fold and pleat<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">About your feet;</span><br /> +<br /> +In place of stockings, worn and old,<br /> +Let a keen dagger all of gold<br /> +Gleam in your garter for the eyes<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of roués wise;</span><br /> +<br /> +Let ribbons carelessly untied<br /> +Reveal to us the radiant pride<br /> +Of your white bosom purer far<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Than any star;</span><br /> +<br /> +Let your white arms uncovered shine.<br /> +Polished and smooth and half divine;<br /> +And let your elfish fingers chase<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With riotous grace</span><br /> +<br /> +The purest pearls that softly glow.<br /> +The sweetest sonnets of Belleau,<br /> +Offered by gallants ere they fight<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For your delight;</span><br /> +<br /> +And many fawning rhymers who<br /> +Inscribe their first thin book to you<br /> +Will contemplate upon the stair<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Your slipper fair;</span><br /> +<br /> +And many a page who plays at cards,<br /> +And many lords and many bards,<br /> +Will watch your going forth, and burn<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For your return;</span><br /> +<br /> +And you will count before your glass<br /> +More kisses than the lily has;<br /> +And more than one Valois will sigh<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">When you pass by.</span><br /> +<br /> +But meanwhile you are on the tramp,<br /> +Begging your living in the damp,<br /> +Wandering mean streets and alleys o'er,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From door to door;</span><br /> +<br /> +And shilling bangles in a shop<br /> +Cause you with eager eyes to stop,<br /> +And I, alas, have not a son<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To give to you.</span><br /> +<br /> +Then go, with no more ornament,<br /> +Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent,<br /> +Than your own fragile naked grace<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And lovely face.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SWAN" id="THE_SWAN"></a>THE SWAN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Andromache, I think of you! The stream,<br /> +The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days<br /> +Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief,<br /> +The lying Simoïs flooded by your tears,<br /> +Made all my fertile memory blossom forth<br /> +As I passed by the new-built Carrousel.<br /> +Old Paris is no more (a town, alas,<br /> +Changes more quickly than man's heart may change);<br /> +Yet in my mind I still can see the booths;<br /> +The heaps of brick and rough-hewn capitals;<br /> +The grass; the stones all over-green with moss;<br /> +The <i>débris</i>, and the square-set heaps of tiles.<br /> +<br /> +There a menagerie was once outspread;<br /> +And there I saw, one morning at the hour<br /> +When toil awakes beneath the cold, clear sky,<br /> +And the road roars upon the silent air,<br /> +A swan who had escaped his cage, and walked<br /> +On the dry pavement with his webby feet,<br /> +And trailed his spotless plumage on the ground.<br /> +<br /> +And near a waterless stream the piteous swan<br /> +Opened his beak, and bathing in the dust<br /> +His nervous wings, he cried (his heart the while<br /> +Filled with a vision of his own fair lake):<br /> +"O water, when then wilt thou come in rain?<br /> +Lightning, when wilt thou glitter?"<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 18.5em;">Sometimes yet</span><br /> +I see the hapless bird—strange, fatal myth—<br /> +Like him that Ovid writes of, lifting up<br /> +Unto the cruelly blue, ironic heavens,<br /> +With stretched, convulsive neck a thirsty face,<br /> +As though he sent reproaches up to God! +</p> +<h4>II.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +Paris may change; my melancholy is fixed.<br /> +New palaces, and scaffoldings, and blocks,<br /> +And suburbs old, are symbols all to me<br /> +Whose memories are as heavy as a stone.<br /> +And so, before the Louvre, to vex my soul,<br /> +The image came of my majestic swan<br /> +With his mad gestures, foolish and sublime,<br /> +As of an exile whom one great desire<br /> +Gnaws with no truce. And then I thought of you,<br /> +Andromache! torn from your hero's arms;<br /> +Beneath the hand of Pyrrhus in his pride;<br /> +<br /> +Bent o'er an empty tomb in ecstasy;<br /> +Widow of Hector—wife of Helenus!<br /> +And of the negress, wan and phthisical,<br /> +Tramping the mud, and with her haggard eyes<br /> +Seeking beyond the mighty walls of fog<br /> +The absent palm-trees of proud Africa;<br /> +Of all who lose that which they never find;<br /> +Of all who drink of tears; all whom grey grief<br /> +Gives suck to as the kindly wolf gave suck;<br /> +Of meagre orphans who like blossoms fade.<br /> +And one old Memory like a crying horn<br /> +Sounds through the forest where my soul is lost....<br /> +I think of sailors on some isle forgotten;<br /> +Of captives; vanquished ... and of many more.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SEVEN_OLD_MEN" id="THE_SEVEN_OLD_MEN"></a>THE SEVEN OLD MEN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +O swarming city, city full of dreams,<br /> +Where in full day the spectre walks and speaks;<br /> +Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins<br /> +My story flows as flows the rising sap.<br /> +<br /> +One morn, disputing with my tired soul,<br /> +And like a hero stiffening all my nerves,<br /> +I trod a suburb shaken by the jar<br /> +Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified<br /> +The houses either side of that sad street,<br /> +So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood<br /> +Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist,<br /> +Unclean and yellow, inundated space—<br /> +A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul.<br /> +Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags<br /> +Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks<br /> +Should have brought alms in floods upon his head,<br /> +Without the misery gleaming in his eye,<br /> +Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed<br /> +To have been washed with gall; the bitter frost<br /> +Sharpened his glance; and from his chin a beard<br /> +Sword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth.<br /> +He was not bent but broken: his backbone<br /> +Made a so true right angle with his legs,<br /> +That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gave<br /> +The finish to the picture, made him seem<br /> +Like some infirm and stumbling quadruped<br /> +Or a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mud<br /> +He walked with troubled and uncertain gait,<br /> +As though his sabots trod upon the dead,<br /> +Indifferent and hostile to the world.<br /> +<br /> +His double followed him: tatters and stick<br /> +And back and eye and beard, all were the same;<br /> +Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable,<br /> +These centenarian twins, these spectres odd,<br /> +Trod the same pace toward some end unknown.<br /> +To what fell complot was I then exposed!<br /> +Humiliated by what evil chance?<br /> +For as the minutes one by one went by<br /> +Seven times I saw this sinister old man<br /> +Repeat his image there before my eyes!<br /> +<br /> +Let him who smiles at my inquietude,<br /> +Who never trembled at a fear like mine,<br /> +Know that in their decrepitude's despite<br /> +These seven old hideous monsters had the mien<br /> +Of beings immortal.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Then, I thought, must I,</span><br /> +Undying, contemplate the awful eighth;<br /> +Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double;<br /> +Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself<br /> +And his own son! In terror then I turned<br /> +My back upon the infernal band, and fled<br /> +To my own place, and closed my door; distraught<br /> +And like a drunkard who sees all things twice,<br /> +With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick,<br /> +Wounded by mystery and absurdity!<br /> +<br /> +In vain my reason tried to cross the bar,<br /> +The whirling storm but drove her back again;<br /> +And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck,<br /> +Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_LITTLE_OLD_WOMEN" id="THE_LITTLE_OLD_WOMEN"></a>THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Deep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns,<br /> +Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns,<br /> +I watch, obedient to my fatal mood,<br /> +For the decrepit, strange and charming beings,<br /> +The dislocated monsters that of old<br /> +Were lovely women—Laïs or Eponine!<br /> +Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be,<br /> +Let us still love them, for they still have souls.<br /> +They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags,<br /> +Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind,<br /> +They tremble when an omnibus rolls by,<br /> +And at their sides, a relic of the past,<br /> +A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs.<br /> +They trot about, most like to marionettes;<br /> +They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast;<br /> +Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bell<br /> +Where hangs and swings a demon without pity.<br /> +Though they be broken they have piercing eyes,<br /> +That shine like pools where water sleeps at night;<br /> +The astonished and divine eyes of a child<br /> +Who laughs at all that glitters in the world.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="margin-b"> +Have you not seen that most old women's shrouds<br /> +Are little like the shroud of a dead child?<br /> +Wise Death, in token of his happy whim,<br /> +Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet.<br /> +And when I see a phantom, frail and wan,<br /> +Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris,<br /> +It ever seems as though the delicate thing<br /> +Trod with soft steps towards a cradle new.<br /> +And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form,<br /> +How many times must workmen change the shape<br /> +Of boxes where at length such limbs are laid?<br /> +These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears;<br /> +Crucibles where the cooling metal pales—<br /> +Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to him<br /> +Whose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster. +</p> + +<h4>II.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +The love-sick vestal of the old "Frasciti";<br /> +Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose name<br /> +Only the prompter knows and he is dead;<br /> +Bygone celebrities that in bygone days<br /> +The Tivoli o'ershadowed in their bloom;<br /> +All charm me; yet among these beings frail<br /> +Three, turning pain to honey-sweetness, said<br /> +To the Devotion that had lent them wings:<br /> +"Lift me, O powerful Hippogriffe, to the skies"—<br /> +One by her country to despair was driven;<br /> +One by her husband overwhelmed with grief;<br /> +One wounded by her child, Madonna-like;<br /> +Each could have made a river with her tears. +</p> + +<h4>III.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +Oft have I followed one of these old women,<br /> +One among others, when the falling sun<br /> +Reddened the heavens with a crimson wound—<br /> +Pensive, apart, she rested on a bench<br /> +To hear the brazen music of the band,<br /> +Played by the soldiers in the public park<br /> +To pour some courage into citizens' hearts,<br /> +On golden eves when all the world revives.<br /> +Proud and erect she drank the music in,<br /> +The lively and the warlike call to arms;<br /> +Her eyes blinked like an ancient eagle's eyes;<br /> +Her forehead seemed to await the laurel crown! +</p> + +<h4>IV.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +Thus you do wander, uncomplaining Stoics,<br /> +Through all the chaos of the living town:<br /> +Mothers with bleeding hearts, saints, courtesans,<br /> +Whose names of yore were on the lips of all;<br /> +Who were all glory and all grace, and now<br /> +None know you; and the brutish drunkard stops,<br /> +Insulting you with his derisive love;<br /> +And cowardly urchins call behind your back.<br /> +Ashamed of living, withered shadows all,<br /> +With fear-bowed backs you creep beside the walls,<br /> +And none salute you, destined to loneliness!<br /> +Refuse of Time ripe for Eternity!<br /> +But I, who watch you tenderly afar,<br /> +With unquiet eyes on your uncertain steps,<br /> +As though I were your father, I—O wonder!—<br /> +Unknown to you taste secret, hidden joy.<br /> +I see your maiden passions bud and bloom,<br /> +Sombre or luminous, and your lost days<br /> +Unroll before me while my heart enjoys<br /> +All your old vices, and my soul expands<br /> +To all the virtues that have once been yours.<br /> +Ruined! and my sisters! O congenerate hearts,<br /> +Octogenarian Eves o'er whom is stretched<br /> +God's awful claw, where will you be to-morrow?<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="A_MADRIGAL_OF_SORROW" id="A_MADRIGAL_OF_SORROW"></a>A MADRIGAL OF SORROW.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +What do I care though you be wise?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Be sad, be beautiful; your tears</span><br /> +But add one more charm to your eyes,<br /> +As streams to valleys where they rise;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And fairer every flower appears</span><br /> +<br /> +After the storm. I love you most<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When joy has fled your brow downcast;</span><br /> +When your heart is in horror lost,<br /> +And o'er your present like a ghost<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Floats the dark shadow of the past.</span><br /> +<br /> +I love you when the teardrop flows,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hotter than blood, from your large eye;</span><br /> +When I would hush you to repose<br /> +Your heavy pain breaks forth and grows<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Into a loud and tortured cry.</span><br /> +<br /> +And then, voluptuousness divine!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Delicious ritual and profound!</span><br /> +I drink in every sob like wine,<br /> +And dream that in your deep heart shine<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The pearls wherein your eyes were drowned.</span><br /> +<br /> +I know your heart, which overflows<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With outworn loves long cast aside,</span><br /> +Still like a furnace flames and glows,<br /> +And you within your breast enclose<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A damnèd soul's unbending pride;</span><br /> +<br /> +But till your dreams without release<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reflect the leaping flames of hell;</span><br /> +Till in a nightmare without cease<br /> +You dream of poison to bring peace,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And love cold steel and powder well;</span><br /> +<br /> +And tremble at each opened door,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And feel for every man distrust,</span><br /> +And shudder at the striking hour—<br /> +Till then you have not felt the power<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of Irresistible Disgust.</span><br /> +<br /> +My queen, my slave, whose love is fear,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When you awaken shuddering,</span><br /> +Until that awful hour be here,<br /> +You cannot say at midnight drear:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"I am your equal, O my King!"</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_IDEAL" id="THE_IDEAL"></a>THE IDEAL.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Not all the beauties in old prints vignetted,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The worthless products of an outworn age,</span><br /> +With slippered feet and fingers castanetted,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The thirst of hearts like this heart can assuage.</span><br /> +<br /> +To Gavarni, the poet of chloroses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I leave his troupes of beauties sick and wan;</span><br /> +I cannot find among these pale, pale roses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The red ideal mine eyes would gaze upon.</span><br /> +<br /> +Lady Macbeth, the lovely star of crime,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Greek poet's dream born in a northern clime—</span><br /> +Ah, she could quench my dark heart's deep desiring;<br /> +<br /> +Or Michelangelo's dark daughter Night,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In a strange posture dreamily admiring</span><br /> +Her beauty fashioned for a giant's delight!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="MIST_AND_RAIN" id="MIST_AND_RAIN"></a>MIST AND RAIN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Autumns and winters, springs of mire and rain,<br /> +Seasons of sleep, I sing your praises loud,<br /> +For thus I love to wrap my heart and brain<br /> +In some dim tomb beneath a vapoury shroud<br /> +<br /> +In the wide plain where revels the cold wind,<br /> +Through long nights when the weathercock whirls round,<br /> +More free than in warm summer day my mind<br /> +Lifts wide her raven pinions from the ground.<br /> +<br /> +Unto a heart filled with funereal things<br /> +That since old days hoar frosts have gathered on,<br /> +Naught is more sweet, O pallid, queenly springs,<br /> +<br /> +Than the long pageant of your shadows wan,<br /> +Unless it be on moonless eves to weep<br /> +On some chance bed and rock our griefs to sleep.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="SUNSET" id="SUNSET"></a>SUNSET.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Fair is the sun when first he flames above,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flinging his joy down in a happy beam;</span><br /> +And happy he who can salute with love<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sunset far more glorious than a dream.</span><br /> +<br /> +Flower, stream, and furrow!—I have seen them all<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the sun's eye swoon like one trembling heart—</span><br /> +Though it be late let us with speed depart<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To catch at least one last ray ere it fall!</span><br /> +<br /> +But I pursue the fading god in vain,<br /> +For conquering Night makes firm her dark domain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mist and gloom fall, and terrors glide between,</span><br /> +<br /> +And graveyard odours in the shadow swim,<br /> +And my faint footsteps on the marsh's rim,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bruise the cold snail and crawling toad unseen.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_CORPSE" id="THE_CORPSE"></a>THE CORPSE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Remember, my Beloved, what thing we met<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By the roadside on that sweet summer day;</span><br /> +There on a grassy couch with pebbles set,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A loathsome body lay.</span><br /> +<br /> +The wanton limbs stiff-stretched into the air,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Steaming with exhalations vile and dank,</span><br /> +In ruthless cynic fashion had laid bare<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The swollen side and flank.</span><br /> +<br /> +On this decay the sun shone hot from heaven<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As though with chemic heat to broil and burn,</span><br /> +And unto Nature all that she had given<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A hundredfold return.</span><br /> +<br /> +The sky smiled down upon the horror there<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As on a flower that opens to the day;</span><br /> +So awful an infection smote the air,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Almost you swooned away.</span><br /> +<br /> +The swarming flies hummed on the putrid side,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whence poured the maggots in a darkling stream,</span><br /> +That ran along these tatters of life's pride<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With a liquescent gleam.</span><br /> +<br /> +And like a wave the maggots rose and fell,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The murmuring flies swirled round in busy strife:</span><br /> +It seemed as though a vague breath came to swell<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And multiply with life</span><br /> +<br /> +The hideous corpse. From all this living world<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A music as of wind and water ran,</span><br /> +Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirled<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">By the swift winnower's fan.</span><br /> +<br /> +And then the vague forms like a dream died out,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or like some distant scene that slowly falls</span><br /> +Upon the artist's canvas, that with doubt<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">He only half recalls.</span><br /> +<br /> +A homeless dog behind the boulders lay<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And watched us both with angry eyes forlorn,</span><br /> +Waiting a chance to come and take away<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The morsel she had torn.</span><br /> +<br /> +And you, even you, will be like this drear thing,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A vile infection man may not endure;</span><br /> +Star that I yearn to! Sun that lights my spring!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">O passionate and pure!</span><br /> +<br /> +Yes, such will you be, Queen of every grace!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When the last sacramental words are said;</span><br /> +And beneath grass and flowers that lovely face<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Moulders among the dead.</span><br /> +<br /> +Then, O Beloved, whisper to the worm<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That crawls up to devour you with a kiss,</span><br /> +That I still guard in memory the dear form<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of love that comes to this!</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="AN_ALLEGORY" id="AN_ALLEGORY"></a>AN ALLEGORY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Here is a woman, richly clad and fair,<br /> +Who in her wine dips her long, heavy hair;<br /> +Love's claws, and that sharp poison which is sin,<br /> +Are dulled against the granite of her skin.<br /> +Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon,<br /> +For their sharp scythe-like talons every one<br /> +Pass by her in their all-destructive play;<br /> +Leaving her beauty till a later day.<br /> +Goddess she walks; sultana in her leisure;<br /> +She has Mohammed's faith that heaven is pleasure,<br /> +And bids all men forget the world's alarms<br /> +Upon her breast, between her open arms.<br /> +She knows, and she believes, this sterile maid,<br /> +Without whom the world's onward dream would fade,<br /> +That bodily beauty is the supreme gift<br /> +Which may from every sin the terror lift.<br /> +Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies;<br /> +And when black Night shall roll before her eyes,<br /> +She will look straight in Death's grim face forlorn,<br /> +Without remorse or hate—as one new born.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_ACCURSED" id="THE_ACCURSED"></a>THE ACCURSED.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Like pensive herds at rest upon the sands,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">These to the sea-horizons turn their eyes;</span><br /> +Out of their folded feet and clinging hands<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bitter sharp tremblings and soft languors rise.</span><br /> +<br /> +Some tread the thicket by the babbling stream,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their hearts with untold secrets ill at ease;</span><br /> +Calling the lover of their childhood's dream,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They wound the green bark of the shooting trees.</span><br /> +<br /> +Others like sisters wander, grave and slow,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Among the rocks haunted by spectres thin,</span><br /> +Where Antony saw as larvæ surge and flow<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The veined bare breasts that tempted him to sin.</span><br /> +<br /> +Some, when the resinous torch of burning wood<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flares in lost pagan caverns dark and deep,</span><br /> +Call thee to quench the fever in their blood,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bacchus, who singest old remorse to sleep!</span><br /> +<br /> +Then there are those the scapular bedights,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose long white vestments hide the whip's red stain,</span><br /> +Who mix, in sombre woods on lonely nights,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain.</span><br /> +<br /> +O virgins, demons, monsters, martyrs! ye<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who scorn whatever actual appears;</span><br /> +Saints, satyrs, seekers of Infinity,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So full of cries, so full of bitter tears;</span><br /> +<br /> +Te whom my soul has followed into hell,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I love and pity, O sad sisters mine,</span><br /> +Tour thirsts unquenched, your pains no tongue can tell,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And your great hearts, those urns of love divine!</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="LA_BEATRICE" id="LA_BEATRICE"></a>LA BEATRICE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew,<br /> +I to the winds my cries of anguish threw;<br /> +And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart,<br /> +Pricked gently with the poignard o'er my heart.<br /> +Then in full noon above my head a cloud<br /> +Descended tempest-swollen, and a crowd<br /> +Of wild, lascivious spirits huddled there,<br /> +The cruel and curious demons of the air,<br /> +Who coldly to consider me began;<br /> +Then, as a crowd jeers some unhappy man,<br /> +Exchanging gestures, winking with their eyes—<br /> +I heard a laughing and a whispering rise:<br /> +<br /> +"Let us at leisure contemplate this clown,<br /> +This shadow of Hamlet aping Hamlet's frown,<br /> +With wandering eyes and hair upon the wind.<br /> +Is't not a pity that this empty mind,<br /> +This tramp, this actor out of work, this droll,<br /> +Because he knows how to assume a rôle<br /> +Should dream that eagles and insects, streams and woods,<br /> +Stand still to hear him chaunt his dolorous moods?<br /> +<br /> +Even unto us, who made these ancient things,<br /> +The fool his public lamentation sings."<br /> +<br /> +With pride as lofty as the towering cloud,<br /> +I would have stilled these clamouring demons loud,<br /> +And turned in scorn my sovereign head away<br /> +Had I not seen—O sight to dim the day!—<br /> +There in the middle of the troupe obscene<br /> +The proud and peerless beauty of my Queen!<br /> +She laughed with them at all my dark distress,<br /> +And gave to each in turn a vile caress.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SOUL_OF_WINE" id="THE_SOUL_OF_WINE"></a>THE SOUL OF WINE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Man, unto thee, dear disinherited,</span><br /> +I sing a song of love and light divine—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red.</span><br /> +<br /> +"I know thou labourest on the hill of fire,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In sweat and pain beneath a flaming sun,</span><br /> +To give the life and soul my vines desire,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And I am grateful for thy labours done.</span><br /> +<br /> +"For I find joys unnumbered when I lave<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The throat of man by travail long outworn,</span><br /> +And his hot bosom is a sweeter grave<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of sounder sleep than my cold caves forlorn.</span><br /> +<br /> +"Hearest thou not the echoing Sabbath sound?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The hope that whispers in my trembling breast?</span><br /> +Thy elbows on the table! gaze around;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Glorify me with joy and be at rest.</span><br /> +<br /> +"To thy wife's eyes I'll bring their long-lost gleam,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I'll bring back to thy child his strength and light,</span><br /> +To him, life's fragile athlete I will seem<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rare oil that firms his muscles for the fight.</span><br /> +<br /> +"I flow in man's heart as ambrosia flows;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The grain the eternal Sower casts in the sod—</span><br /> +From our first loves the first fair verse arose,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flower-like aspiring to the heavens and God!"</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_WINE_OF_LOVERS" id="THE_WINE_OF_LOVERS"></a>THE WINE OF LOVERS.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Space rolls to-day her splendour round!<br /> +Unbridled, spurless, without bound,<br /> +Mount we upon the wings of wine<br /> +For skies fantastic and divine!<br /> +<br /> +Let us, like angels tortured by<br /> +Some wild delirious phantasy,<br /> +Follow the far-off mirage born<br /> +In the blue crystal of the morn.<br /> +<br /> +And gently balanced on the wing<br /> +Of the wild whirlwind we will ride,<br /> +Rejoicing with the joyous thing.<br /> +<br /> +My sister, floating side by side,<br /> +Fly we unceasing whither gleams<br /> +The distant heaven of my dreams.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_DEATH_OF_LOVERS" id="THE_DEATH_OF_LOVERS"></a>THE DEATH OF LOVERS.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +There shall be couches whence faint odours rise,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound;</span><br /> +Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The death-bed of our love shall breathe around.</span><br /> +<br /> +And guarding their last embers till the end,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our hearts shall be the torches of the shrine,</span><br /> +And their two leaping flames shall fade and blend<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the twin mirrors of your soul and mine.</span><br /> +<br /> +And through the eve of rose and mystic blue<br /> +A beam of love shall pass from me to you,<br /> +Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell;<br /> +<br /> +And later still an angel, flinging wide<br /> +The gates, shall bring to life with joyful spell<br /> +The tarnished mirrors and the flames that died.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_DEATH_OF_THE_POOR" id="THE_DEATH_OF_THE_POOR"></a>THE DEATH OF THE POOR.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Death is consoler and Death brings to life;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The end of all, the solitary hope;</span><br /> +We, drunk with Death's elixir, face the strife,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Take heart, and mount till eve the weary slope.</span><br /> +<br /> +Across the storm, the hoar-frost, and the snow,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Death on our dark horizon pulses clear;</span><br /> +Death is the famous hostel we all know,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where we may rest and sleep and have good cheer.</span><br /> +<br /> +Death is an angel whose magnetic palms<br /> +Bring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calms<br /> +To smooth the beds of naked men and poor.<br /> +<br /> +Death is the mystic granary of God;<br /> +The poor man's purse; his fatherland of yore;<br /> +The Gate that opens into heavens un trod!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_BENEDICTION" id="THE_BENEDICTION"></a>THE BENEDICTION.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +When by the high decree of powers supreme,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Poet came into this world outworn,</span><br /> +She who had borne him, in a ghastly dream,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Clenched blasphemous hands at God, and cried in scorn:</span><br /> +<br /> +"O rather had I borne a writhing knot<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of unclean vipers, than my breast should nurse</span><br /> +This vile derision, of my joy begot<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To be my expiation and my curse!</span><br /> +<br /> +"Since of all women thou hast made of me<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Unto my husband a disgust and shame;</span><br /> +Since I may not cast this monstrosity,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like an old love-epistle, to the flame;</span><br /> +<br /> +"I will pour out thine overwhelming hate<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On this the accursed weapon of thy spite;</span><br /> +This stunted tree I will so desecrate<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That not one tainted bud shall see the light!"</span><br /> +<br /> +So foaming with the foam of hate and shame,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Blind unto God's design inexorable,</span><br /> +With her own hands she fed the purging flame<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To crimes maternal consecrate in hell.</span><br /> +<br /> +Meanwhile beneath an Angel's care unseen<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The child disowned grows drunken with the sun;</span><br /> +His food and drink, though they be poor and mean,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With streams of nectar and ambrosia run.</span><br /> +<br /> +Speaking to clouds and playing with the wind,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With joy he sings the sad Way of the Rood;</span><br /> +His shadowing pilgrim spirit weeps behind<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To see him gay as birds are in the wood.</span><br /> +<br /> +Those he would love looked sideways and with fear,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or, taking courage from his aspect mild,</span><br /> +Sought who should first bring to his eye the tear,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And spent their anger on the dreaming child.</span><br /> +<br /> +With all the bread and wine the Poet must eat<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">They mingled earth and ash and excrement,</span><br /> +All things he touched were spurned beneath their feet;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They mourned if they must tread the road he went.</span><br /> +<br /> +His wife ran crying in the public square:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Since he has found me worthy to adore,</span><br /> +Shall I not be as antique idols were,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With gold and with bright colours painted o'er?</span><br /> +<br /> +"I will be drunk with nard and frankincense.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With myrrh, and knees bowed down, and flesh and wine.</span><br /> +Can I not, smiling, in his love-sick sense,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Usurp the homage due to beings divine?</span><br /> +<br /> +"I will lay on him my fierce, fragile hand<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When I am weary of the impious play;</span><br /> +For well these harpy talons understand<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To furrow to his heart their crimson way.</span><br /> +<br /> +"I'll tear the red thing beating from his breast,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To cast it with disdain upon the ground,</span><br /> +Like a young bird torn trembling from the nest—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His heart shall go to gorge my favourite hound."</span><br /> +<br /> +To the far heaven, where gleams a splendid throne,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Poet uplifts his arms in calm delight,</span><br /> +And the vast beams from his pure spirit flown,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wrap all the furious peoples from his sight:</span><br /> +<br /> +"Thou, O my God, be blest who givest pain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The balm divine for each imperfect heart,</span><br /> +The strong pure essence cleansing every stain<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of sin that keeps us from thy joys apart.</span><br /> +<br /> +"Among the numbers of thy legions blest,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I know a place awaits the poet there;</span><br /> +Him thou hast bid attend the eternal feast<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That Thrones and Virtues and Dominions share.</span><br /> +<br /> +"I know the one thing noble is a grief<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Withstanding earth's and hell's destructive tooth,</span><br /> +And I, through all my dolorous life and brief,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To gain the mystic crown, must cry the truth.</span><br /> +<br /> +"The jewels lost in Palmyra of old,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Metals unknown, pearls of the outer sea,</span><br /> +Are far too dim to set within the gold<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the bright crown that Time prepares for me.</span><br /> +<br /> +"For it is wrought of pure unmingled light,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dipped in the white flame whence all flame is born—</span><br /> +The flame that makes all eyes, though diamond-bright,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Seem obscure mirrors, darkened and forlorn."</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="GYPSIES_TRAVELLING" id="GYPSIES_TRAVELLING"></a>GYPSIES TRAVELLING.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +The tribe prophetic with the eyes of fire<br /> +Went forth last night; their little ones at rest<br /> +Each on his mother's back, with his desire<br /> +Set on the ready treasure of her breast.<br /> +<br /> +Laden with shining arms the men-folk tread<br /> +By the long wagons where their goods lie hidden;<br /> +They watch the heaven with eyes grown wearied<br /> +Of hopeless dreams that come to them unbidden.<br /> +<br /> +The grasshopper, from out his sandy screen,<br /> +Watching them pass redoubles his shrill song;<br /> +Dian, who loves them, makes the grass more green,<br /> +<br /> +And makes the rock run water for this throng<br /> +Of ever-wandering ones whose calm eyes see<br /> +Familiar realms of darkness yet to be.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="FRANCISCAE_MEAE_LAUDES" id="FRANCISCAE_MEAE_LAUDES"></a>FRANCISCÆ MEÆ LAUDES.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Novis te cantabo chordis,<br /> +O novelletum quod ludia<br /> +In solitudine cordis.<br /> +<br /> +Esto sertis implicata,<br /> +O fÅ“mina delicata<br /> +Per quam solvuntur peccata<br /> +<br /> +Sicut beneficum Lethe,<br /> +Hauriam oscula de te,<br /> +Quæ imbuta es magnete.<br /> +<br /> +Quum vitiorum tempestas<br /> +Turbabat omnes semitas,<br /> +Apparuisti, Deitas,<br /> +<br /> +Velut stella salutaris<br /> +In naufragiis amaris....<br /> +Suspendam cor tuis aris!<br /> +<br /> +Piscina plena virtutis,<br /> +Fons æternæ juventutis,<br /> +Labris vocem redde mutis!<br /> +<br /> +Quod erat spurcum, cremasti;<br /> +Quod rudius, exæquasti;<br /> +Quod debile, confirmasti!<br /> +<br /> +In fame mea taberna,<br /> +In nocte mea lucerna,<br /> +Recte me semper guberna.<br /> +<br /> +Adde nunc vires viribus,<br /> +Dulce balneum suavibus,<br /> +Unguentatum odoribus!<br /> +<br /> +Meos circa I umbos mica,<br /> +O castitatis lorica,<br /> +Aqua tincta seraphica;<br /> +<br /> +Patera gemmis corusca,<br /> +Panis salsus, mollis esca,<br /> +Divinum vinum, Francisca!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="ROBED_IN_A_SILKEN_ROBE" id="ROBED_IN_A_SILKEN_ROBE"></a>ROBED IN A SILKEN ROBE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Robed in a silken robe that shines and shakes,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She seems to dance whene'er she treads the sod,</span><br /> +Like the long serpent that a fakir makes<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dance to the waving cadence of a rod.</span><br /> +<br /> +As the sad sand upon the desert's verge,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Insensible to mortal grief and strife;</span><br /> +As the long weeds that float among the surge,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She folds indifference round her budding life.</span><br /> +<br /> +Her eyes are carved of minerals pure and cold,<br /> +And in her strange symbolic nature where<br /> +An angel mingles with the sphinx of old,<br /> +<br /> +Where all is gold and steel and light and air,<br /> +For ever, like a vain star, unafraid<br /> +Shines the cold hauteur of the sterile maid.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="A_LANDSCAPE" id="A_LANDSCAPE"></a>A LANDSCAPE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +I would, when I compose my solemn verse,<br /> +Sleep near the heaven as do astrologers,<br /> +Near the high bells, and with a dreaming mind<br /> +Hear their calm hymns blown to me on the wind.<br /> +<br /> +Out of my tower, with chin upon my hands,<br /> +I'll watch the singing, babbling human bands;<br /> +And see clock-towers like spars against the sky,<br /> +And heavens that bring thoughts of eternity;<br /> +<br /> +And softly, through the mist, will watch the birth<br /> +Of stars in heaven and lamplight on the earth;<br /> +The threads of smoke that rise above the town;<br /> +The moon that pours her pale enchantment down.<br /> +<br /> +Seasons will pass till Autumn fades the rose;<br /> +And when comes Winter with his weary snows,<br /> +I'll shut the doors and window-casements tight,<br /> +And build my faery palace in the night.<br /> +<br /> +Then I will dream of blue horizons deep;<br /> +Of gardens where the marble fountains weep;<br /> +Of kisses, and of ever-singing birds—<br /> +A sinless Idyll built of innocent words.<br /> +<br /> +And Trouble, knocking at my window-pane<br /> +And at my closet door, shall knock in vain;<br /> +I will not heed him with his stealthy tread,<br /> +Nor from my reverie uplift my head;<br /> +<br /> +For I will plunge deep in the pleasure still<br /> +Of summoning the spring-time with my will,<br /> +Drawing the sun out of my heart, and there<br /> +With burning thoughts making a summer air.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_VOYAGE" id="THE_VOYAGE"></a>THE VOYAGE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +The world is equal to the child's desire<br /> +Who plays with pictures by his nursery fire—<br /> +How vast the world by lamplight seems! How small<br /> +When memory's eyes look back, remembering all!—<br /> +<br /> +One morning we set forth with thoughts aflame,<br /> +Or heart o'erladen with desire or shame;<br /> +And cradle, to the song of surge and breeze,<br /> +Our own infinity on the finite seas.<br /> +<br /> +Some flee the memory of their childhood's home;<br /> +And others flee their fatherland; and some,<br /> +Star-gazers drowned within a woman's eyes,<br /> +Flee from the tyrant Circe's witcheries;<br /> +<br /> +And, lest they still be changed to beasts, take flight<br /> +For the embrasured heavens, and space, and light,<br /> +Till one by one the stains her kisses made<br /> +In biting cold and burning sunlight fade.<br /> +<br /> +But the true voyagers are they who part<br /> +From all they love because a wandering heart<br /> +Drives them to fly the Fate they cannot fly;<br /> +Whose call is ever "On!"—they know not why.<br /> +<br /> +Their thoughts are like the clouds that veil a star;<br /> +They dream of change as warriors dream of war;<br /> +And strange wild wishes never twice the same:<br /> +Desires no mortal man can give a name. +</p> + +<h4>II.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +We are like whirling tops and rolling balls—<br /> +For even when the sleepy night-time falls,<br /> +Old Curiosity still thrusts us on,<br /> +Like the cruel Angel who goads forth the sun.<br /> +<br /> +The end of fate fades ever through the air,<br /> +And, being nowhere, may be anywhere<br /> +Where a man runs, hope waking in his breast,<br /> +For ever like a madman, seeking rest.<br /> +<br /> +Our souls are wandering ships outwearied;<br /> +And one upon the bridge asks: "What's ahead?"<br /> +The topman's voice with an exultant sound<br /> +Cries: "Love and Glory!"—then we run aground.<br /> +<br /> +Each isle the pilot signals when 'tis late,<br /> +Is El Dorado, promised us by fate—<br /> +Imagination, spite of her belief,<br /> +Finds, in the light of dawn, a barren reef.<br /> +<br /> +Oh the poor seeker after lands that flee!<br /> +Shall we not bind and cast into the sea<br /> +This drunken sailor whose ecstatic mood<br /> +Makes bitterer still the water's weary flood?<br /> +<br /> +Such is an old tramp wandering in the mire,<br /> +Dreaming the paradise of his own desire,<br /> +Discovering cities of enchanted sleep<br /> +Where'er the light shines on a rubbish heap. +</p> + +<h4>III.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +Strange voyagers, what tales of noble deeds<br /> +Deep in your dim sea-weary eyes one reads!<br /> +Open the casket where your memories are,<br /> +And show each jewel, fashioned from a star;<br /> +<br /> +For I would travel without sail or wind,<br /> +And so, to lift the sorrow from my mind,<br /> +Let your long memories of sea-days far fled<br /> +Pass o'er my spirit like a sail outspread.<br /> +<br /> +What have you seen? +</p> + +<h4>IV.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">"We have seen waves and stars,</span><br /> +And lost sea-beaches, and known many wars,<br /> +And notwithstanding war and hope and fear,<br /> +We were as weary there as we are here.<br /> +<br /> +"The lights that on the violet sea poured down,<br /> +The suns that set behind some far-off town,<br /> +Lit in our hearts the unquiet wish to fly<br /> +Deep in the glimmering distance of the sky;<br /> +<br /> +"The loveliest countries that rich cities bless,<br /> +Never contained the strange wild loveliness<br /> +By fate and chance shaped from the floating cloud—<br /> +And we were always sorrowful and proud!<br /> +<br /> +"Desire from joy gains strength in weightier measure.<br /> +Desire, old tree who draw'st thy sap from pleasure,<br /> +Though thy bark thickens as the years pass by,<br /> +Thine arduous branches rise towards the sky;<br /> +<br /> +"And wilt thou still grow taller, tree more fair<br /> +Than the tall cypress?<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13.5em;">—Thus have we, with care,</span><br /> +Gathered some flowers to please your eager mood,<br /> +Brothers who dream that distant things are good!<br /> +<br /> +"We have seen many a jewel-glimmering throne;<br /> +And bowed to Idols when wild horns were blown<br /> +In palaces whose faery pomp and gleam<br /> +To your rich men would be a ruinous dream;<br /> +<br /> +"And robes that were a madness to the eyes;<br /> +Women whose teeth and nails were stained with dyes;<br /> +Wise jugglers round whose neck the serpent winds—" +</p> + +<h4>V.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +And then, and then what more? +</p> + +<h4>VI.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +<span style="margin-left: 16.5em;">"O childish minds!</span><br /> +<br /> +"Forget not that which we found everywhere,<br /> +From top to bottom of the fatal stair,<br /> +Above, beneath, around us and within,<br /> +The weary pageant of immortal sin.<br /> +<br /> +"We have seen woman, stupid slave and proud,<br /> +Before her own frail, foolish beauty bowed;<br /> +And man, a greedy, cruel, lascivious fool,<br /> +Slave of the slave, a ripple in a pool;<br /> +<br /> +"The martyrs groan, the headsman's merry mood;<br /> +And banquets seasoned and perfumed with blood;<br /> +Poison, that gives the tyrant's power the slip;<br /> +And nations amorous of the brutal whip;<br /> +<br /> +"Many religions not unlike our own,<br /> +All in full flight for heaven's resplendent throne;<br /> +And Sanctity, seeking delight in pain,<br /> +Like a sick man of his own sickness vain;<br /> +<br /> +"And mad mortality, drunk with its own power,<br /> +As foolish now as in a bygone hour,<br /> +Shouting, in presence of the tortured Christ:<br /> +'I curse thee, mine own Image sacrificed.'<br /> +<br /> +"And silly monks in love with Lunacy,<br /> +Fleeing the troops herded by destiny,<br /> +Who seek for peace in opiate slumber furled—<br /> +Such is the pageant of the rolling world!" +</p> + +<h4>VII.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +O bitter knowledge that the wanderers gain!<br /> +The world says our own age is little and vain;<br /> +For ever, yesterday, to-day, to-morrow,<br /> +'Tis horror's oasis in the sands of sorrow.<br /> +<br /> +Must we depart? If you can rest, remain;<br /> +Part, if you must. Some fly, some cower in vain,<br /> +Hoping that Time, the grim and eager foe,<br /> +Will pass them by; and some run to and fro<br /> +<br /> +Like the Apostles or the Wandering Jew;<br /> +Go where they will, the Slayer goes there too!<br /> +And there are some, and these are of the wise,<br /> +Who die as soon as birth has lit their eyes.<br /> +<br /> +But when at length the Slayer treads us low,<br /> +We will have hope and cry, "'Tis time to go!"<br /> +As when of old we parted for Cathay<br /> +With wind-blown hair and eyes upon the bay.<br /> +<br /> +We will embark upon the Shadowy Sea,<br /> +Like youthful wanderers for the first time free—<br /> +Hear you the lovely and funereal voice<br /> +That sings: <i>O come all ye whose wandering joys</i><br /> +<i>Are set upon the scented Lotus flower</i>,<br /> +<i>For here we sell the fruit's miraculous boon</i>;<br /> +<i>Come ye and drink the sweet and sleepy power</i><br /> +<i>Of the enchanted, endless afternoon</i>.</p> + +<h4>VIII.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +O Death, old Captain, it is time, put forth!<br /> +We have grown weary of the gloomy north;<br /> +Though sea and sky are black as ink, lift sail!<br /> +Our hearts are full of light and will not fail.<br /> +<br /> +O pour thy sleepy poison in the cup!<br /> +The fire within the heart so burns us up<br /> +That we would wander Hell and Heaven through,<br /> +Deep in the Unknown seeking something <i>new</i>!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> +<h2><a name="LITTLE_POEMS_IN_PROSE" id="LITTLE_POEMS_IN_PROSE"></a>LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE</h2> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="THE_STRANGER" id="THE_STRANGER"></a>THE STRANGER.</h3> + + +<p>Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, +your sister, or your brother?</p> + +<p>"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother."</p> + +<p>Your friends, then?</p> + +<p>"You use a word that until now has had no meaning for me."</p> + +<p>Your country?</p> + +<p>"I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated."</p> + +<p>Then Beauty?</p> + +<p>"Her I would love willingly, goddess and immortal."</p> + +<p>Gold?</p> + +<p>"I hate it as you hate your God."</p> + +<p>What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love?</p> + +<p>"I love the clouds—the clouds that pass—yonder—the marvellous +clouds."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="EVERY_MAN_HIS_CHIMAERA" id="EVERY_MAN_HIS_CHIMAERA"></a>EVERY MAN HIS CHIMÆRA.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimæra as heavy as a sack of +flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier.</p> + +<p>But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and +oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with +her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head +reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by +which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy.</p> + +<p>I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied +that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they +went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to +walk.</p> + +<p>Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the +ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had +said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary +faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the +heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as +the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned +to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere +of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the +curiosity of the human eye.</p> + +<p>During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this +mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor +was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing +Chimæras.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="VENUS_AND_THE_FOOL" id="VENUS_AND_THE_FOOL"></a>VENUS AND THE FOOL.</h3> + + +<p>How admirable the day! The vast park swoons beneath the burning eye of +the sun, as youth beneath the lordship of love.</p> + +<p>There is no rumour of the universal ecstasy of all things. The waters +themselves are as though drifting into sleep. Very different from the +festivals of humanity, here is a silent revel.</p> + +<p>It seems as though an ever-waning light makes all objects glimmer more +and more, as though the excited flowers burn with a desire to rival the +blue of the sky by the vividness of their colours; as though the heat, +making perfumes visible, drives them in vapour towards their star.</p> + +<p>Yet, in the midst of this universal joy, I have perceived one afflicted +thing.</p> + +<p>At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those motley fools, those +willing clowns whose business it is to bring laughter upon kings when +weariness or remorse possesses them, lies wrapped in his gaudy and +ridiculous garments, coined with his cap and bells, huddled against the +pedestal, and raises towards the goddess his eyes filled with tears.</p> + +<p>And his eyes say: "I am the last and most alone of all mortals, inferior +to the meanest of animals in that I am denied either love or friendship. +Yet I am made, even I, for the understanding and enjoyment of immortal +Beauty. O Goddess, have pity upon my sadness and my frenzy."</p> + +<p>The implacable Venus gazed into I know not what distances with her +marble eyes.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="INTOXICATION" id="INTOXICATION"></a>INTOXICATION.</h3> + + +<p>One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. +If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your +shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. +But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But +be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green +grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should +waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, +of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that +flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that +speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and +timepiece will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be +the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without +cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_GIFTS_OF_THE_MOON" id="THE_GIFTS_OF_THE_MOON"></a>THE GIFTS OF THE MOON.</h3> + + +<p>The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in +your cradle, and said to herself: "I am well pleased with this child."</p> + +<p>And she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the +window-pane without noise. She bent over you with the supple tenderness +of a mother and laid her colours upon your face. Therefrom your eyes +have remained green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. From +contemplation of your visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she +so tenderly wounded you upon the breast that you have ever kept a +certain readiness to tears.</p> + +<p>In the amplitude of her joy, the Moon filled all your chamber as with a +phosphorescent air, a luminous poison; and all this living radiance +thought and said: "You shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. +You shall love all that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, +and night; the vast green sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; +the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous +flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves +swooning upon the piano and lament with the sweet, hoarse voices of +women.</p> + +<p>"And you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. You +shall be the Queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also I have +wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green +ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where +they are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem +to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the +will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images of their own folly."</p> + +<p>And that is why I am couched at your feet, O spoiled child, beloved and +accursed, seeking in all your being the reflection of that august +divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all +<i>lunatics</i>.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_INVITATION_TO_THE_VOYAGE" id="THE_INVITATION_TO_THE_VOYAGE"></a>THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE.</h3> + + +<p>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 patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate +vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy.</p> + +<p>A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and +honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is +opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the +unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where +even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all +things, my beloved, are like you.</p> + +<p>Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold +miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguish of curiosity? +It is a land which resembles you, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil +and honest, where phantasy has built and decorated an occidental China, +where life is sweet to breathe, and happiness married to silence. It is +there that one would live; there that one would die.</p> + +<p>Yes, it is there that one must go to breathe, to dream, and to lengthen +one's hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written the +"Invitation to the Waltz"; where is he who will write the "Invitation to +the Voyage," that one may offer it to his beloved, to the sister of his +election?</p> + +<p>Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live,—yonder, +where slower hours contain more thoughts, where the clocks strike the +hours of happiness with a more profound and significant solemnity.</p> + +<p>Upon the shining panels, or upon skins gilded with a sombre opulence, +beatified paintings have a discreet life, as calm and profound as the +souls of the artists who created them.</p> + +<p>The setting suns that colour the rooms and salons with so rich a light, +shine through veils of rich tapestry, or through high leaden-worked +windows of many compartments. The furniture is massive, curious, and +bizarre, armed with locks and secrets, like profound and refined souls. +The mirrors, the metals, the ail ver work and the china, play a mute and +mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from the corners, +from the chinks in the drawers, from the folds of drapery, a singular +perfume escapes, a Sumatran <i>revenez-y</i>, which is like the soul of the +apartment.</p> + +<p>A true country of Cockaigne, I have said; where all is rich, correct and +shining, like a beautiful conscience, or a splendid set of silver, or a +medley of jewels. The treasures of the world flow there, as in the house +of a laborious man who has well merited the entire world. A singular +land, as superior to others as Art is superior to Nature; where Nature +is made over again by dream; where she is corrected, embellished, +refashioned.</p> + +<p>Let them seek and seek again, let them extend the limits of their +happiness for ever, these alchemists who work with flowers! Let them +offer a prize of sixty or a hundred thousand florins to whosoever can +solve their ambitious problems! As for me, I have found my <i>black tulip</i> +and my <i>blue dahlia</i>!</p> + +<p>Incomparable flower, tulip found at last, symboli-cal dahlia, it is +there, is it not, in this so calm and dreamy land that you live and +blossom? Will you not there be framed in your proper analogy, and will +you not be mirrored, to speak like the mystics, in your own +<i>correspondence</i>?</p> + +<p>Dreams!—always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul, +the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him +his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from +birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with +positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in +and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that +resembles you?</p> + +<p>These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous +flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The +enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with +the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon +your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity, +reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your +lovely soul;—and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the +products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they +are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from +Infinity.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="WHAT_IS_TRUTH" id="WHAT_IS_TRUTH"></a>WHAT IS TRUTH?</h3> + + +<p>I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the +ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of +glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality.</p> + +<p>But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died +soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon +a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I +myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as +uncorruptible as the coffers of India.</p> + +<p>And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I +became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the +dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and +hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true +Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly +and blindness you shall love me as I truly am."</p> + +<p>But I, furious, replied: "No!" The better to emphasise my refusal I +struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to +the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught +perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="ALREADY" id="ALREADY"></a>ALREADY!</h3> + + +<p>A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from +the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred +times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of +twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the +firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And +each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the +approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they +said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by +a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an +unmoving table?"</p> + +<p>There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their +sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the +image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass +with as much enthusiasm as the beasts.</p> + +<p>At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent +and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed +therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of +growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and +fruits.</p> + +<p>Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were +forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted +out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke.</p> + +<p>I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest from whom one has torn +his divinity, I could not, without heartbreaking bitterness, leave this +so monstrously seductive ocean, this sea so infinitely various in its +terrifying simplicity, which seemed to contain in itself and represent +by its joys, and attractions, and angers, and smiles, the moods and +agonies and ecstasies of all souls that have lived, that live, and that +shall yet live.</p> + +<p>In saying good-bye to this incomparable beauty I felt as though I had +been smitten to death; and that is why when each of my companions said: +"At last!" I could only cry "<i>Already!</i>"</p> + +<p>Here meanwhile was the land, the land with its noises, its passions, its +commodities, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of +promises, that sent to us a mysterious perfume of rose and musk, and +from whence the music of life flowed in an amorous murmuring.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_DOUBLE_CHAMBER" id="THE_DOUBLE_CHAMBER"></a>THE DOUBLE CHAMBER.</h3> + + +<p>A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly <i>spiritual</i>, where the +stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue.</p> + +<p>There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and +desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue +and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the +furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed +with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals.</p> + +<p>The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the +skies, the dropping suns.</p> + +<p>There are no artistic abominations upon the walls. Compared with the +pure dream, with an impression unanalysed, definite art, positive art, +is a blasphemy. Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious +obscurity of music.</p> + +<p>An infinitesimal odour of the most exquisite choice, mingled with a +floating humidity, swims in this atmosphere where the drowsing spirit is +lulled by the sensations one feels in a hothouse.</p> + +<p>The abundant muslin flows before the windows and the couch, and spreads +out in snowy cascades. Upon the couch lies the Idol, ruler of my dreams. +But why is she here?—who has brought her?—what magical power has +installed her upon this throne of delight and reverie? What matter—she +is there; and I recognise her.</p> + +<p>These indeed are the eyes whose flame pierces the twilight; the subtle +and terrible mirrors that I recognise by their horrifying malice. They +attract, they dominate, they devour the sight of whomsoever is imprudent +enough to look at them. I have often studied them; these Black Stars +that compel curiosity and admiration.</p> + +<p>To what benevolent demon, then, do I owe being thus surrounded with +mystery, with silence, with peace, and sweet odours? O beatitude! the +thing we name life, even in its most fortunate amplitude, has nothing in +common with this supreme life with which I am now acquainted, which I +taste minute by minute, second by second.</p> + +<p>Not so! Minutes are no more; seconds are no more. Time has vanished, and +Eternity reigns—an Eternity of delight.</p> + +<p>A heavy and terrible knocking reverberates upon the door, and, as in a +hellish dream, it seems to me as though I had received a blow from a +mattock.</p> + +<p>Then a Spectre enters: it is an usher who comes to torture me in the +name of the Law; an infamous concubine who comes to cry misery and to +add the trivialities of her life to the sorrow of mine; or it may be the +errand-boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder of a +manuscript.</p> + +<p>The chamber of paradise, the Idol, the ruler of dreams, the Sylphide, as +the great René said; all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking +of the Spectre.</p> + +<p>Horror; I remember, I remember! Yes, this kennel, this habitation of +eternal weariness, is indeed my own. Here is my senseless furniture, +dusty and tattered; the dirty fireplace without a flame or an ember; the +sad windows where the raindrops have traced runnels in the dust; the +manuscripts, erased or unfinished; the almanac with the sinister days +marked off with a pencil!</p> + +<p>And this perfume of another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a +so perfected sensitiveness; alas, its place is taken by an odour of +stale tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness. +Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation.</p> + +<p>In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar +object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like +all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries.</p> + +<p>Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the +hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories, +Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves.</p> + +<p>I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now; +and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable, +implacable Life!"</p> + +<p>There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good +news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye.</p> + +<p>Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me, +as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Woa, thou fool! Sweat, +then, thou slave! Live on, thou damnèd!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="AT_ONE_OCLOCK_IN_THE_MORNING" id="AT_ONE_OCLOCK_IN_THE_MORNING"></a>AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.</h3> + + +<p>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. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared—I +shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh +myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the +lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude +and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world.</p> + +<p>A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the +day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he +could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was +an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a +review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable +people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a +knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me; +and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the +precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time, +during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a +costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said: +"You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest, +foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you +will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have +boasted (why?) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and +indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy, +certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused +an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a +perfect fool. Heavens! it's well ended.</p> + +<p>Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I +should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the +silence and solitude.</p> + +<p>Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain +me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and +Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some +beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I +am not inferior to those I despise.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_CONFITEOR_OF_THE_ARTIST" id="THE_CONFITEOR_OF_THE_ARTIST"></a>THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST.</h3> + + +<p>How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough +to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose +vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen +than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns +his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the +incomparable chastity of the azure—a little sail trembling upon the +horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable +existence—the melodious monotone of the surge—all these things +thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the +reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and +picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions.</p> + +<p>These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external +objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within +pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too +tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations.</p> + +<p>And now the profundity of the sky dismays me! its limpidity exasperates +me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, +revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from +Beauty?</p> + +<p>Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my +desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel +where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_THYRSUS" id="THE_THYRSUS"></a>THE THYRSUS.</h3> + +<h4>TO FRANZ LISZT.</h4> + + +<p>What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a +sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating +the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But +physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a +vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious +meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and +fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing +complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant +lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the +spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a +mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollæ, all +these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical +dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to +decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the +baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty +of the vine branches and the flowers?</p> + +<p>The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and +venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty. +Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over +the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles +in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm, +unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the +feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance. +Straight line and arabesque—intention and expression—the rigidity of +the will and the suppleness of the word—a variety of means united for a +single purpose—the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is +genius—what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to +separate you?</p> + +<p>Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the +pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your +wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City +or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles; +improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper +your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain, +philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of +immortality!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_MARKSMAN" id="THE_MARKSMAN"></a>THE MARKSMAN.</h3> + + +<p>As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the +neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a +few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most +ordinary and legitimate occupation of man?—So he gallantly offered his +hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to +whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great +part of his genius.</p> + +<p>Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far +into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously, +mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and +said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air, +and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, <i>I will +imagine to myself that it is you!</i>"</p> + +<p>He closed both eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly +decapitated.</p> + +<p>Then, bending towards his dear, adorable, and execrable wife, his +inevitable and pitiless muse, he kissed her respectfully upon the hand, +and added, "Ah, dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SHOOTING-RANGE_AND_THE_CEMETERY" id="THE_SHOOTING-RANGE_AND_THE_CEMETERY"></a>THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY.</h3> + + +<p>"Cemetery View Inn"—"A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but +it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper of this inn appreciates Horace +and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound +philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, +or some emblem of life's brevity."</p> + +<p>He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly +smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the +cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the +sunshine.</p> + +<p>The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said +the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon +the corruption beneath.</p> + +<p>The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life—the life of things +infinitely small—and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from +a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of +champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony.</p> + +<p>And then, beneath a sun which scorched the brain, and in that atmosphere +charged with the ardent perfume of death, he heard a voice whispering +out of the tomb where he sat. And this voice said: "Accursed be your +rifles and targets, you turbulent living ones, who care so little for +the dead in their divine repose! Accursed be your ambitions and +calculations, importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter near +the sanctuary of Death himself! Did you but know how easy the prize to +win, how facile the end to reach, and how all save Death is naught, not +so greatly would you fatigue yourselves, O ye laborious alive; nor would +you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago reached the End—the +only true end of life detestable!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_DESIRE_TO_PAINT" id="THE_DESIRE_TO_PAINT"></a>THE DESIRE TO PAINT.</h3> + + +<p>Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this +desire.</p> + +<p>I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so +swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller +must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her.</p> + +<p>She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The +colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal +and profound. Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and +gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion +in the darkness.</p> + +<p>I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star +overthrowing light and happiness. But it is the moon that she makes one +dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with +her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a +cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the +depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet +peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from +the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly +constrain to dance upon the terrified grass.</p> + +<p>Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of +prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the +unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, the +smile of a large mouth; white, red, and delicious; a mouth that makes +one dream of the miracle of some superb flower unclosing in a volcanic +land.</p> + +<p>There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo them and win +them; but she makes one wish to die slowly beneath her steady gaze.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_GLASS-VENDOR" id="THE_GLASS-VENDOR"></a>THE GLASS-VENDOR.</h3> + + +<p>These 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 one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation +awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before +the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter +fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of +six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year +past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards +action, like an arrow from a bow.</p> + +<p>The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet +cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent +and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest +and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time +possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the +most absurd and even the most dangerous acts.</p> + +<p>One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one +time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether +the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His +experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only +too well.</p> + +<p>Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, <i>in order to see, to +know, to tempt Destiny</i>, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, +for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of +energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it +manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most +indolent and dreamy beings.</p> + +<p>Another so timid that he must cast down his eyes before the gaze of any +man, and summon all his poor will before he dare enter a café or pass +the pay-box of a theatre, where the ticket-seller seems, in his eyes, +invested with all the majesty of Minos, Æcus, and Rhadamanthus, will at +times throw himself upon the neck of some old man whom he sees in the +street, and embrace him with enthusiasm in sight of an astonished crowd. +Why? Because—because this countenance is irresistibly attractive to +him? Perhaps; but it is more legitimate to suppose that he himself does +not know why.</p> + +<p>I have been more than once a victim to these crises and outbreaks which +give us cause to believe that evil-meaning demons slip into us, to make +us the ignorant accomplices of their most absurd desires. One morning I +arose in a sullen mood, very sad, and tired of idleness, and thrust as +it seemed to me to the doing of some great thing, some brilliant +act—and then, alas, I opened the window.</p> + +<p>(I beg you to observe that in some people the spirit of mystification is +not the result of labour or combination, but rather of a fortuitous +inspiration which would partake, were it not for the strength of the +feeling, of the mood called hysterical by the physician and satanic by +those who think a little more profoundly than the physician; the mood +which thrusts us unresisting to a multitude of dangerous and +inconvenient acts.)</p> + +<p>The first person I noticed in the street was a glass-vendor whose shrill +and discordant cry mounted up to me through the heavy, dull atmosphere +of Paris. It would have been else impossible to account for the sudden +and despotic hatred of this poor man that came upon me.</p> + +<p>"Hello, there!" I cried, and bade him ascend. Meanwhile I reflected, not +without gaiety, that as my room was on the sixth landing, and the +stairway very narrow, the man would have some difficulty in ascending, +and in many a place would break off the corners of his fragile +merchandise.</p> + +<p>At length he appeared. I examined all his glasses with curiosity, and +then said to him: "What, have you no coloured glasses? Glasses of rose +and crimson and blue, magical glasses, glasses of Paradise? You are +insolent. You dare to walk in mean streets when you have no glasses that +would make one see beauty in life?" And I hurried him briskly to the +staircase, which he staggered down, grumbling.</p> + +<p>I went on to the balcony and caught up a little flower-pot, and when the +man appeared in the door-way beneath I let fall my engine of war +perpendicularly upon the edge of his pack, so that it was upset by the +shock and all his poor walking fortune broken to bits. It made a noise +like a palace of crystal shattered by lightning. Mad with my folly, I +cried furiously after him: "The life beautiful! the life beautiful!"</p> + +<p>Such nervous pleasantries are not without peril; often enough one pays +dearly for them. But what matters an eternity of damnation to him who +has found in one second an eternity of enjoyment?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_WIDOWS" id="THE_WIDOWS"></a>THE WIDOWS.</h3> + + +<p>Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted +principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted +glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted +souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus +betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the +well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's +cripples.</p> + +<p>To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their +avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there +is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the +place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions +for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn +towards all that is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft.</p> + +<p>An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected +lineaments; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last +fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound +wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience +deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded +effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported.</p> + +<p>Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor +widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. +Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; +a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is +forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who +exhibit a full complement of sorrow.</p> + +<p>Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the +hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I +do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours +an aged and afflicted woman of this kind: rigid and erect, wrapped in a +little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism.</p> + +<p>She was evidently condemned by her absolute loneliness to the habits of +an ancient celibacy; and the masculine characters of her habits added to +their austerity a piquant mysteriousness. In what miserable café she +dines I know not, nor in what manner. I followed her to a reading-room, +and for a long time watched her reading the papers, her active eyes, +that once burned with tears, seeking for news of a powerful and personal +interest.</p> + +<p>At length, in the afternoon, under a charming autumnal sky, one of those +skies that let fall hosts of memories and regrets, she seated herself +remotely in a garden, to listen, far from the crowd, to one of the +regimental bands whose music gratifies the people of Paris. This was +without doubt the small debauch of the innocent old woman (or the +purified old woman), the well-earned consolation for another of the +burdensome days without a friend, without conversation, without joy, +without a confidant, that God had allowed to fall upon her perhaps for +many years past—three hundred and sixty-five times a year!</p> + +<p>Yet one more:</p> + +<p>I can never prevent myself from throwing a glance, if not sympathetic at +least full of curiosity, over the crowd of outcasts who press around the +enclosure of a public concert. From the orchestra, across the night, +float songs of fête, of triumph, or of pleasure. The dresses of the +women sweep and shimmer; glances pass; the well-to-do, tired with doing +nothing, saunter about and make indolent pretence of listening to the +music. Here are only the rich, the happy; here is nothing that does not +inspire or exhale the pleasure of being alive, except the aspect of the +mob that presses against the outer barrier yonder, catching gratis, at +the will of the wind, a tatter of music, and watching the glittering +furnace within.</p> + +<p>There is a reflection of the joy of the rich deep in the eyes of the +poor that is always interesting. But to-day, beyond this people dressed +in blouses and calico, I saw one whose nobility was in striking contrast +with all the surrounding triviality. She was a tall, majestic woman, and +so imperious in all her air that I cannot remember having seen the like +in the collections of the aristocratic beauties of the past. A perfume +of exalted virtue emanated from all her being. Her face, sad and worn, +was in perfect keeping with the deep mourning in which she was dressed. +She also, like the plebeians she mingled with and did not see, looked +upon the luminous world with a profound eye, and listened with a toss of +her head.</p> + +<p>It was a strange vision. "Most certainly," I said to myself, "this +poverty, if poverty it be, ought not to admit of any sordid economy; so +noble a face answers for that. Why then does she remain in surroundings +with which she is so strikingly in contrast?"</p> + +<p>But in curiously passing near her I was able to divine the reason. The +tall widow held by the hand a child dressed like herself in black. +Modest as was the price of entry, this price perhaps sufficed to pay +for some of the needs of the little being, or even more, for a +superfluity, a toy.</p> + +<p>She will return on foot, dreaming and meditating—and alone, always +alone, for the child is turbulent and selfish, without gentleness or +patience, and cannot become, any more than another animal, a dog or a +cat, the confidant of solitary griefs.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_TEMPTATIONS_OR_EROS_PLUTUS_AND_GLORY" id="THE_TEMPTATIONS_OR_EROS_PLUTUS_AND_GLORY"></a>THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY.</h3> + + +<p>Last night two superb Satans and a She-devil not less extraordinary +ascended the mysterious stairway by which Hell gains access to the +frailty of sleeping man, and communes with him in secret. These three +postured gloriously before me, as though they had been upon a stage—and +a sulphurous splendour emanated from these beings who so disengaged +themselves from the opaque heart of the night. They bore with them so +proud a presence, and so full of mastery, that at first I took them for +three of the true Gods.</p> + +<p>The first Satan, by his face, was a creature of doubtful sex. The +softness of an ancient Bacchus shone in the lines of his body. His +beautiful langourous eyes, of a tenebrous and indefinite colour, were +like violets still laden with the heavy tears of the storm; his +slightly-parted lips were like heated censers, from whence exhaled the +sweet savour of many perfumes; and each time he breathed, exotic +insects drew, as they fluttered, strength from the ardours of his +breath.</p> + +<p>Twined about his tunic of purple stuff, in the manner of a cincture, was +an iridescent Serpent with lifted head and eyes like embers turned +sleepily towards him. Phials full of sinister fluids, alternating with +shining knives and instruments of surgery, hung from this living girdle. +He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red fluid, and +inscribed with a legend in these singular words:</p> + +<p>"DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE";</p> + +<p>and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing his +pleasures and pains, and to spread abroad the contagion of his folly +upon the nights of the Sabbath.</p> + +<p>From rings upon his delicate ankles trailed a broken chain of gold, and +when the burden of this caused him to bend his eyes towards the earth, +he would contemplate with vanity the nails of his feet, as brilliant and +polished as well-wrought jewels.</p> + +<p>He looked at me with eyes inconsolably heartbroken and giving forth an +insidious intoxication, and cried in a chanting voice: "If thou wilt, if +thou wilt, I will make thee an overlord of souls; thou shalt be master +of living matter more perfectly than the sculptor is master of his clay; +thou shalt taste the pleasure, reborn without end, of obliterating +thyself in the self of another, and of luring other souls to lose +themselves in thine."</p> + +<p>But I replied to him: "I thank thee. I only gain from this venture, +then, beings of no more worth than my poor self? Though remembrance +brings me shame indeed, I would forget nothing; and even before I +recognised thee, thou ancient monster, thy mysterious cutlery, thy +equivocal phials, and the chain that imprisons thy feet, were symbols +showing clearly enough the inconvenience of thy friendship. Keep thy +gifts."</p> + +<p>The second Satan had neither the air at once tragical and smiling, the +lovely insinuating ways, nor the delicate and scented beauty of the +first. A gigantic man, with a coarse, eyeless face, his heavy paunch +overhung his hips and was gilded and pictured, like a tattooing, with a +crowd of little moving figures which represented the unnumbered forms of +universal misery. There were little sinew-shrunken men who hung +themselves willingly from nails; there were meagre gnomes, deformed and +under-sized, whose beseeching eyes begged an alms even more eloquently +than their trembling hands; there were old mothers who nursed clinging +abortions at their pendent breasts. And many others, even more +surprising.</p> + +<p>This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from whence +came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away in a +sighing made by many human voices. And he smiled unrestrainedly, showing +his broken teeth—the imbecile smile of a man who has dined too freely. +Then the creature said to me:</p> + +<p>"I can give thee that which gets all, which is worth all, which takes +the place of all." And he tapped his monstrous paunch, whence came a +sonorous echo as the commentary to his obscene speech. I turned away +with disgust and replied: "I need no man's misery to bring me happiness; +nor will I have the sad wealth of all the misfortunes pictured upon thy +skin as upon a tapestry."</p> + +<p>As for the She-devil, I should lie if I denied that at first I found in +her a certain strange charm, which to define I can but compare to the +charm of certain beautiful women past their first youth, who yet seem to +age no more, whose beauty keeps something of the penetrating magic of +ruins. She had an air at once imperious and sordid, and her eyes, though +heavy, held a certain power of fascination. I was struck most by her +voice, wherein I found the remembrance of the most delicious contralti, +as well as a little of the hoarseness of a throat continually laved with +brandy.</p> + +<p>"Wouldst thou know my power?" said the charming and paradoxical voice of +the false goddess. "Then listen." And she put to her mouth a gigantic +trumpet, enribboned, like a mirliton, with the titles of all the +newspapers in the world; and through this trumpet she cried my name so +that it rolled through space with the sound of a hundred thousand +thunders, and came re-echoing back to me from the farthest planet.</p> + +<p>"Devil!" cried I, half tempted, "that at least is worth something." But +it vaguely struck me, upon examining the seductive virago more +attentively, that I had seen her clinking glasses with certain drolls of +my acquaintance, and her blare of brass carried to my ears I know not +what memory of a fanfare prostituted.</p> + +<p>So I replied, with all disdain: "Get thee hence! I know better than wed +the light o' love of them that I will not name."</p> + +<p>Truly, I had the right to be proud of a so courageous renunciation. But +unfortunately I awoke, and all my courage left me. "In truth," I said, +"I must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have had such scruples. +Ah, if they would but return while I am awake, I would not be so +delicate."</p> + +<p>So I invoked the three in a loud voice, offering to dishonour myself as +often as necessary to obtain their favours; but I had without doubt too +deeply offended them, for they have never returned.</p> + + +<h4>THE END</h4> + + + + + + + + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 36287 ***</div> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..dc7c03c --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #36287 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36287) diff --git a/old/36287-0.txt b/old/36287-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8e5a025 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/36287-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4453 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles +Baudelaire, by Charles Baudelaire + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire + with an Introductory Preface by James Huneker + +Author: Charles Baudelaire + +Editor: James Huneker + +Release Date: May 31, 2011 [EBook #36287] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, PROSE POEMS, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE *** + + + + +Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at +http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously made +available by the Internet Archive. + + + + + +THE POEMS AND PROSE POEMS + +OF + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE + + +WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE BY + +JAMES HUNEKER + + + +NEW YORK +BRENTANO'S +PUBLISHERS + +1919 + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by James Huneker + + +THE FLOWERS OF EVIL + +The Dance of Death +The Beacons +The Sadness of the Moon +Exotic Perfume +Beauty +The Balcony +The Sick Muse +The Venal Muse +The Evil Monk +The Temptation +The Irreparable +A Former Life +Don Juan in Hades +The Living Flame +Correspondences +The Flask +Reversibility +The Eyes of Beauty +Sonnet of Autumn +The Remorse of the Dead +The Ghost +To a Madonna +The Sky +Spleen +The Owls +Bien Loin d'Ici +Music +Contemplation +To a Brown Beggar-maid +The Swan +The Seven Old Men +The Little Old Women +A Madrigal of Sorrow +The Ideal +Mist and Rain +Sunset +The Corpse +An Allegory +The Accursed +La Beatrice +The Soul of Wine +The Wine of Lovers +The Death of Lovers +The Death of the Poor +The Benediction +Gypsies Travelling +Francisco Meæ Laudes +Robed in a Silken Robe +A Landscape +The Voyage + + +LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE + +The Stranger +Every Man his Chimæra +Venus and the Fool +Intoxication +The Gifts of the Moon +The Invitation to the Voyage +What is Truth? +Already! +The Double Chamber +At One o'Clock in the Morning +The Confiteor of the Artist +The Thyrsus +The Marksman +The Shooting-range and the Cemetery +The Desire to Paint +The Glass-vendor +The Widows +The Temptations; or, Eros, Plutus, and Glory + + + + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. + +BY JAMES HUNEKER. + + + + +I + + +For the sentimental no greater foe exists than the iconoclast who +dissipates literary legends. And he is abroad nowadays. Those golden +times when they gossiped of De Quincey's enormous opium consumption, of +the gin absorbed by gentle Charles Lamb, of Coleridge's dark ways, +Byron's escapades, and Shelley's atheism--alas! into what faded limbo +have they vanished. Poe, too, whom we saw in fancy reeling from Richmond +to Baltimore, Baltimore to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to New York. Those +familiar fascinating anecdotes have gone the way of all such jerry-built +spooks. We now know Poe to have been a man suffering at the time of his +death from cerebral lesion, a man who drank at intervals and little. Dr. +Guerrier of Paris has exploded a darling superstition about De Quincey's +opium-eating. He has demonstrated that no man could have lived so +long--De Quincey was nearly seventy-five at his death--and worked so +hard, if he had consumed twelve thousand drops of laudanum as often as +he said he did. Furthermore, the English essayist's description of the +drug's effects is inexact. He was seldom sleepy--a sure sign, asserts +Dr. Guerrier, that he was not altogether enslaved by the drug habit. +Sprightly in old age, his powers of labour were prolonged until past +three-score and ten. His imagination needed little opium to produce the +famous Confessions. Even Gautier's revolutionary red waistcoat worn at +the première of Hernani was, according to Gautier, a pink doublet. And +Rousseau has been whitewashed. So they are disappearing, those literary +legends, until, disheartened, we cry out: Spare us our dear, +old-fashioned, disreputable men of genius! + +But the legend of Charles Baudelaire is seemingly indestructible. This +French poet has suffered more from the friendly malignant biographer and +chroniclers than did Poe. Who shall keep the curs out of the cemetery? +asked Baudelaire after he had read Griswold on Poe. A few years later +his own cemetery was invaded and the world was put into possession of +the Baudelaire legend; that legend of the atrabilious, irritable poet, +dandy, maniac, his hair dyed green, spouting blasphemies; that grim, +despairing image of a diabolic, a libertine, saint, and drunkard. Maxime +du Camp was much to blame for the promulgation of these tales--witness +his Souvenirs littéraires. However, it may be confessed that part of the +Baudelaire legend was created by Charles Baudelaire. In the history of +literature it is difficult to parallel such a deliberate piece of +self-stultification. Not Villon, who preceded him, not Verlaine, who +imitated him, drew for the astonishment or disedification of the world a +like unflattering portrait. Mystifier as he was, he must have suffered +at times from acute cortical irritation. And, notwithstanding his +desperate effort to realize Poe's idea, he only proved Poe correct, who +had said that no man can bare his heart quite naked; there always will +be something held back, something false ostentatiously thrust forward. +The grimace, the attitude, the pomp of rhetoric are so many buffers +between the soul of man and the sharp reality of published confessions. +Baudelaire was no more exception to this rule than St. Augustine, +Bunyan, Rousseau, or Huysmans; though he was as frank as any of them, as +we may see in the printed diary, Mon cÅ“ur mis à nu (Posthumous Works, +Société du Mercure de France); and in the Journal, Fusées, Letters, and +other fragments exhumed by devoted Baudelarians. + +To smash legends, Eugène Crépet's biographical study, first printed in +1887, has been republished with new notes by his son, Jacques Crépet. +This is an exceedingly valuable contribution to Baudelaire lore; a +dispassionate life, however, has yet to be written, a noble task for +some young poet who will disentangle the conflicting lies originated by +Baudelaire--that tragic comedian--from the truth and thus save him from +himself. The Crépet volume is really but a series of notes; there are +some letters addressed to the poet by the distinguished men of his day, +supplementing the rather disappointing volume of Letters, 1841-1866, +published in 1908. There are also documents in the legal prosecution of +Baudelaire, with memories of him by Charles Asselineau, Léon Cladel, +Camille Lemonnier, and others. + +In November, 1850, Maxime du Camp and Gustave Flaubert found themselves +at the French Ambassador's, Constantinople. The two friends had taken a +trip in the Orient which later bore fruit in Salammbô. General Aupick, +the representative of the French Government, cordially the young men +received; they were presented to his wife, Madame Aupick. She was the +mother of Charles Baudelaire, and inquired rather anxiously of Du Camp: +"My son has talent, has he not?" Unhappy because her second marriage, a +brilliant one, had set her son against her, the poor woman welcomed from +such a source confirmation of her eccentric boy's gifts. Du Camp tells +the much-discussed story of a quarrel between the youthful Charles and +his stepfather, a quarrel that began at table. There were guests +present. After some words Charles bounded at the General's throat and +sought to strangle him. He was promptly boxed on the ears and succumbed +to a nervous spasm. A delightful anecdote, one that fills with joy +psychiatrists in search of a theory of genius and degeneration. Charles +was given some money and put on board a ship sailing to East India. He +became a cattle-dealer in the British army, and returned to France +years afterward with a Vénus noire, to whom he addressed extravagant +poems! All this according to Du Camp. Here is another tale, a comical +one. Baudelaire visited Du Camp in Paris, and his hair was violently +green. Du Camp said nothing. Angered by this indifference, Baudelaire +asked: "You find nothing abnormal about me?" "No," was the answer. "But +my hair--it is green!" "That is not singular, mon cher Baudelaire; every +one has hair more or less green in Paris." Disappointed in not creating +a sensation, Baudelaire went to a café, gulped down two large bottles of +Burgundy, and asked the waiter to remove the water, as water was a +disagreeable sight; then he went away in a rage. It is a pity to doubt +this green hair legend; presently a man of genius will not be able to +enjoy an epileptic fit in peace--as does a banker or a beggar. We are +told that St. Paul, Mahomet, Handel, Napoleon, Flaubert, Dostoiëvsky +were epileptoids; yet we do not encounter men of this rare kind among +the inmates of asylums. Even Baudelaire had his sane moments. + +The joke of the green hair has been disposed of by Crépet. Baudelaire's +hair thinning after an illness, he had his head shaved and painted with +salve of a green hue, hoping thereby to escape baldness. At the time +when he had embarked for Calcutta (May, 1841), he was not seventeen, but +twenty years of age. Du Camp said he was seventeen when he attacked +General Aupick. The dinner could not have taken place at Lyons because +the Aupick family had left that city six years before the date given by +Du Camp. Charles was provided with five thousand francs for his +expenses, instead of twenty--Du Camp's version--and he never was a +beef-drover in the British army, for a good reason--he never reached +India. Instead, he disembarked at the Isle of Bourbon, and after a short +stay suffered from homesickness and returned to France, after being +absent about ten months. But, like Flaubert, on his return home +Baudelaire was seized with the nostalgia of the East; over there he had +yearned for Paris. Jules Claretie recalls Baudelaire saying to him with +a grimace: "I love Wagner; but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung +up by his tail outside of a window, and trying to stick to the panes of +glass with its claws. There is an odd grating on the glass which I find +at the same time strange, irritating, and singularly harmonious." Is it +necessary to add that Baudelaire, notorious in Paris for his love of +cats, dedicating poems to cats, would never have perpetrated such +revolting cruelty? + +Another misconception, a critical one, is the case of Poe and +Baudelaire. The young Frenchman first became infatuated with Poe's +writings in 1846 or 1847--he gave these two dates, though several +stories of Poe had been translated into French as early as 1841 or 1842; +L'Orang-Outang was the first, which we know as The Murders in the Rue +Morgue; Madame Meunier also adapted several Poe stories for the reviews. +Baudelaire's labours as a translator lasted over ten years. That he +assimilated Poe, that he idolized Poe, is a commonplace of literary +gossip. But that Poe had overwhelming influence in the formation of his +poetic genius is not the truth. Yet we find such an acute critic as the +late Edmund Clarence Stedman writing, "Poe's chief influence upon +Baudelaire's own production relates to poetry." It is precisely the +reverse. Poe's influence affected Baudelaire's prose, notably in the +disjointed confessions, Mon cÅ“ur mis à nu, which vaguely recall the +American writer's Marginalia. The bulk in the poetry in Les Fleurs du +Mal was written before Baudelaire had read Poe, though not published in +book form until 1857. But in 1855 some of the poems saw the light in the +Revue des deux Mondes, while many of them had been put forth a decade or +fifteen years before as fugitive verse in various magazines. Stedman was +not the first to make this mistake. In Bayard Taylor's The Echo Club we +find on page 24 this criticism: "There was a congenital twist about Poe +... Baudelaire and Swinburne after him have been trying to surpass him +by increasing the dose; but his muse is the natural Pythia inheriting +her convulsions, while they eat all sorts of insane roots to produce +theirs." This must have been written about 1872, and after reading it +one would fancy that Poe and Baudelaire were rhapsodic wrigglers on the +poetic tripod, whereas their poetry is often reserved, even glacial. +Baudelaire, like Poe, sometimes "built his nests with the birds of +Night," and that was enough to condemn the work of both men by critics +of the didactic school. + +Once, when Baudelaire heard that an American man of letters(?) was in +Paris, he secured an introduction and called on him. Eagerly inquiring +after Poe, he learned that he was not considered a genteel person in +America, Baudelaire withdrew, muttering maledictions. Enthusiastic poet! +Charming literary person! Yet the American, whoever he was, represented +public opinion at the time. To-day criticisms of Poe are vitiated by the +desire to make him an angel. It is to be doubted whether without his +barren environment and hard fortunes we should have had Poe at all. He +had to dig down deep into the pit of his personality to reach the +central core of his music. But every ardent young soul entering +"literature" begins by a vindication of Poe's character. Poe was a man, +and he is now a classic. He was a half-charlatan as was Baudelaire. In +both the sublime and the sickly were never far asunder. The pair loved +to mystify, to play pranks on their contemporaries. Both were implacable +pessimists. Both were educated in affluence, and both had to face +unprepared the hardships of life. The hastiest comparison of their +poetic work will show that their only common ideal was the worship of an +exotic beauty. Their artistic methods of expression were totally +dissimilar. Baudelaire, like Poe, had a harp-like temperament which +vibrated in the presence of strange subjects. Above all, he was obsessed +by sex. Women, as angel of destruction, is the keynote of his poems. Poe +was almost sexless. His aerial creatures never footed the dusty highways +of the world. His lovely lines, "Helen, thy beauty is to me," could +never have been written by Baudelaire; while Poe would never have +pardoned the "fulgurant" grandeur, the Beethoven-like harmonies, the +Dantesque horrors of that "deep wide music of lost souls" in "Femmes +Damnées": + + "Descendes, descendes, lamentable victimes." + +Or this, which might serve as a text for one of John Martin's vast +sinister mezzotints: + + J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal + Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore, + Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal + Une miraculeuse aurore; + + J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal + Un être, qui n'était que lumière, or et gaze, + Terrasser rénorme Satan; + Mais mon cÅ“ur que jamais ne visite l'extase, + Est un théâtre où l'on attend + Toujours, toujours en vain l'Etre aux ailes de gaze. + +George Saintsbury thus sums up the differences between Poe and +Baudelaire: "Both authors--Poe and De Quincey--fell short of Baudelaire +himself as regards depth and fulness of passion, but both have a +superficial likeness to him in eccentricity of temperameut and affection +for a certain peculiar mixture of grotesque and horror." Poe is without +passion, except a passion for the macabre; what Huysmans calls "The +October of the sensations"; whereas, there is a gulf of despair and +terror and humanity in Baudelaire, which shakes your nerves, yet +stimulates the imagination. However, profounder as a poet, he was no +match for Poe in what might be termed intellectual prestidigitation. The +mathematical Poe, the Poe of the ingenious detective tales, tales +extraordinary, the Poe of the swift flights into the cosmic blue, the +Poe the prophet and mystic--in these the American was more versatile +than his French translator. That Baudelaire said, "Evil be thou my +good," is doubtless true. He proved all things and found them vanity. He +is the poet of original sin, a worshipper of Satan for the sake of +paradox; his Litanies to Satan ring childish to us--in his heart he was +a believer. His was "an infinite reverse aspiration," and mixed up with +his pose was a disgust for vice, for life itself. He was the last of the +Romanticists; Sainte-Beuve called him the Kamchatka of Romanticism; its +remotest hyperborean peak. Romanticism is dead to-day, as dead as +Naturalism; but Baudelaire is alive, and read. His glistening +phosphorescent trail is over French poetry and he is the begetter of a +school:--Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Carducci, Arthur Rimbaud, +Jules Laforgue, Gabriel D'Annunzio, Aubrey Beardsley, Verhaeren, and +many of the youthful crew. He affected Swinburne, and in Huysmans, who +was not a poet, his splenetic spirit lives. Baudelaire's motto might be +the obverse of Browning's lines: "The Devil is in heaven. All's wrong +with the world." + +When Goethe said of Hugo and the Romanticists that they came +from Chateaubriand, he should have substituted the name of +Rousseau--"Romanticism, it is Rousseau," exclaims Pierre Lasserre. But +there is more of Byron and Petrus Borel--a forgotten half-mad poet--in +Baudelaire; though, for a brief period, in 1848, he became a Rousseau +reactionary, sported the workingman's blouse, cut his hair, shouldered a +musket, went to the barricades, wrote inflammatory editorials calling +the proletarian "Brother!" (oh, Baudelaire!) and, as the Goncourts +recorded in their diary, had the head of a maniac. How seriously we may +take this swing of the pendulum is to be noted in a speech of the poet's +at the time of the Revolution: "Come," he said, "let us go shoot General +Aupick!" It was his stepfather that he thought of, not the eternal +principles of Liberty. This may be a false anecdote; many such were +foisted upon Baudelaire. For example, his exclamations at cafés or in +public places, such as: "Have you ever eaten a baby? I find it pleasing +to the palate!" or, "The night I killed my father!" Naturally, people +stared and Baudelaire was happy--he had startled a bourgeois. The +cannibalistic idea he may have borrowed from Swift's amusing pamphlet, +for this French poet knew English literature. + +Gautier compares the poems to a certain tale of Hawthorne's in which +there is a garden of poisoned flowers. But Hawthorne worked in his +laboratory of evil wearing mask and gloves; he never descended into the +mud and sin of the street. Baudelaire ruined his health, smudged his +soul, yet remained withal, as Anatole France says, "a divine poet." How +childish, yet how touching is his resolution--he wrote in his diary of +prayer's dynamic force--when he was penniless, in debt, threatened with +imprisonment, sick, nauseated with sin: "To make every morning my prayer +to God, the reservoir of all force, and all justice; to my father, to +Mariette, and to Poe as intercessors." (Evidently, Maurice Barrès +encountered here his theory of Intercessors.) Baudelaire loved the +memory of his father as much as Stendhal hated his own. He became +reconciled with his mother after the death of General Aupick, in 1857. +He felt in 1862 that his own intellectual eclipse was approaching, for +he wrote: "I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror. To-day +imbecility's wing fanned me as it passed." The sense of the vertiginous +gulf was abiding with him; read his poem, "Pascal avait son gouffre." + +In preferring the Baudelaire translations of Poe to the original--and +they give the impression of being original works--Stedman agreed with +Asselineau that the French is more concise than the English. The prose +of Poe and Baudelaire is clear, sober, rhythmic; Baudelaire's is more +lapidary, finer in contour, richer coloured, more supple, though without +the "honey and tiger's blood" of Barbey d'Aurevilly. Baudelaire's soul +was patiently built up as a fabulous bird might build its nest--bits of +straw, the sobbing of women, clay, cascades of black stars, rags, +leaves, rotten wood, corroding dreams, a spray of roses, a sparkle of +pebble, a gleam of blue sky, arabesques of incense and verdigris, +despairing hearts and music and the abomination of desolation, for its +ground-tones. But this soul-nest is also a cemetery of the seven +sorrows. He loves the clouds ... les nuages ... là bas.... It was là bas +with him even in the tortures of his wretched love-life. Corruption and +death were ever floating in his consciousness. He was like Flaubert, who +saw everywhere the hidden skeleton. Félicien Hops has best interpreted +Baudelaire; the etcher and poet were closely knit spirits. Rodin, too, +is a Baudelarian. If there could be such an anomaly as a native +wood-note wildly evil, it would be the lyric and astringent voice of +this poet. His sensibility was both catholic and morbid, though he could +be frigid in the face of the most disconcerting misfortunes. He was a +man for whom the invisible word existed; if Gautier was pagan, +Baudelaire was a strayed spirit from mediæval days. The spirit rules, +and, as Paul Bourget said, "he saw God." A Manichean in his worship of +evil, he nevertheless abased his soul: "Oh! Lord God! Give me the force +and courage to contemplate my heart and my body without disgust," he +prays: but as some one remarked to Rochefoucauld, "Where you end, +Christianity begins." + +Baudelaire built his ivory tower on the borders of a poetic Maremma, +which every miasma of the spirit pervaded, every marsh-light and +glow-worm inhabited. Like Wagner, Baudelaire painted in his sultry music +the profundities of abysms, the vastness of space. He painted, too, the +great nocturnal silences of the soul. + +Pacem summum tenent! He never reached peace on the heights. Let us +admit that souls of his kind are encased in sick frames; their steel is +too shrewd for the scabbard; yet the enigma for us is none the less +unfathomable. Existence for such natures is a sort of muffled delirium. +To affiliate him with Poe, De Quincey, Hoffman, James Thomson, +Coleridge, and the rest of the sombre choir does not explain him; he is, +perhaps, nearer Donne and Villon than any of the others--strains of the +metaphysical and sinister and supersubtle are to be discovered in him. +The disharmony of brain and body, the spiritual bilocation, are only too +easy to diagnose; but the remedy? Hypocrite lecteur--mon semblable--mon +frère! When the subtlety, force, grandeur, of his poetic production be +considered, together with its disquieting, nervous, vibrating qualities, +it is not surprising that Victor Hugo wrote to the poet: "You invest the +heaven of art with we know not what deadly rays; you create a new +shudder." Hugo might have said that he turned Art into an Inferno. +Baudelaire is the evil archangel of poetry. In his heaven of fire, glass +and ebony he is the blazing Lucifer. "A glorious devil, large in heart +and brain, that did love beauty only..." once sang Tennyson, though not +of the Frenchman. + + + + +II + + +As long ago as 1869, and in our "barbarous gas-lit country," as +Baudelaire named the land of Poe, an unsigned review appeared in which +this poet was described as "unique and as interesting as Hamlet. He is +that rare and unknown being, a genuine poet--a poet in the midst of +things that have disordered his spirit--a poet excessively developed in +his taste for and by beauty ... very responsive to the ideal, very +greedy of sensation." A better description of Baudelaire does not exist +The Hamlet-motive, particularly, is one that sounded throughout the +disordered symphony of the poet's life. + +He was, later, revealed--also reviled--to American readers by Henry +James, who completely missed his significance. This was in 1878, when +appeared the first edition of French Poets and Novelists. Previous to +that there had been some desultory discussion, a few essays in the +magazines, and in 1875 a sympathetic paper by Professor James Albert +Harrison of the University of Virginia. He denounced the Frenchman for +his reprehensible taste, though he did not mention his beautiful verse +nor his originality in the matter of criticism. Baudelaire, in his eyes, +was not only immoral, but he had, with the approbation of Sainte-Beuve, +introduced Poe as a great man to the French nation. (See Baudelaire's +letter to Sainte-Beuve in the newly published Letters, 1841-1866.) +Perhaps "Mr. Dick Minim" and his projected Academy of Criticism might +make clear these devious problems. + +The Etudes Critiques of Edmond Schérer were collected in 1863. In them +we find this unhappy, uncritical judgment: "Baudelaire, lui, n'a rien, +ni le cÅ“ur, ni l'esprit, ni l'idée, ni le mot, ni la raison, ni la +fantaisie, ni la verve, ni même la facture ... son unique titre c'est +d'avoir contribué à créer l'esthétique de la débauche." It is not our +intention to dilate upon the injustice of this criticism. It is +Baudelaire the critic of æsthetics in whom we are interested. Yet I +cannot forbear saying that if all the negations of Schérer had been +transformed into affirmations, only justice would have been accorded +Baudelaire, who was not alone a poet, the most original of his century, +but also a critic of the first rank, one who welcomed Richard Wagner +when Paris hooted him and his fellow composer, Hector Berlioz, played +the rôle of the envious; one who fought for Edouard Manet, Leconte de +Lisle, Gustave Flaubert, Eugène Delacroix; fought with pen for the +modern etchers, illustrators, Meryon, Daumier, Félicien Rops, Gavarni, +and Constantin Guys. He literally identified himself with De Quincey and +Poe, translating them so wonderfully well that some unpatriotic persons +like the French better than the originals. So much was Baudelaire +absorbed in Poe that a writer of his times asserted that the translator +would meet the same fate as the American poet. A singular, vigorous +spirit is Baudelaire's, whose poetry with its "icy ecstasy" is profound +and harmonious, whose criticism is penetrated by a catholic quality, who +anticipated modern critics in his abhorrence of schools and +environments, preferring to isolate the man and uniquely study him. He +would have subscribed to Swinburne's generous pronouncement: "I have +never been able to see what should attract man to the profession of +criticism but the noble pleasure of praising." The Frenchman has said +that it would be impossible for a critic to become a poet; and it is +impossible for a poet not to contain a critic. + +Théophile Gautier's study prefixed to the definitive edition of Les +Fleurs du Mal is not only the most sympathetic exposition of Baudelaire +as man and genius, but it is also the high-water mark of Gautier's gifts +as a critical essayist. We learn therein how the young Charles, an +incorrigible dandy, came to visit Hôtel Pimodan about 1844. In this +Hôtel Pimodan a dilettante, Ferdinand Boissard, held high revel. His +fantastically decorated apartments were frequented by the painters, +poets, sculptors, romancers, of the day--that is, carefully selected +ones such as Liszt, George Sand, Mérimée, and others whose verve or +genius gave them the privilege of saying Open Sesame! to this cave of +forty Supermen. Balzac has in his Peau de Chagrin pictured the same sort +of scenes which were supposed to occur weekly at the Pimodan. Gautier +eloquently describes the meeting of these kindred artistic souls, where +the beautiful Jewess, Maryx, who had posed for Ary Scheffer's Mignon +and for Paul Delaroche's La Gloire, met the superb Madame Sabatier, the +only woman that Baudelaire loved, and the original of that extraordinary +group of Clésinger's--the sculptor and son-in-law of George Sand--la +Femme au Serpent, a Salammbô à la mode in marble. Hasheesh was eaten, so +Gautier writes, by Boissard and Baudelaire. As for the creator of +Mademoiselle Maupin, he was too robust for such nonsense. He had to work +for his living at journalism, and he died in harness, an irreproachable +father, while the unhappy Baudelaire, the inheritor of an intense, +unstable temperament, soon devoured his patrimony of 75,000 francs, and +for the remaining years of his life was between the devil of his dusky +Jenny Duval and the deep sea of hopeless debt. + +It was at these Pimodan gatherings, which were no doubt much less wicked +than the participants would have us believe, that Baudelaire encountered +Emile Deroy, a painter of skill, who made his portrait, and encouraged +the fashionable young fellow to continue his art studies. We have seen +an album containing sketches by the poet. They betray talent of about +the same order as Thackeray's, with a superadded note of the +"horrific"--that favourite epithet of the early Poe critics. Baudelaire +admired Thackeray, and when the Englishman praised the illustrations of +Guys, he was delighted. Deroy taught his pupil the commonplaces of a +painter's technique; also how to compose a palette--a rather meaningless +phrase nowadays. At least, he did not write of the arts without some +technical experience. Delacroix took up his enthusiastic disciple, and +when the Salons of Baudelaire appeared in 1845, 1846, 1855, and 1859, +the praise and blame they evoked were testimonies to the training and +knowledge of their author. A new spirit had been born. + +The names of Diderot and Baudelaire were coupled. Neither academic nor +spouting the jargon of the usual critic, the Salons of Baudelaire are +the production of a humanist. Some would put them above Diderot's. Mr. +Saintsbury, after Swinburne the warmest advocate of Baudelaire among the +English, thinks that the French poet in his picture criticism observed +too little and imagined too much. "In other words," he adds, "to read a +criticism of Baudelaire's without the title affixed is by no means a +sure method of recognizing the picture afterward." Now, word-painting +was the very thing that Baudelaire avoided. It was his friend Gautier, +with the plastic style, who attempted the well-nigh impossible feat of +competing in his verbal descriptions with the certitudes of canvas and +marble. And, if he with his verbal imagination did not entirely succeed, +how could a less adept manipulator of the vocabulary? We do not agree +with Mr. Saintsbury. No one can imagine too much when the imagination is +that of a poet. Baudelaire divined the work of the artist and set it +down scrupulously in a prose of exceeding rectitude. He did not paint +pictures in prose. He did not divagate. He did not overburden his pages +with technical terms. But the spirit of his subject he did disengage in +a few swift phrases. The polemics of historical schools were a cross for +him to bear, and he wore his prejudices lightly. Like a true critic, he +judged more by form than theme. There are no types; there is only life, +he asserted, and long before Jules Laforgue. He was ever art-for-art, +yet, having breadth of comprehension and a Heine-like capacity for +seeing both sides of his own nature with its idiosyncrasies, he could +write: "The puerile utopia of the school of art-for-art, in excluding +morality, and often even passion, was necessarily sterile. All +literature which refuses to advance fraternally between science and +philosophy is a homicidal and a suicidal literature." + +Baudelaire, then, was no less sound a critic of the plastic arts than of +music and literature. Like his friend Flaubert, he had a horror of +democracy, of the democratisation of the arts, of all the sentimental +fuss and fuddle of a pseudo-humanitarianism. During the 1848 agitation +the former dandy of 1840 put on a blouse and spoke of barricades. Those +things were in the air. Wagner rang the alarm-bells during the Dresden +uprising. Chopin wrote for the pianoforte a revolutionary étude. Brave +lads! Poets and musicians fight their battles best in the region of the +ideal. Baudelaire's little attack of the equality-measles soon vanished. +He lectured his brother poets and artists on the folly and injustice of +abusing or despising the bourgeois (being a man of paradox, he dedicated +a volume of his Salons to the bourgeois), but he would not have +contradicted Mr. George Moore for declaring that "in art the democrat +is always reactionary. In 1830 the democrats were against Victor Hugo +and Delacrois." And Les Fleurs du Mal, that book of opals, blood, and +evil swamp-flowers, will never be savoured by the mob. + +In his Souvenirs de Jeunesse, Champfleury speaks of the promenades in +the Louvre he enjoyed the company with Baudelaire. Bronzino was one of +the poet's preferences. He was also attracted by El Greco--not an +unnatural admiration, considering the sombre extravagance of his own +genius. Of Goya he has written in exalted phrases. Velasquez was his +touchstone. Being of a perverse nature, his Derves ruined by abuse of +drink and drugs, the landscapes of his imagination were more beautiful +than Nature herself. The country itself, he declared, was odious. Like +Whistler, whom he often met--see the Hommage à Delacrois by +Fantin-Latour, with its portraits of Whistler, Baudelaire, Manet, +Bracquemond the etcher, Legros, Delacrois, Cordier, Duranty the critic, +and De Balleroy--he could not help showing his aversion to "foolish +sunsets." In a word, Baudelaire, into whose brain had entered too much +moonlight, was the father of a lunar school of poetry, criticism and +fiction. His Samuel Cramer, in La Fanfarlo, is the literary progenitor +of Jean, Duc d'Esseintes, in Huysmans's _A Rebours_. Huysmans at first +modelled himself upon Baudelaire. His Le Drageoir aux Epices is a +continuation of Petits Poèmes en Prose. And to Baudelaire's account must +be laid much artificial morbid writing. Despite his pursuit of +perfection in form, his influence has been too often baneful to +impressionable artists in embryo. A lover of Gallic Byronism, and +high-priest of the Satanic school, there was no extravagance, absurd or +terrible, that he did not commit, from etching a four-part fugue on ice +to skating hymns in honour of Lucifer. In his criticism alone was he the +sane logical Frenchman. And while he did not live to see the success of +the Impressionist group, he surely would have acclaimed their theory and +practice. Was he not an impressionist himself? + +As Richard Wagner was his god in music, so Delacroix quite overflowed +his æsthetic consciousness. Read Volume II of his collected works, +_Curiosités Esthétiques_, which contains his Salons; also his essay, _De +l'Essence du Rire_ (worthy to be placed side by side with George +Meredith's essay on Comedy). Caricaturists, French and foreign, are +considered in two chapters at the close of the volume. Baudelaire was as +conscientious as Gautier. He trotted around miles of mediocre canvas, +saying an encouraging word to the less talented, boiling over with holy +indignation or indulging in glacial irony, before the rash usurpers +occupying the seats of the mighty, and pouncing on new genius with +promptitude. Upon Delacroix he lavished the largesse of his admiration. +He smiled at the platitudes of Horace Vernet, and only shook his head +over the Schnetzes and other artisans of the day. He welcomed William +Hausollier, now so little known. He praised Devéria, Chasseriau--who +waited years before he came into his own; his preferred landscapists +were Corot, Rousseau and Troyon. He impolitely spoke of Ary Scheffer and +the "apes of sentiment"; while his discussions of Hogarth, Cruikshank, +Pinelli and Breughel proclaims his versatility of vision. In his essay +Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne he was the first among critics to recognize +the peculiar quality called "modernity," that naked vibration which +informs the novels of Goncourt, Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale, +and the pictures of Manet, Monet, Degas and Raffaelli with their +evocations of a new, nervous Paris. It is in his Volume III, entitled +L'Art Romantique, that so many things dear to the new century were then +subjects of furious quarrels. This book contains much just and brilliant +writing. It was easy for Nietzsche to praise Wagner in Germany in 1876, +but dangerous at Paris in 1861 to declare war on Wagner's adverse +critics. This Baudelaire did. + +The relations of Baudelaire and Edouard Manet were exceedingly cordial. +In a letter to Théophile Thoré, the art critic (Letters, p. 361), we +find Baudelaire defending his friend from the accusation that his +pictures were pastiches of Goya. He wrote: "Manet has never seen Goya, +never El Greco; he was never in the Pourtalés Gallery." Which may have +been true at the time, 1864, nevertheless Manet had visited Madrid and +spent much time studying Velasquez and abusing Spanish cookery. +(Consider, too, Goya's Balcony with Girls and Manet's famous Balcony.) +Raging at the charge of imitation, Baudelaire said in this same epistle: +"They accuse even me of imitating Edgar Poe.... Do you know why I so +patiently translated Poe? Because he resembled me." The poet italicized +these words. With stupefaction, therefore, he admired the mysterious +coincidences of Manet's work with that of Goya and El Greco. + +He took Manet seriously. He wrote to him in a paternal and severe tone. +Recall his reproof when urging the painter to exhibit his work. "You +complain about attacks, but are you the first to endure them? Have you +more genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by +derision. And in order not to make you too proud I must tell you that +they are models, each in his way, and in a very rich world, while you +are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." (Letters, p. 436.) + +Would Baudelaire recall these prophetic words if he were able to revisit +the glimpses of the Champs Elysées at the Autumn Salons? What would he +think of Cézanne? Odilon Redon he would understand, for he is the +transposer of Baudelairianism to terms of design and colour. And perhaps +the poet whose verse is saturated with tropical hues--he, when young, +sailed in southern seas--might appreciate the monstrous debauch of form +and colour in the Tahitian canvases of Paul Gauguin. + +Baudelaire's preoccupation with pictorial themes may be noted in his +verse. He is par excellence the poet of æsthetics. To Daumier he +inscribed a poem; and to the sculptor Ernest Christophe, to Delacroix +(Sur Tasse en Prison), to Manet, to Guys (Rêve Parisien), to an unknown +master (Une Martyre); and Watteau, a Watteau à rebours, is seen in Un +Voyage à Cythère; while in Les Phares this poet of the ideal, spleen +music, and perfume, shows his adoration for Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci, +Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Puget, Goya, Delacroix--"Delacroix, lac de sang +hanté des mauvais anges." And what is more exquisite than his quatrain +to Lola de Valence, a poetic inscription for the picture of Edouard +Manet, with its last line as vaporous, as subtle as Verlaine: "Le charme +inattendu d'un bijou rose et noir!" Heine called himself the last of the +Romantics. The first of the "Moderns" and the last of the Romantics was +the many-sided Charles Baudelaire. + + + + +III + + +He was born at Paris, April 9, 1821 (Flaubert's birth year), and not +April 21, as Gautier has it. His father was Joseph Francis Baudelaire, +or Baudelaire, who occupied a government position. A cultivated art +lover, his taste was apparent in the home he made for his second wife, +Caroline Archimbaut-Dufays, an orphan and the daughter of a military +officer. There was a considerable difference in the years of this pair; +the mother was twenty-seven, the father sixty-two, at the birth of their +only child. By his first marriage the elder Baudelaire had one son, +Claude, who, like his half-brother Charles, died of paralysis, though a +steady man of business. That great modern neurosis, called Commerce, has +its mental wrecks, too, and no one pays attention; but when a poet falls +by the wayside is the chase begun by neurologists and other soul-hunters +seeking victims. After the death of Baudelaire's father, the widow, +within a year, married the handsome, ambitious Aupick, then chef de +bataillon, lieutenant-colonel, decorated with the Legion of Honour, and +later general and ambassador to Madrid, Constantinople, and London. +Charles was a nervous, frail youth, but unlike most children of genius, +he was a scholar and won brilliant honours at school. His stepfather was +proud of him. From the Royal College of Lyons, Charles went to the Lycée +Louis-le-Grand, Paris, but was expelled in 1839, on various +discreditable charges. Troubles soon began at home. He was irascible, +vain, precocious, and given to dissipation. He quarreled with General +Aupick, and disdained his mother. But she was to blame, she has +confessed; she had quite forgotten the boy in the flush of her second +love. He could not forget, or forgive what he called her infidelity to +the memory of his father. Hamlet-like, he was inconsolable. The good +Bishop of Montpellier, who knew the family, said that Charles was a +little crazy--second marriages usually bring woe in their train. "When a +mother has such a son, she doesn't re-marry," said the young poet +Charles signed himself Baudelaire-Dufays, or sometimes Dufais. He wrote +in his journal: "My ancestors, idiots or maniacs ... all victims of +terrible passions"; which was one of his exaggerations. His grandfather +on the paternal side was a Champenois peasant, his mother's family +presumably Norman, but not much is known of her forbears. Charles +believed himself lost from the time his half-brother was stricken. He +also believed that his instability of temperament--and he studied his +"case" as would a surgeon--was the result of his parents' disparity in +years. + +After his return from the East, where he did not learn English as has +been said--his mother taught him as a boy to converse in and write the +language--he came into his little inheritance, about fifteen thousand +dollars. Two years later he was so heavily in debt that his family asked +for a guardian on the ground of incompetency. He had been swindled, +being young and green. How had he squandered his money? Not exactly on +opera-glasses, like Gérard de Nerval, but on clothes, pictures, +furniture, books. The remnant was set aside to pay his debts. Charles +would be both poet and dandy. He dressed expensively but soberly, in the +English fashion; his linen dazzling, the prevailing hue of his +habiliments black. In height he was medium, his eyes brown, searching, +luminous, the eye of a nyctalops, "eyes like ravens"; nostrils +palpitating, cleft chin, mouth expressive, sensual jaw, strong and +square. His hair was black, curly, glossy, his forehead high, square and +white. In the Deroy portrait he wears a beard; he is there what Catulle +Mendès nicknamed him: "His Excellence, Monseigneur Brummel!" Later he +was the elegiac Satan, the author of L'Imitation de N.S. le Diable; or +the Baudelaire of George Moore: "the clean-shaven face of the mock +priest, the slow cold eyes and the sharp cunning sneer of the cynical +libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness +of temptation." In the heyday of his blood he was perverse and +deliberate. Let us credit him with contradicting the Byronic notion that +ennui could best be cured by dissipation; in sin Baudelaire found the +saddest of all consolations. Mendès laughs at the legend of Baudelaire's +violence, of his being given to explosive phrases. Despite Gautier's +stories about the Hôtel Pimodan and its club of hasheesh-eaters, M. +Mendès denies that Baudelaire was a victim of the hemp. What the +majority of mankind does not know concerning the habits of literary +workers is this prime fact: men who work hard, writing verse--and there +is no mental toil comparable to it--cannot drink, or indulge in opium, +without inevitable collapse. The old-fashioned ideas of "inspiration," +spontaneity, easy improvisation, the sudden bolt from heaven, are +delusions still hugged by the world. To be told that Chopin filed +at his music for years, that Beethoven in his smithy forged his +thunderbolts by the sweat of his brow, that Manet toiled like a +labourer on the dock, that Baudelaire was a mechanic in his devotion +to poetic work, that Gautier was a hard-working journalist, are +disillusions for the sentimental. Minerva springing full-fledged from +Jupiter's skull to the desk of the poet is a pretty fancy; but Balsac +and Flaubert did not encourage this fancy. Work literally killed Poe, as +it killed Jules de Goncourt, Flaubert and Daudet. Maupassant went insane +because he would work and he would play the same day. Baudelaire worked +and worried. His debts haunted him his life long. His constitution was +flawed--Sainte-Beuve told him that he had worn out his nerves--from the +start, he was détraqué; but that his entire life was one huge debauch is +a nightmare of the moral police in some red cotton nightcap country. + +His period of mental production was not brief nor barren. He was a +student. Du Camp's charge that he was an ignorant man is disproved by +the variety and quality of his published work. His range of sympathies +was large. His mistake, in the eyes of his colleagues, was to write so +well about the seven arts. Versatility is seldom given its real +name--which is protracted labour. Baudelaire was one of the elect, an +aristocrat, who dealt with the quintessence of art; his delicate air of +a bishop, his exquisite manners, his modulated voice, aroused unusual +interest and admiration. He was a humanist of distinction; he has left a +hymn to Saint Francis in the Latin of the decadence. Baudelaire, like +Chopin, made more poignant the phrase, raised to a higher intensity the +expressiveness of art. + +Women played a commanding rôle in his life. They always do with any poet +worthy of the name, though few have been so frank in acknowledging this +as Baudelaire. Yet he was in love more with Woman than the individual. +The legend of the beautiful creature he brought from the East resolves +itself into the dismal affair with Jeanne Duval. He met her in Paris, +after he had been in the East. She sang at a café concert in Paris. She +was more brown than black. She was not handsome, not intelligent, not +good; yet he idealized her, for she was the source of half his +inspiration. To her were addressed those marvellous evocations of the +Orient, of perfume, tresses, delicious dawns on strange far-away seas +and "superb Byzant," domes that devils built. Baudelaire is the poet of +perfumes; he is also the patron saint of ennui. No one has so chanted +the praise of odours. His soul swims on perfume as do other souls on +music, he has sung. As he grew older he seemed to hunt for more acrid +odours; he often presents an elaborately chased vase the carving of +which transports us, but from which the head is quickly averted. Jeanne, +whom he never loved, no matter what may be said, was a sorceress. But +she was impossible; she robbed, betrayed him; he left her a dozen times +only to return. He was a capital draughtsman with a strong nervous line +and made many pen-and-ink drawings of her. They are not prepossessing. +In her rapid decline she was not allowed to want. Madame Aupick paid her +expenses in the hospital. A sordid history. She was a veritable flower +of evil for Baudelaire. Yet poetry, like music, would be colourless, +scentless, if it sounded no dissonances. Fancy art reduced to the +beatific and banal chord of C major! + +He fell in love with the celebrated Madame Sabatier, a reigning beauty, +at whose salon artistic Paris assembled. She had been christened by +Gautier Madame la Présidente, and her sumptuous beauty was portrayed by +Ricard in his La Femme au Chien. She returned Baudelaire's love. They +soon parted. Again a riddle which the published letters hardly solve. +One letter, however, does show that Baudelaire had tried to be faithful, +and failed. He could not extort from his exhausted soul the sentiment; +but he put its music on paper. His most seductive lyrics were addressed +to Madame Sabatier: "A la très chère, à la très-belle," a hymn saturated +with love. Music, spleen, perfumes--"colour, sound, perfumes call to +each other as deep to deep; perfumes like the flesh of children, soft as +hautboys, green as the meadows"--criminals, outcasts, the charm of +childhood, the horrors of love, pride, and rebellion, Eastern +landscapes, cats, soothing and false; cats, the true companions of +lonely poets; haunted clocks, shivering dusks, and gloomier +dawns--Paris in a hundred phases--these and many other themes this +strange-souled poet, this "Dante, pacer of the shore," of Paris has +celebrated in finely wrought verse and profound phrases. In a single +line he contrives atmosphere; the very shape of his sentence, the ring +of the syllables, arouse the deepest emotion. A master of harmonic +undertones is Baudelaire. His successors have excelled him in making +their music more fluid, more lyrical, more vapourous--many young French +poets pass through their Baudelarian green-sickness--but he alone knows +the secrets of moulding those metallic, free sonnets, which have the +resistance of bronze; and of the despairing music that flames from the +mouths of lost souls trembling on the wharves of hell. He is the supreme +master of irony and troubled voluptuousness. + +Baudelaire is a masculine poet. He carved rather than sang; the plastic +arts spoke to his soul. A lover and maker of images. Like Poe, his +emotions transformed themselves into ideas. Bourget classified him as +mystic, libertine, and analyst. He was born with a wound in his soul, to +use the phrase of Père Lacordaire. (Curiously enough, he actually +contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat +in the French Academy. Sainte-Beuve dissuaded him from this folly.) +Recall Baudelaire's prayer: "Thou, O Lord, my God, grant me the grace to +produce some fine lines which will prove to myself that I am not the +last of men, that I am not inferior to those I contemn." Individualist, +egoist, anarchist, his only thought was letters. Jules Laforgue thus +described Baudelaire: "Cat, Hindoo, Yankee, Episcopal, Alchemist." Yes, +an alchemist who suffocated in the fumes he created. He was of Gothic +imagination, and could have said with Rolla: "Je suis venu trop tard +dans un monde trop vieux." He had an unassuaged thirst for the absolute. +The human soul was his stage, he its interpreting orchestra. + +In 1857 The Flowers of Evil was published by Poulet-Malassis, who +afterward went into bankruptcy--a warning to publishers with a taste for +fine literature. The titles contemplated were Limbes, or Lesbiennes. +Hippolyte Babou suggested the one we know. These poems were suppressed +on account of six, and poet and publisher summoned. As the municipal +government had made a particular ass of itself in the prosecution of +Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary, the Baudelaire matter was +disposed of in haste. He was condemned to a fine of three hundred +francs, a fine which was never paid, as the objectionable poems were +removed. They were printed in the Belgian edition, and may be read in +the new volume, Å’uvres. Posthumes. + +Baudelaire was infuriated over the judgment, for he knew that his book +was dramatic in expression. He had expected, like Flaubert, to emerge +from the trial with flying colours; therefore to be classed as one who +wrote objectionable literature was a shock. "Flaubert had the Empress +back of him," he complained; which was true; the Empress Eugénie, also +the Princess Mathilde. But he worked as ever and put forth those +polished intaglios called Poems in Prose, for the form of which he had +taken a hint from Aloys Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit. He filled this +form with a new content; not alone pictures, but moods, are to be found +in those miniatures. Pity is their keynote, a tenderness for the abject +and lowly, a revelation of sensibility that surprised those critics who +had discerned in Baudelaire only a sculptor of evil. In one of his poems +he described a landscape of metal, of marble and water; a babel of +staircases and arcades, a palace of infinity, surrounded by the silence +of eternity. This depressing yet magical dream was utilized by Huysmans +in his A Rebours. But in the tiny landscapes of the Prose Poems there is +nothing rigid or artificial. Indeed, the poet's deliberate attitude of +artificiality is dropped. He is human. Not that the deep fundamental +note of humanity is ever absent in his poems; the eternal diapason is +there even when least overheard. Baudelaire is more human than Poe. His +range of sympathy is wider. In this he transcends him as a poet, though +his subject-matter often issues from the very dregs of life. Brother to +pitiable wanderers, there are, nevertheless, no traces of cant, no +"Russian pity" à la Dostoiëvsky, no humanitarian or socialistic +rhapsodies in his work. Baudelaire is an egoist He hated the sentimental +sapping of altruism. His prose-poem, Crowds, with its "bath of +multitude," may have been suggested by Poe; but in Charles Lamb we find +the idea: "Are there no solitudes out of caves and the desert? or +cannot the heart, in the midst of crowds, feel frightfully alone?" + +His best critical work is the Richard Wagner and Tannhauser, as +significant an essay as Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. And +Baudelaire's polemic appeared at a more critical period in Wagner's +career. Wagner sent a brief hearty letter of thanks to the critic, and +later made his acquaintance. To Wagner, Baudelaire introduced a young +Wagnerian, Villiers de l'Isle Adam. This Wagner letter is included in +the volume of Crépet; but there are no letters published from Baudelaire +to Franz Liszt, though they were friends. In Weimar I saw at the Liszt +Museum several from Baudelaire which should have been included in the +Letters. The poet understood Liszt and his reforms as he understood +Wagner. The German composer admired the French poet, and his Kundry, in +the sultry second act of Parsifal, has a Baudelairian hue, especially in +the temptation scene. + +The end was at hand. Baudelaire had been steadily, rather, unsteadily, +going downhill; a desperate figure, a dandy in shabby attire. He went +out only after dark, he haunted the exterior boulevards, associated +with birds of nocturnal plumage. He drank without thirst, ate without +hunger, as he has said. A woeful decadence for this aristocrat of life +and letters. Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged +his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre. He fled to +Brussels, there to rehabilitate his dwindling fortunes. He gave a few +lectures, and met Rops, Lemonnier, drank to forget, and forgot to work. +He abused Brussels, Belgium, its people. A country, he cried, where the +trees are black, the flowers without odour, and where there is no +conversation! He, the brilliant causeur, the chief blaguer of a circle +in which young James McNeill Whistler was reduced to the rôle of a +listener--this most spiritual among artists, found himself a failure in +the Belgian capital. It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that +Baudelaire was the creator of many of the paradoxes attributed, not only +to Whistler, but to an entire school--if one may employ such a phrase. +The frozen imperturbability of the poet, his cutting enunciation, his +power of blasphemy, his hatred of Nature, his love of the artificial, +have been copied by the æsthetic blades of our day. He it was who first +taunted Nature with being an imitator of art, with always being the +same. Oh, the imitative sunsets! Oh, the quotidian eating and drinking! +And as pessimist, too, he led the mode. Baudelaire, like Flaubert, +grasped the murky torch of pessimism once held by Chateaubriand, +Benjamin Constant, and Senancour. Doubtless, all this stemmed from +Byronism. And now it is as stale as Byronism. + +His health failed, and he lacked money enough to pay for doctor's +prescriptions; he even owed for the room in his hotel. At Namur, where +he was visiting the father-in-law of Felician Rops (March, 1866), he +suffered from an attack of paralysis. He was removed to Brussels. His +mother, who lived at Honneur, in mourning for her husband, came to his +aid. Taken to France, he was placed in a sanatorium. Aphasia set in. He +could only ejaculate a mild oath, and when he caught sight of himself in +the mirror he would bow pleasantly as if to a stranger. His friends +rallied, and they were among the most distinguished people in Paris, the +élite of souls. Ladies visited him, one or two playing Wagner on the +piano--which must have added a fresh nuance to death--and they brought +him flowers. He expressed his love for flowers and music to the last. He +could not bear the sight of his mother; she revived in him some painful +memories, but that passed, and he clamoured for her when she was absent. +If anyone mentioned the names of Wagner or Manet, he smiled. And with a +fixed stare, as if peering through some invisible window opening upon +eternity, he died, August 31, 1867, aged forty-six. + +Barbey d'Aurevilly himself a Satanist and dandy (oh, those comical old +attitudes of literature), had prophesied that the author of Fleurs du +Mal would either blow out his brains or prostrate himself at the foot of +the cross. (Later he said the same of Huysmans.) Baudelaire had the +alternative course forced upon him by fate after he had attempted +spiritual suicide for how many years? (He once tried actual suicide, but +the slight cut in his throat looked so ugly to him that he went no +farther.) His soul had been a battle-field for the powers of good and +evil. That at the end he brought the wreck of both soul and body to his +God should not be a subject for comment. He was an extraordinary poet +with a bad conscience, who lived miserably and was buried with honours. +Then it was that his worth was discovered (funeral orations over a +genius are a species of public staircase-wit). His reputation waxes with +the years. He is an exotic gem in the crown of French poetry. Of him +Swinburne has chanted Ave Atque Vale: + + Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, + Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? + + * * * * * + + + + +THE FLOWERS OF EVIL + + + + +THE DANCE OF DEATH. + + +Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves, +Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves +With all the careless and high-stepping grace, +And the extravagant courtesan's thin face. + +Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed? +Her floating robe, in royal amplitude, +Palls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod +With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod. + +The swarms that hum about her collar-bones +As the lascivious streams caress the stones, +Conceal from every scornful jest that flies, +Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes + +Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays +Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways, +Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebræ. +O charm of nothing decked in folly! they + +Who laugh and name you a Caricature, +They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure, +The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone +That is most dear to me, tall skeleton! + +Come you to trouble with your potent sneer +The feast of Life! or are you driven here, +To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir +And goad your moving corpse on with a spur? + +Or do you hope, when sing the violins, +And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins, +To drive some mocking nightmare far apart, +And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart? + +Fathomless well of fault and foolishness! +Eternal alembic of antique distress! +Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides +The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides. + +And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find, +Among us here, no lover to your mind; +Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave? +The charms of horror please none but the brave. + +Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir, +Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller +Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath, +The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth. + +For he who has not folded in his arms +A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms, +Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent, +When Horror comes the way that Beauty went. + +O irresistible, with fleshless face, +Say to these dancers in their dazzled race: +"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones, +Ye shall taste death, musk-scented skeletons! + +Withered Antinous, dandies with plump faces, +Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces, +Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath, +Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death. + +From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream, +The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream; +They do not see, within the opened sky, +The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high. + +In every clime and under every sun, +Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run; +And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye +And mingles with your madness, irony!" + + + + + THE BEACONS. + + + RUBENS, 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, + + LEONARD DA VINCI, sombre and fathomless glass, + Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile, + Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass, + Among the ice and pines that guard some isle. + + REMBRANDT, sad hospital that a murmuring fills, + Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls, + Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils, + And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls. + + Strong MICHELANGELO, a vague far place + Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules; + Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace, + And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease. + + The fighter's anger, the faun's impudence, + Thou makest of all these a lovely thing; + Proud heart, sick body, mind's magnificence: + PUGET, the convict's melancholy king. + + WATTEAU, the carnival of illustrious hearts, + Fluttering like moths upon the wings of chance; + Bright lustres light the silk that flames and darts, + And pour down folly on the whirling dance. + + GOYA, a nightmare full of things unknown; + The fÅ“tus witches broil on Sabbath night; + Old women at the mirror; children lone + Who tempt old demons with their limbs delight. + + DELACROIX, lake of blood ill angels haunt, + Where ever-green, o'ershadowing woods arise; + Under the surly heaven strange fanfares chaunt + And pass, like one of Weber's strangled sighs. + + And malediction, blasphemy and groan, + Ecstasies, cries, Te Deums, and tears of brine, + Are echoes through a thousand labyrinths flown; + For mortal hearts an opiate divine; + + A shout cried by a thousand sentinels, + An order from a thousand bugles tossed, + A beacon o'er a thousand citadels, + A call to huntsmen in deep woodlands lost. + + It is the mightiest witness that could rise + To prove our dignity, O Lord, to Thee; + This sob that rolls from age to age, and dies + Upon the verge of Thy Eternity! + + + + + THE SADNESS OF THE MOON. + + + The Moon more indolently dreams to-night + Than a fair woman on her couch at rest. + Caressing, with a hand distraught and light, + Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast. + + Upon her silken avalanche of down, + Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh; + And watches the white visions past her flown, + Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky. + + And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep, + Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow, + Some pious poet, enemy of sleep, + + Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow + Whence gleams of iris and of opal start, + And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart. + + + + + EXOTIC PERFUME. + + + 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. + + Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs + Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down. + Where men are upright, maids have never grown + Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows. + + Led by that perfume to these lands of ease, + I see a port where many ships have flown + With sails outwearied of the wandering seas; + + While the faint odours from green tamarisks blown, + Float to my soul and in my senses throng, + And mingle vaguely with the sailor's song. + + + + + BEAUTY. + + + I 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, + My throne is in the heaven's azure deep; + I hate all movements that disturb my pose, + I smile not ever, neither do I weep. + + Before my monumental attitudes, + That breathe a soul into the plastic arts, + My poets pray in austere studious moods, + + For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts, + Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies, + The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes. + + + + + THE BALCONY. + + + Mother 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, + Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses! + + The eves illumined by the burning coal, + The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings-- + How soft your breast was then, how sweet your soul! + Ah, and we said imperishable things, + Those eves illumined by the burning coal. + + Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm, + And space profound, and strong life's pulsing flood, + In bending o'er you, queen of every charm, + I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood. + The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm. + + The film of night flowed round and over us, + And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet; + I drank your breath, ah! sweet and poisonous, + And in my hands fraternal slept your feet-- + Night, like a film, flowed round and over us. + + I can recall those happy days forgot, + And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past. + Your languid beauties now would move me not + Did not your gentle heart and body cast + The old spell of those happy days forgot. + + Can vows and perfumes, kisses infinite, + Be reborn from the gulf we cannot sound; + As rise to heaven suns once again made bright + After being plunged in deep seas and profound? + Ah, vows and perfumes, kisses infinite! + + + + + THE SICK MUSE. + + + Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day? + Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn, + Upon thy brow in alternation play, + Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn. + + Have the green lemure and the goblin red, + Poured on thee love and terror from their urn? + Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread + Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne? + + Would that thy breast where so deep thoughts arise, + Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs; + Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave + + In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave, + When PhÅ“bus shared his alternating reign + With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain. + + + + + THE VENAL MUSE. + + + Muse of my heart, lover of palaces, + When January comes with wind and sleet, + During the snowy eve's long wearinesses, + Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet? + + Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shoulders + In the moon-beams that through the window fly? + Or when thy purse dries up, thy palace moulders, + Reap the far star-gold of the vaulted sky? + + For thou, to keep thy body to thy soul, + Must swing a censer, wear a holy stole, + And chaunt Te Deums with unbelief between. + + Or, like a starving mountebank, expose + Thy beauty and thy tear-drowned smile to those + Who wait thy jeste to drive away thy spleen. + + + + + THE EVIL MONK. + + + The ancient cloisters on their lofty walls + Had holy Truth in painted frescoes shown, + And, seeing these, the pious in those halls + Felt their cold, lone austereness less alone. + + At that time when Christ's seed flowered all around, + More than one monk, forgotten in his hour, + Taking for studio the burial-ground, + Glorified Death with simple faith and power. + + And my soul is a sepulchre where I, + Ill cenobite, have spent eternity: + On the vile cloister walls no pictures rise. + + O when may I cast off this weariness, + And make the pageant of my old distress + For these hands labour, pleasure for these eyes? + + + + + THE TEMPTATION. + + + The Demon, in my chamber high. + This morning came to visit me, + And, thinking he would find some fault, + He whispered: "I would know of thee + + Among the many lovely things + That make the magic of her face, + Among the beauties, black and rose, + That make her body's charm and grace, + + Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply + To the Abhorred, O soul of mine: + "No single beauty is the best + When she is all one flower divine. + + When all things charm me I ignore + Which one alone brings most delight; + She shines before me like the dawn, + And she consoles me like the night. + + The harmony is far too great, + That governs all her body fair, + For impotence to analyse + And say which note is sweetest there. + + O mystic metamorphosis! + My senses into one sense flow-- + Her voice makes perfume when she speaks, + Her breath is music faint and low!" + + + + + THE IRREPARABLE. + + + Can we suppress the old Remorse + Who bends our heart beneath his stroke, + Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse, + Or as the acorn on the oak? + Can we suppress the old Remorse! + + Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell, + May we drown this our ancient foe, + Destructive glutton, gorging well, + Patient as the ants, and slow? + What wine, what philtre, or what spell? + + Tell it, enchantress, if you can, + Tell me, with anguish overcast, + Wounded, as a dying man, + Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past. + Tell it, enchantress, if you can, + + To him the wolf already tears + Who sees the carrion pinions wave, + This broken warrior who despairs + To have a cross above his grave-- + This wretch the wolf already tears. + + Can one illume a leaden sky, + Or tear apart the shadowy veil + Thicker than pitch, no star on high, + Not one funereal glimmer pale + Can one illume a leaden sky? + + Hope lit the windows of the Inn, + But now that shining flame is dead; + And how shall martyred pilgrims win + Along the moonless road they tread? + Satan has darkened all the Inn! + + Witch, do you love accursèd hearts? + Say, do you know the reprobate? + Know you Remorse, whose venomed darts + Make souls the targets for their hate? + Witch, do you know accursèd hearts? + + The Might-have-been with tooth accursed + Gnaws at the piteous souls of men, + The deep foundations suffer first, + And all the structure crumbles then + Beneath the bitter tooth accursed. + + + II. + + Often, when seated at the play, + And sonorous music lights the stage, + I see the frail hand of a Fay + With magic dawn illume the rage + Of the dark sky. Oft at the play + + A being made of gauze and fire + Casts to the earth a Demon great. + And my heart, whence all hopes expire, + Is like a stage where I await, + In vain, the Fay with wings of fire! + + + + + A FORMER LIFE. + + + Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, + By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, + Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows, + Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired. + + The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies + Mingled its music, turbulent and rich, + Solemn and mystic, with the colours which + The setting sun reflected in my eyes. + + And there I lived amid voluptuous calms, + In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave, + Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave, + + Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms. + They were my slaves--the only care they had + To know what secret grief had made me sad. + + + + + DON JUAN IN HADES. + + + When Juan sought the subterranean flood. + And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore. + Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stood + With one strong, vengeful hand on either oar. + + With open robes and bodies agonised, + Lost women writhed beneath that darkling sky; + There were sounds as of victims sacrificed: + Behind him all the dark was one long cry. + + And Sganarelle, with laughter, claimed his pledge; + Don Luis, with trembling finger in the air, + Showed to the souls who wandered in the sedge + The evil son who scorned his hoary hair. + + Shivering with woe, chaste Elvira the while, + Near him untrue to all but her till now, + Seemed to beseech him for one farewell smile + Lit with the sweetness of the first soft vow. + + And clad in armour, a tall man of stone + Held firm the helm, and clove the gloomy flood; + But, staring at the vessel's track alone, + Bent on his sword the unmoved hero stood. + + + + + THE LIVING FLAME. + + + They pass before me, these Eyes full of light, + Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise; + The holy brothers pass before my sight, + And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes. + + They keep me from all sin and error grave, + They set me in the path whence Beauty came; + They are my servants, and I am their slave, + And all my soul obeys the living flame. + + Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light + As candles lighted at full noon; the sun + Dims not your flame phantastical and bright. + + You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done; + Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn, + Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim! + + + + + CORRESPONDENCES. + + + In Nature's temple living pillars rise, + And words are murmured none have understood. + And man must wander through a tangled wood + Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes. + + As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim + Mingle to one deep sound and fade away; + Vast as the night and brilliant as the day, + Colour and sound and perfume speak to him. + + Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child, + Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green; + Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild, + + Have all the expansion of things infinite: + As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin, + Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight. + + + + + THE FLASK. + + + There are some powerful odours that can pass + Out of the stoppered flagon; even glass + To them is porous. Oft when some old box + Brought from the East is opened and the locks + And hinges creak and cry; or in a press + In some deserted house, where the sharp stress + Of odours old and dusty fills the brain; + An ancient flask is brought to light again, + And forth the ghosts of long-dead odours creep. + There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep + A thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides, + Phantoms of old the folding darkness hides, + Who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold, + Rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold. + + A memory that brings languor flutters here: + The fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear + Thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit + Where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet, + Arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost + Of an old passion, long since loved and lost. + So I, when vanished from man's memory + Deep in some dark and sombre chest I lie. + An empty flagon they have cast aside, + Broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride, + Will be your shroud, beloved pestilence! + The witness of your might and virulence, + Sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup + Of life and death my heart has drunken up! + + + + + REVERSIBILITY. + + + Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? + Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite, + And the vague terrors of the fearful night + That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf? + Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? + + Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? + With hands clenched in the shade and tears of gall, + When Vengeance beats her hellish battle-call, + And makes herself the captain of our fate, + Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? + + Angel of health, did ever you know pain, + Which like an exile trails his tired footfalls + The cold length of the white infirmary walls, + With lips compressed, seeking the sun in vain? + Angel of health, did ever you know pain? + + Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? + Know you the fear of age, the torment vile + Of reading secret horror in the smile + Of eyes your eyes have loved since long ago? + Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? + + Angel of happiness, and joy, and light, + Old David would have asked for youth afresh + From the pure touch of your enchanted flesh; + I but implore your prayers to aid my plight, + Angel of happiness, and joy, and light. + + + + + THE EYES OF BEAUTY. + + + 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. + + In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er, + That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate + By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more + Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate. + + It is a ruin where the jackals rest, + And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay-- + A perfume swims about your naked breast! + + Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way! + With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared + Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared! + + + + + SONNET OF AUTUMN. + + + They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: + "Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?" + Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise + All save that antique brute-like faith of thine; + + And will not bare the secret of their shame + To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long, + Nor their black legend write for thee in flame! + Passion I hate, a spirit does me wrong. + + Let us love gently. Love, from his retreat, + Ambushed and shadowy, bends his fatal bow, + And I too well his ancient arrows know: + + Crime, horror, folly. O pale marguerite, + Thou art as I, a bright sun fallen low, + O my so white, my so cold Marguerite. + + + + + THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD. + + + O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep + In the deep heart of a black marble tomb; + When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep + Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom; + + And when the stone upon thy trembling breast, + And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace, + Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest, + And holds those feet from their adventurous race; + + Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie, + (For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend) + During long nights when sleep is far from thee, + + Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend + The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"-- + And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek. + + + + + THE GHOST. + + + Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove + I will return to thy alcove. + And glide upon the night to thee, + Treading the shadows silently. + + And I will give to thee, my own, + Kisses as icy as the moon, + And the caresses of a snake + Cold gliding in the thorny brake. + + And when returns the livid morn + Thou shalt find all my place forlorn + And chilly, till the falling night. + + Others would rule by tenderness + Over thy life and youthfulness, + But I would conquer thee by fright! + + + + + TO A MADONNA. + + (_An Ex-Voto in the Spanish taste_.) + + + Madonna, mistress. I would build for thee + An altar deep in the sad soul of me; + And in the darkest corner of my heart, + From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart, + Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine + For thee to stand erect in, Image divine! + And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crowned + Wrought of the gold of my smooth Verse, set round + With starry crystal rhymes; and I will make, + O mortal maid, a Mantle for thy sake, + And weave it of my jealousy, a gown + Heavy, barbaric, stiff, and weighted down + With my distrust, and broider round the hem + Not pearls, but all my tears in place of them. + And then thy wavering, trembling robe shall be + All the desires that rise and fall in me + From mountain-peaks to valleys of repose, + Kissing thy lovely body's white and rose. + For thy humiliated feet divine, + Of my Respect I'll make thee Slippers fine + Which, prisoning them within a gentle fold, + + Shall keep their imprint like a faithful mould. + And if my art, unwearying and discreet, + Can make no Moon of Silver for thy feet + To have for Footstool, then thy heel shall rest + Upon the snake that gnaws within my breast, + Victorious Queen of whom our hope is born! + And thou shalt trample down and make a scorn + Of the vile reptile swollen up with hate. + And thou shalt see my thoughts, all consecrate, + Like candles set before thy flower-strewn shrine, + O Queen of Virgins, and the taper-shine + Shall glimmer star-like in the vault of blue, + With eyes of flame for ever watching you. + While all the love and worship in my sense + Will be sweet smoke of myrrh and frankincense. + Ceaselessly up to thee, white peak of snow, + My stormy spirit will in vapours go! + + And last, to make thy drama all complete, + That love and cruelty may mix and meet, + I, thy remorseful torturer, will take + All the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them make + In darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen, + And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen, + That spot profound whence love and mercy start, + I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart! + + + + + THE SKY. + + + Where'er he be, on water or on land, + Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold; + One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band, + Shadowy beggar or CrÅ“sus rich with gold; + + Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er + His little brain may be, alive or dead; + Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere, + And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead. + + The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall; + The lighted ceiling of a music-hall + Where every actor treads a bloody soil-- + + The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot; + The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot + Where the vast human generations boil! + + + + + SPLEEN. + + + I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins + Flows aged blood; who rules a land of rains; + Who, young in years, is old in all distress; + Who flees good counsel to find weariness + Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred + Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird; + Whose weary face emotion moves no more + E'en when his people die before his door. + His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile + Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile; + The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good, + Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood + No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom + Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb. + The sage who takes his gold essays in vain + To purge away the old corrupted strain, + His baths of blood, that in the days of old + The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold, + Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains, + For green Lethean water fills his veins. + + + + + THE OWLS. + + + Under the overhanging yews, + The dark owls sit in solemn state. + Like stranger gods; by twos and twos + Their red eyes gleam. They meditate. + + Motionless thus they sit and dream + Until that melancholy hour + When, with the sun's last fading gleam, + The nightly shades assume their power. + + From their still attitude the wise + Will learn with terror to despise + All tumult, movement, and unrest; + + For he who follows every shade, + Carries the memory in his breast, + Of each unhappy journey made. + + + + + BIEN LOIN D'ICI. + + + Here 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. + + Dorothy's chamber undefiled. + The winds and waters sing afar + Their song of sighing strange and wild + To lull to sleep the petted child. + + From head to foot with subtle care, + Slaves have perfumed her delicate skin + With odorous oils and benzoin. + And flowers faint in a corner there. + + + + + MUSIC. + + + Music doth oft 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, + And through the cordage wail, + I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me + Beneath her sombre veil. + + I feel the tremblings of all passions known + To ships before the breeze; + Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown + + I pass the abysmal seas + That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair + Of my despair! + + + + + CONTEMPLATION. + + + Thou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still, + The eve is thine which even now drops down, + To carry peace or care to human will, + And in a misty veil enfolds the town. + + While the vile mortals of the multitude, + By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on, + Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood-- + Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone + + Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years, + In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim; + And from the water, smiling through her tears, + + Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim; + And in the east, her long shroud trailing light, + List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night. + + + + + TO A BROWN BEGGAR-MAID. + + + White maiden with the russet hair, + Whose garments, through their holes, declare + That poverty is part of you, + And beauty too. + + To me, a sorry bard and mean, + Your youthful beauty, frail and lean, + With summer freckles here and there, + Is sweet and fair. + + Your sabots tread the roads of chance, + And not one queen of old romance + Carried her velvet shoes and lace + With half your grace. + + In place of tatters far too short + Let the proud garments worn at Court + Fall down with rustling fold and pleat + About your feet; + + In place of stockings, worn and old, + Let a keen dagger all of gold + Gleam in your garter for the eyes + Of roués wise; + + Let ribbons carelessly untied + Reveal to us the radiant pride + Of your white bosom purer far + Than any star; + + Let your white arms uncovered shine. + Polished and smooth and half divine; + And let your elfish fingers chase + With riotous grace + + The purest pearls that softly glow. + The sweetest sonnets of Belleau, + Offered by gallants ere they fight + For your delight; + + And many fawning rhymers who + Inscribe their first thin book to you + Will contemplate upon the stair + Your slipper fair; + + And many a page who plays at cards, + And many lords and many bards, + Will watch your going forth, and burn + For your return; + + And you will count before your glass + More kisses than the lily has; + And more than one Valois will sigh + When you pass by. + + But meanwhile you are on the tramp, + Begging your living in the damp, + Wandering mean streets and alleys o'er, + From door to door; + + And shilling bangles in a shop + Cause you with eager eyes to stop, + And I, alas, have not a son + To give to you. + + Then go, with no more ornament, + Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent, + Than your own fragile naked grace + And lovely face. + + + + + THE SWAN. + + + Andromache, I think of you! The stream, + The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days + Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief, + The lying Simoïs flooded by your tears, + Made all my fertile memory blossom forth + As I passed by the new-built Carrousel. + Old Paris is no more (a town, alas, + Changes more quickly than man's heart may change); + Yet in my mind I still can see the booths; + The heaps of brick and rough-hewn capitals; + The grass; the stones all over-green with moss; + The _débris_, and t&e square-set heaps of tiles. + + There a menagerie was once outspread; + And there I saw, one morning at the hour + When toil awakes beneath the cold, clear sky, + And the road roars upon the silent air, + A swan who had escaped his cage, and walked + On the dry pavement with his webby feet, + And trailed his spotless plumage on the ground. + + And near a waterless stream the piteous swan + Opened his beak, and bathing in the dust + His nervous wings, he cried (his heart the while + Filled with a vision of his own fair lake): + "O water, when then wilt thou come in rain? + Lightning, when wilt thou glitter?" + + Sometimes yet + I see the hapless bird--strange, fatal myth-- + Like him that Ovid writes of, lifting up + Unto the cruelly blue, ironic heavens, + With stretched, convulsive neck a thirsty face, + As though he sent reproaches up to God! + + + II. + + Paris may change; my melancholy is fixed. + New palaces, and scaffoldings, and blocks, + And suburbs old, are symbols all to me + Whose memories are as heavy as a stone. + And so, before the Louvre, to vex my soul, + The image came of my majestic swan + With his mad gestures, foolish and sublime, + As of an exile whom one great desire + Gnaws with no truce. And then I thought of you, + Andromache! torn from your hero's arms; + Beneath the hand of Pyrrhus in his pride; + + Bent o'er an empty tomb in ecstasy; + Widow of Hector--wife of Helenus! + And of the negress, wan and phthisical, + Tramping the mud, and with her haggard eyes + Seeking beyond the mighty walls of fog + The absent palm-trees of proud Africa; + Of all who lose that which they never find; + Of all who drink of tears; all whom grey grief + Gives suck to as the kindly wolf gave suck; + Of meagre orphans who like blossoms fade. + And one old Memory like a crying horn + Sounds through the forest where my soul is lost.... + I think of sailors on some isle forgotten; + Of captives; vanquished ... and of many more. + + + + + THE SEVEN OLD MEN. + + + O swarming city, city full of dreams, + Where in full day the spectre walks and speaks; + Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins + My story flows as flows the rising sap. + + One morn, disputing with my tired soul, + And like a hero stiffening all my nerves, + I trod a suburb shaken by the jar + Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified + The houses either side of that sad street, + So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood + Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist, + Unclean and yellow, inundated space-- + A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul. + Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags + Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks + Should have brought alms in floods upon his head, + Without the misery gleaming in his eye, + Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed + To have been washed with gall; the bitter frost + Sharpened his glance; and from his chin a beard + Sword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth. + He was not bent but broken: his backbone + Made a so true right angle with his legs, + That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gave + The finish to the picture, made him seem + Like some infirm and stumbling quadruped + Or a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mud + He walked with troubled and uncertain gait, + As though his sabots trod upon the dead, + Indifferent and hostile to the world. + + His double followed him: tatters and stick + And back and eye and beard, all were the same; + Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable, + These centenarian twins, these spectres odd, + Trod the same pace toward some end unknown. + To what fell complot was I then exposed! + Humiliated by what evil chance? + For as the minutes one by one went by + Seven times I saw this sinister old man + Repeat his image there before my eyes! + + Let him who smiles at my inquietude, + Who never trembled at a fear like mine, + Know that in their decrepitude's despite + These seven old hideous monsters had the mien + Of beings immortal. + Then, I thought, must I, + Undying, contemplate the awful eighth; + Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double; + Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself + And his own son! In terror then I turned + My back upon the infernal band, and fled + To my own place, and closed my door; distraught + And like a drunkard who sees all things twice, + With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick, + Wounded by mystery and absurdity! + + In vain my reason tried to cross the bar, + The whirling storm but drove her back again; + And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck, + Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea. + + + + + THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN. + + + Deep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns, + Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns, + I watch, obedient to my fatal mood, + For the decrepit, strange and charming beings, + The dislocated monsters that of old + Were lovely women--Laïs or Eponine! + Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be, + Let us still love them, for they still have souls. + They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags, + Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind, + They tremble when an omnibus rolls by, + And at their sides, a relic of the past, + A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs. + They trot about, most like to marionettes; + They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast; + Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bell + Where hangs and swings a demon without pity. + Though they be broken they have piercing eyes, + That shine like pools where water sleeps at night; + The astonished and divine eyes of a child + Who laughs at all that glitters in the world. + + Have you not seen that most old women's shrouds + Are little like the shroud of a dead child? + Wise Death, in token of his happy whim, + Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet. + And when I see a phantom, frail and wan, + Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris, + It ever seems as though the delicate thing + Trod with soft steps towards a cradle new. + And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form, + How many times must workmen change the shape + Of boxes where at length such limbs are laid? + These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears; + Crucibles where the cooling metal pales-- + Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to him + Whose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster. + + + II. + + The love-sick vestal of the old "Frasciti"; + Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose name + Only the prompter knows and he is dead; + Bygone celebrities that in bygone days + The Tivoli o'ershadowed in their bloom; + All charm me; yet among these beings frail + Three, turning pain to honey-sweetness, said + To the Devotion that had lent them wings: + "Lift me, O powerful Hippogriffe, to the skies"-- + One by her country to despair was driven; + One by her husband overwhelmed with grief; + One wounded by her child, Madonna-like; + Each could have made a river with her tears. + + + III. + + Oft have I followed one of these old women, + One among others, when the falling sun + Reddened the heavens with a crimson wound-- + Pensive, apart, she rested on a bench + To hear the brazen music of the band, + Played by the soldiers in the public park + To pour some courage into citizens' hearts, + On golden eves when all the world revives. + Proud and erect she drank the music in, + The lively and the warlike call to arms; + Her eyes blinked like an ancient eagle's eyes; + Her forehead seemed to await the laurel crown! + + + IV. + + Thus you do wander, uncomplaining Stoics, + Through all the chaos of the living town: + Mothers with bleeding hearts, saints, courtesans, + Whose names of yore were on the lips of all; + Who were all glory and all grace, and now + None know you; and the brutish drunkard stops, + Insulting you with his derisive love; + And cowardly urchins call behind your back. + Ashamed of living, withered shadows all, + With fear-bowed backs you creep beside the walls, + And none salute you, destined to loneliness! + Refuse of Time ripe for Eternity! + But I, who watch you tenderly afar, + With unquiet eyes on your uncertain steps, + As though I were your father, I--O wonder!-- + Unknown to you taste secret, hidden joy. + I see your maiden passions bud and bloom, + Sombre or luminous, and your lost days + Unroll before me while my heart enjoys + All your old vices, and my soul expands + To all the virtues that have once been yours. + Ruined! and my sisters! O congenerate hearts, + Octogenarian Eves o'er whom is stretched + God's awful claw, where will you be to-morrow? + + + + + A MADRIGAL OF SORROW. + + + What do I care though you be wise? + Be sad, be beautiful; your tears + But add one more charm to your eyes, + As streams to valleys where they rise; + And fairer every flower appears + + After the storm. I love you most + When joy has fled your brow downcast; + When your heart is in horror lost, + And o'er your present like a ghost + Floats the dark shadow of the past. + + I love you when the teardrop flows, + Hotter than blood, from your large eye; + When I would hush you to repose + Your heavy pain breaks forth and grows + Into a loud and tortured cry. + + And then, voluptuousness divine! + Delicious ritual and profound! + I drink in every sob like wine, + And dream that in your deep heart shine + The pearls wherein your eyes were drowned. + + I know your heart, which overflows + With outworn loves long cast aside, + Still like a furnace flames and glows, + And you within your breast enclose + A damnèd soul's unbending pride; + + But till your dreams without release + Reflect the leaping flames of hell; + Till in a nightmare without cease + You dream of poison to bring peace, + And love cold steel and powder well; + + And tremble at each opened door, + And feel for every man distrust, + And shudder at the striking hour-- + Till then you have not felt the power + Of Irresistible Disgust. + + My queen, my slave, whose love is fear, + When you awaken shuddering, + Until that awful hour be here, + You cannot say at midnight drear: + "I am your equal, O my King!" + + + + + THE IDEAL. + + + Not all the beauties in old prints vignetted, + The worthless products of an outworn age, + With slippered feet and fingers castanetted, + The thirst of hearts like this heart can assuage. + + To Gavarni, the poet of chloroses, + I leave his troupes of beauties sick and wan; + I cannot find among these pale, pale roses, + The red ideal mine eyes would gaze upon. + + Lady Macbeth, the lovely star of crime, + The Greek poet's dream born in a northern clime-- + Ah, she could quench my dark heart's deep desiring; + + Or Michelangelo's dark daughter Night, + In a strange posture dreamily admiring + Her beauty fashioned for a giant's delight! + + + + + MIST AND RAIN. + + + Autumns and winters, springs of mire and rain, + Seasons of sleep, I sing your praises loud, + For thus I love to wrap my heart and brain + In some dim tomb beneath a vapoury shroud + + In the wide plain where revels the cold wind, + Through long nights when the weathercock whirls round, + More free than in warm summer day my mind + Lifts wide her raven pinions from the ground. + + Unto a heart filled with funereal things + That since old days hoar frosts have gathered on, + Naught is more sweet, O pallid, queenly springs, + + Than the long pageant of your shadows wan, + Unless it be on moonless eves to weep + On some chance bed and rock our griefs to sleep. + + + + + SUNSET. + + + Fair is the sun when first he flames above, + Flinging his joy down in a happy beam; + And happy he who can salute with love + The sunset far more glorious than a dream. + + Flower, stream, and furrow!--I have seen them all + In the sun's eye swoon like one trembling heart-- + Though it be late let us with speed depart + To catch at least one last ray ere it fall! + + But I pursue the fading god in vain, + For conquering Night makes firm her dark domain, + Mist and gloom fall, and terrors glide between, + + And graveyard odours in the shadow swim, + And my faint footsteps on the marsh's rim, + Bruise the cold snail and crawling toad unseen. + + + + + THE CORPSE. + + + Remember, my Beloved, what thing we met + By the roadside on that sweet summer day; + There on a grassy couch with pebbles set, + A loathsome body lay. + + The wanton limbs stiff-stretched into the air, + Steaming with exhalations vile and dank, + In ruthless cynic fashion had laid bare + The swollen side and flank. + + On this decay the sun shone hot from heaven + As though with chemic heat to broil and burn, + And unto Nature all that she had given + A hundredfold return. + + The sky smiled down upon the horror there + As on a flower that opens to the day; + So awful an infection smote the air, + Almost you swooned away. + + The swarming flies hummed on the putrid side, + Whence poured the maggots in a darkling stream, + That ran along these tatters of life's pride + With a liquescent gleam. + + And like a wave the maggots rose and fell, + The murmuring flies swirled round in busy strife: + It seemed as though a vague breath came to swell + And multiply with life + + The hideous corpse. From all this living world + A music as of wind and water ran, + Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirled + By the swift winnower's fan. + + And then the vague forms like a dream died out, + Or like some distant scene that slowly falls + Upon the artist's canvas, that with doubt + He only half recalls. + + A homeless dog behind the boulders lay + And watched us both with angry eyes forlorn, + Waiting a chance to come and take away + The morsel she had torn. + + And you, even you, will be like this drear thing, + A vile infection man may not endure; + Star that I yearn to! Sun that lights my spring! + O passionate and pure! + + Yes, such will you be, Queen of every grace! + When the last sacramental words are said; + And beneath grass and flowers that lovely face + Moulders among the dead. + + Then, O Beloved, whisper to the worm + That crawls up to devour you with a kiss, + That I still guard in memory the dear form + Of love that comes to this! + + + + + AN ALLEGORY. + + + Here is a woman, richly clad and fair, + Who in her wine dips her long, heavy hair; + Love's claws, and that sharp poison which is sin, + Are dulled against the granite of her skin. + Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon, + For their sharp scythe-like talons every one + Pass by her in their all-destructive play; + Leaving her beauty till a later day. + Goddess she walks; sultana in her leisure; + She has Mohammed's faith that heaven is pleasure, + And bids all men forget the world's alarms + Upon her breast, between her open arms. + She knows, and she believes, this sterile maid, + Without whom the world's onward dream would fade, + That bodily beauty is the supreme gift + Which may from every sin the terror lift. + Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies; + And when black Night shall roll before her eyes, + She will look straight in Death's grim face forlorn, + Without remorse or hate--as one new born. + + + + + THE ACCURSED. + + + Like pensive herds at rest upon the sands, + These to the sea-horizons turn their eyes; + Out of their folded feet and clinging hands + Bitter sharp tremblings and soft languors rise. + + Some tread the thicket by the babbling stream, + Their hearts with untold secrets ill at ease; + Calling the lover of their childhood's dream, + They wound the green bark of the shooting trees. + + Others like sisters wander, grave and slow, + Among the rocks haunted by spectres thin, + Where Antony saw as larvæ surge and flow + The veined bare breasts that tempted him to sin. + + Some, when the resinous torch of burning wood + Flares in lost pagan caverns dark and deep, + Call thee to quench the fever in their blood, + Bacchus, who singest old remorse to sleep! + + Then there are those the scapular bedights, + Whose long white vestments hide the whip's red stain, + Who mix, in sombre woods on lonely nights, + The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain. + + O virgins, demons, monsters, martyrs! ye + Who scorn whatever actual appears; + Saints, satyrs, seekers of Infinity, + So full of cries, so full of bitter tears; + + Te whom my soul has followed into hell, + I love and pity, O sad sisters mine, + Tour thirsts unquenched, your pains no tongue can tell, + And your great hearts, those urns of love divine! + + + + + LA BEATRICE. + + + In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew, + I to the winds my cries of anguish threw; + And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart, + Pricked gently with the poignard o'er my heart. + Then in full noon above my head a cloud + Descended tempest-swollen, and a crowd + Of wild, lascivious spirits huddled there, + The cruel and curious demons of the air, + Who coldly to consider me began; + Then, as a crowd jeers some unhappy man, + Exchanging gestures, winking with their eyes-- + I heard a laughing and a whispering rise: + + "Let us at leisure contemplate this clown, + This shadow of Hamlet aping Hamlet's frown, + With wandering eyes and hair upon the wind. + Is't not a pity that this empty mind, + This tramp, this actor out of work, this droll, + Because he knows how to assume a rôle + Should dream that eagles and insects, streams and woods, + Stand still to hear him chaunt his dolorous moods? + + Even unto us, who made these ancient things, + The fool his public lamentation sings." + + With pride as lofty as the towering cloud, + I would have stilled these clamouring demons loud, + And turned in scorn my sovereign head away + Had I not seen--O sight to dim the day!-- + There in the middle of the troupe obscene + The proud and peerless beauty of my Queen! + She laughed with them at all my dark distress, + And gave to each in turn a vile caress. + + + + + THE SOUL OF WINE. + + + One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine: + "Man, unto thee, dear disinherited, + I sing a song of love and light divine-- + Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red. + + "I know thou labourest on the hill of fire, + In sweat and pain beneath a flaming sun, + To give the life and soul my vines desire, + And I am grateful for thy labours done. + + "For I find joys unnumbered when I lave + The throat of man by travail long outworn, + And his hot bosom is a sweeter grave + Of sounder sleep than my cold caves forlorn. + + "Hearest thou not the echoing Sabbath sound? + The hope that whispers in my trembling breast? + Thy elbows on the table! gaze around; + Glorify me with joy and be at rest. + + "To thy wife's eyes I'll bring their long-lost gleam, + I'll bring back to thy child his strength and light, + To him, life's fragile athlete I will seem + Rare oil that firms his muscles for the fight. + + "I flow in man's heart as ambrosia flows; + The grain the eternal Sower casts in the sod-- + From our first loves the first fair verse arose, + Flower-like aspiring to the heavens and God!" + + + + + THE WINE OF LOVERS. + + + Space rolls to-day her splendour round! + Unbridled, spurless, without bound, + Mount we upon the wings of wine + For skies fantastic and divine! + + Let us, like angels tortured by + Some wild delirious phantasy, + Follow the far-off mirage born + In the blue crystal of the morn. + + And gently balanced on the wing + Of the wild whirlwind we will ride, + Rejoicing with the joyous thing. + + My sister, floating side by side, + Fly we unceasing whither gleams + The distant heaven of my dreams. + + + + + THE DEATH OF LOVERS. + + + There shall be couches whence faint odours rise, + Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound; + Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies + The death-bed of our love shall breathe around. + + And guarding their last embers till the end, + Our hearts shall be the torches of the shrine, + And their two leaping flames shall fade and blend + In the twin mirrors of your soul and mine. + + And through the eve of rose and mystic blue + A beam of love shall pass from me to you, + Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell; + + And later still an angel, flinging wide + The gates, shall bring to life with joyful spell + The tarnished mirrors and the flames that died. + + + + + THE DEATH OF THE POOR. + + + Death is consoler and Death brings to life; + The end of all, the solitary hope; + We, drunk with Death's elixir, face the strife, + Take heart, and mount till eve the weary slope. + + Across the storm, the hoar-frost, and the snow, + Death on our dark horizon pulses clear; + Death is the famous hostel we all know, + Where we may rest and sleep and have good cheer. + + Death is an angel whose magnetic palms + Bring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calms + To smooth the beds of naked men and poor. + + Death is the mystic granary of God; + The poor man's purse; his fatherland of yore; + The Gate that opens into heavens un trod! + + + + + THE BENEDICTION. + + + When by the high decree of powers supreme, + The Poet came into this world outworn, + She who had borne him, in a ghastly dream, + Clenched blasphemous hands at God, and cried in scorn: + + "O rather had I borne a writhing knot + Of unclean vipers, than my breast should nurse + This vile derision, of my joy begot + To be my expiation and my curse! + + "Since of all women thou hast made of me + Unto my husband a disgust and shame; + Since I may not cast this monstrosity, + Like an old love-epistle, to the flame; + + "I will pour out thine overwhelming hate + On this the accursed weapon of thy spite; + This stunted tree I will so desecrate + That not one tainted bud shall see the light!" + + So foaming with the foam of hate and shame, + Blind unto God's design inexorable, + With her own hands she fed the purging flame + To crimes maternal consecrate in hell. + + Meanwhile beneath an Angel's care unseen + The child disowned grows drunken with the sun; + His food and drink, though they be poor and mean, + With streams of nectar and ambrosia run. + + Speaking to clouds and playing with the wind, + With joy he sings the sad Way of the Rood; + His shadowing pilgrim spirit weeps behind + To see him gay as birds are in the wood. + + Those he would love looked sideways and with fear, + Or, taking courage from his aspect mild, + Sought who should first bring to his eye the tear, + And spent their anger on the dreaming child. + + With all the bread and wine the Poet must eat + They mingled earth and ash and excrement, + All things he touched were spurned beneath their feet; + They mourned if they must tread the road he went. + + His wife ran crying in the public square: + "Since he has found me worthy to adore, + Shall I not be as antique idols were, + With gold and with bright colours painted o'er? + + "I will be drunk with nard and frankincense. + With myrrh, and knees bowed down, and flesh and wine. + Can I not, smiling, in his love-sick sense, + Usurp the homage due to beings divine? + + "I will lay on him my fierce, fragile hand + When I am weary of the impious play; + For well these harpy talons understand + To furrow to his heart their crimson way. + + "I'll tear the red thing beating from his breast, + To cast it with disdain upon the ground, + Like a young bird torn trembling from the nest-- + His heart shall go to gorge my favourite hound." + + To the far heaven, where gleams a splendid throne, + The Poet uplifts his arms in calm delight, + And the vast beams from his pure spirit flown, + Wrap all the furious peoples from his sight: + + "Thou, O my God, be blest who givest pain, + The balm divine for each imperfect heart, + The strong pure essence cleansing every stain + Of sin that keeps us from thy joys apart. + + "Among the numbers of thy legions blest, + I know a place awaits the poet there; + Him thou hast bid attend the eternal feast + That Thrones and Virtues and Dominions share. + + "I know the one thing noble is a grief + Withstanding earth's and hell's destructive tooth, + And I, through all my dolorous life and brief, + To gain the mystic crown, must cry the truth. + + "The jewels lost in Palmyra of old, + Metals unknown, pearls of the outer sea, + Are far too dim to set within the gold + Of the bright crown that Time prepares for me. + + "For it is wrought of pure unmingled light, + Dipped in the white flame whence all flame is born-- + The flame that makes all eyes, though diamond-bright, + Seem obscure mirrors, darkened and forlorn." + + + + + GYPSIES TRAVELLING. + + + The tribe prophetic with the eyes of fire + Went forth last night; their little ones at rest + Each on his mother's back, with his desire + Set on the ready treasure of her breast. + + Laden with shining arms the men-folk tread + By the long wagons where their goods lie hidden; + They watch the heaven with eyes grown wearied + Of hopeless dreams that come to them unbidden. + + The grasshopper, from out his sandy screen, + Watching them pass redoubles his shrill song; + Dian, who loves them, makes the grass more green, + + And makes the rock run water for this throng + Of ever-wandering ones whose calm eyes see + Familiar realms of darkness yet to be. + + + + + FRANCISCÆ MEÆ LAUDES. + + + Novis te cantabo chordis, + O novelletum quod ludia + In solitudine cordis. + + Esto sertis implicata, + O fÅ“mina delicata + Per quam solvuntur peccata + + Sicut beneficum Lethe, + Hauriam oscula de te, + Quæ imbuta es magnete. + + Quum vitiorum tempestas + Turbabat omnes semitas, + Apparuisti, Deitas, + + Velut stella salutaris + In naufragiis amaris.... + Suspendam cor tuis aris! + + Piscina plena virtutis, + Fons æternæ juventutis, + Labris vocem redde mutis! + + Quod erat spurcum, cremasti; + Quod rudius, exæquasti; + Quod debile, confirmasti! + + In fame mea taberna, + In nocte mea lucerna, + Recte me semper guberna. + + Adde nunc vires viribus, + Dulce balneum suavibus, + Unguentatum odoribus! + + Meos circa I umbos mica, + O castitatis lorica, + Aqua tincta seraphica; + + Patera gemmis corusca, + Panis salsus, mollis esca, + Divinum vinum, Francisca! + + + + + ROBED IN A SILKEN ROBE. + + + Robed in a silken robe that shines and shakes, + She seems to dance whene'er she treads the sod, + Like the long serpent that a fakir makes + Dance to the waving cadence of a rod. + + As the sad sand upon the desert's verge, + Insensible to mortal grief and strife; + As the long weeds that float among the surge, + She folds indifference round her budding life. + + Her eyes are carved of minerals pure and cold, + And in her strange symbolic nature where + An angel mingles with the sphinx of old, + + Where all is gold and steel and light and air, + For ever, like a vain star, unafraid + Shines the cold hauteur of the sterile maid. + + + + + A LANDSCAPE. + + + I would, when I compose my solemn verse, + Sleep near the heaven as do astrologers, + Near the high bells, and with a dreaming mind + Hear their calm hymns blown to me on the wind. + + Out of my tower, with chin upon my hands, + I'll watch the singing, babbling human bands; + And see clock-towers like spars against the sky, + And heavens that bring thoughts of eternity; + + And softly, through the mist, will watch the birth + Of stars in heaven and lamplight on the earth; + The threads of smoke that rise above the town; + The moon that pours her pale enchantment down. + + Seasons will pass till Autumn fades the rose; + And when comes Winter with his weary snows, + I'll shut the doors and window-casements tight, + And build my faery palace in the night. + + Then I will dream of blue horizons deep; + Of gardens where the marble fountains weep; + Of kisses, and of ever-singing birds-- + A sinless Idyll built of innocent words. + + And Trouble, knocking at my window-pane + And at my closet door, shall knock in vain; + I will not heed him with his stealthy tread, + Nor from my reverie uplift my head; + + For I will plunge deep in the pleasure still + Of summoning the spring-time with my will, + Drawing the sun out of my heart, and there + With burning thoughts making a summer air. + + + + + THE VOYAGE. + + + The world is equal to the child's desire + Who plays with pictures by his nursery fire-- + How vast the world by lamplight seems! How small + When memory's eyes look back, remembering all!-- + + One morning we set forth with thoughts aflame, + Or heart o'erladen with desire or shame; + And cradle, to the song of surge and breeze, + Our own infinity on the finite seas. + + Some flee the memory of their childhood's home; + And others flee their fatherland; and some, + Star-gazers drowned within a woman's eyes, + Flee from the tyrant Circe's witcheries; + + And, lest they still be changed to beasts, take flight + For the embrasured heavens, and space, and light, + Till one by one the stains her kisses made + In biting cold and burning sunlight fade. + + But the true voyagers are they who part + From all they love because a wandering heart + Drives them to fly the Fate they cannot fly; + Whose call is ever "On!"--they know not why. + + Their thoughts are like the clouds that veil a star; + They dream of change as warriors dream of war; + And strange wild wishes never twice the same: + Desires no mortal man can give a name. + + + II. + + We are like whirling tops and rolling balls-- + For even when the sleepy night-time falls, + Old Curiosity still thrusts us on, + Like the cruel Angel who goads forth the sun. + + The end of fate fades ever through the air, + And, being nowhere, may be anywhere + Where a man runs, hope waking in his breast, + For ever like a madman, seeking rest. + + Our souls are wandering ships outwearied; + And one upon the bridge asks: "What's ahead?" + The topman's voice with an exultant sound + Cries: "Love and Glory!"--then we run aground. + + Each isle the pilot signals when 'tis late, + Is El Dorado, promised us by fate-- + Imagination, spite of her belief, + Finds, in the light of dawn, a barren reef. + + Oh the poor seeker after lands that flee! + Shall we not bind and cast into the sea + This drunken sailor whose ecstatic mood + Makes bitterer still the water's weary flood? + + Such is an old tramp wandering in the mire, + Dreaming the paradise of his own desire, + Discovering cities of enchanted sleep + Where'er the light shines on a rubbish heap. + + + III. + + Strange voyagers, what tales of noble deeds + Deep in your dim sea-weary eyes one reads! + Open the casket where your memories are, + And show each jewel, fashioned from a star; + + For I would travel without sail or wind, + And so, to lift the sorrow from my mind, + Let your long memories of sea-days far fled + Pass o'er my spirit like a sail outspread. + + What have you seen? + + + IV. + + "We have seen waves and stars, + And lost sea-beaches, and known many wars, + And notwithstanding war and hope and fear, + We were as weary there as we are here. + + "The lights that on the violet sea poured down, + The suns that set behind some far-off town, + Lit in our hearts the unquiet wish to fly + Deep in the glimmering distance of the sky; + + "The loveliest countries that rich cities bless, + Never contained the strange wild loveliness + By fate and chance shaped from the floating cloud-- + And we were always sorrowful and proud! + + "Desire from joy gains strength in weightier measure. + Desire, old tree who draw'st thy sap from pleasure, + Though thy bark thickens as the years pass by, + Thine arduous branches rise towards the sky; + + "And wilt thou still grow taller, tree more fair + Than the tall cypress? + + --Thus have we, with care, + Gathered some flowers to please your eager mood, + Brothers who dream that distant things are good! + + "We have seen many a jewel-glimmering throne; + And bowed to Idols when wild horns were blown + In palaces whose faery pomp and gleam + To your rich men would be a ruinous dream; + + "And robes that were a madness to the eyes; + Women whose teeth and nails were stained with dyes; + Wise jugglers round whose neck the serpent winds--" + + + V. + + And then, and then what more? + + + VI. + + "O childish minds! + + "Forget not that which we found everywhere, + From top to bottom of the fatal stair, + Above, beneath, around us and within, + The weary pageant of immortal sin. + + "We have seen woman, stupid slave and proud, + Before her own frail, foolish beauty bowed; + And man, a greedy, cruel, lascivious fool, + Slave of the slave, a ripple in a pool; + + "The martyrs groan, the headsman's merry mood; + And banquets seasoned and perfumed with blood; + Poison, that gives the tyrant's power the slip; + And nations amorous of the brutal whip; + + "Many religions not unlike our own, + All in full flight for heaven's resplendent throne; + And Sanctity, seeking delight in pain, + Like a sick man of his own sickness vain; + + "And mad mortality, drunk with its own power, + As foolish now as in a bygone hour, + Shouting, in presence of the tortured Christ: + 'I curse thee, mine own Image sacrificed.' + + "And silly monks in love with Lunacy, + Fleeing the troops herded by destiny, + Who seek for peace in opiate slumber furled-- + Such is the pageant of the rolling world!" + + + VII. + + O bitter knowledge that the wanderers gain! + The world says our own age is little and vain; + For ever, yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, + 'Tis horror's oasis in the sands of sorrow. + + Must we depart? If you can rest, remain; + Part, if you must. Some fly, some cower in vain, + Hoping that Time, the grim and eager foe, + Will pass them by; and some run to and fro + + Like the Apostles or the Wandering Jew; + Go where they will, the Slayer goes there too! + And there are some, and these are of the wise, + Who die as soon as birth has lit their eyes. + + But when at length the Slayer treads us low, + We will have hope and cry, "'Tis time to go!" + As when of old we parted for Cathay + With wind-blown hair and eyes upon the bay. + + We will embark upon the Shadowy Sea, + Like youthful wanderers for the first time free-- + Hear you the lovely and funereal voice + That sings: _O come all ye whose wandering joys_ + _Are set upon the scented Lotus flower_, + _For here we sell the fruit's miraculous boon_; + _Come ye and drink the sweet and sleepy power_ + _Of the enchanted, endless afternoon_. + + + VIII. + + O Death, old Captain, it is time, put forth! + We have grown weary of the gloomy north; + Though sea and sky are black as ink, lift sail! + Our hearts are full of light and will not fail. + + O pour thy sleepy poison in the cup! + The fire within the heart so burns us up + That we would wander Hell and Heaven through, + Deep in the Unknown seeking something _new_! + + * * * * * + + + + +LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE + + + + +THE STRANGER. + + +Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, +your sister, or your brother? + +"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother." + +Your friends, then? + +"You use a word that until now has had no meaning for me." + +Your country? + +"I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated." + +Then Beauty? + +"Her I would love willingly, goddess and immortal." + +Gold? + +"I hate it as you hate your God." + +What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love? + +"I love the clouds--the clouds that pass--yonder--the marvellous +clouds." + + + + +EVERY MAN HIS CHIMÆRA. + + +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. + +Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimæra as heavy as a sack of +flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier. + +But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and +oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with +her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head +reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by +which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy. + +I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied +that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they +went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to +walk. + +Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the +ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had +said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary +faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the +heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as +the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned +to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere +of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the +curiosity of the human eye. + +During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this +mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor +was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing +Chimæras. + + + + +VENUS AND THE FOOL. + + +How admirable the day! The vast park swoons beneath the burning eye of +the sun, as youth beneath the lordship of love. + +There is no rumour of the universal ecstasy of all things. The waters +themselves are as though drifting into sleep. Very different from the +festivals of humanity, here is a silent revel. + +It seems as though an ever-waning light makes all objects glimmer more +and more, as though the excited flowers burn with a desire to rival the +blue of the sky by the vividness of their colours; as though the heat, +making perfumes visible, drives them in vapour towards their star. + +Yet, in the midst of this universal joy, I have perceived one afflicted +thing. + +At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those motley fools, those +willing clowns whose business it is to bring laughter upon kings when +weariness or remorse possesses them, lies wrapped in his gaudy and +ridiculous garments, coined with his cap and bells, huddled against the +pedestal, and raises towards the goddess his eyes filled with tears. + +And his eyes say: "I am the last and most alone of all mortals, inferior +to the meanest of animals in that I am denied either love or friendship. +Yet I am made, even I, for the understanding and enjoyment of immortal +Beauty. O Goddess, have pity upon my sadness and my frenzy." + +The implacable Venus gazed into I know not what distances with her +marble eyes. + + + + +INTOXICATION. + + +One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. +If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your +shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. +But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But +be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green +grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should +waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, +of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that +flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that +speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and +timepiece will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be +the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without +cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will." + + + + +THE GIFTS OF THE MOON. + + +The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in +your cradle, and said to herself: "I am well pleased with this child." + +And she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the +window-pane without noise. She bent over you with the supple tenderness +of a mother and laid her colours upon your face. Therefrom your eyes +have remained green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. From +contemplation of your visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she +so tenderly wounded you upon the breast that you have ever kept a +certain readiness to tears. + +In the amplitude of her joy, the Moon filled all your chamber as with a +phosphorescent air, a luminous poison; and all this living radiance +thought and said: "You shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. +You shall love all that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, +and night; the vast green sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; +the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous +flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves +swooning upon the piano and lament with the sweet, hoarse voices of +women. + +"And you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. You +shall be the Queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also I have +wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green +ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where +they are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem +to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the +will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images of their own folly." + +And that is why I am couched at your feet, O spoiled child, beloved and +accursed, seeking in all your being the reflection of that august +divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all +_lunatics_. + + + + +THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE. + + +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 patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate +vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy. + +A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and +honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is +opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the +unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where +even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all +things, my beloved, are like you. + +Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold +miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguish of curiosity? +It is a land which resembles you, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil +and honest, where phantasy has built and decorated an occidental China, +where life is sweet to breathe, and happiness married to silence. It is +there that one would live; there that one would die. + +Yes, it is there that one must go to breathe, to dream, and to lengthen +one's hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written the +"Invitation to the Waltz"; where is he who will write the "Invitation to +the Voyage," that one may offer it to his beloved, to the sister of his +election? + +Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live,--yonder, +where slower hours contain more thoughts, where the clocks strike the +hours of happiness with a more profound and significant solemnity. + +Upon the shining panels, or upon skins gilded with a sombre opulence, +beatified paintings have a discreet life, as calm and profound as the +souls of the artists who created them. + +The setting suns that colour the rooms and salons with so rich a light, +shine through veils of rich tapestry, or through high leaden-worked +windows of many compartments. The furniture is massive, curious, and +bizarre, armed with locks and secrets, like profound and refined souls. +The mirrors, the metals, the ail ver work and the china, play a mute and +mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from the corners, +from the chinks in the drawers, from the folds of drapery, a singular +perfume escapes, a Sumatran _revenez-y_, which is like the soul of the +apartment. + +A true country of Cockaigne, I have said; where all is rich, correct and +shining, like a beautiful conscience, or a splendid set of silver, or a +medley of jewels. The treasures of the world flow there, as in the house +of a laborious man who has well merited the entire world. A singular +land, as superior to others as Art is superior to Nature; where Nature +is made over again by dream; where she is corrected, embellished, +refashioned. + +Let them seek and seek again, let them extend the limits of their +happiness for ever, these alchemists who work with flowers! Let them +offer a prize of sixty or a hundred thousand florins to whosoever can +solve their ambitious problems! As for me, I have found my _black tulip_ +and my _blue dahlia_! + +Incomparable flower, tulip found at last, symboli-cal dahlia, it is +there, is it not, in this so calm and dreamy land that you live and +blossom? Will you not there be framed in your proper analogy, and will +you not be mirrored, to speak like the mystics, in your own +_correspondence_? + +Dreams!--always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul, +the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him +his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from +birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with +positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in +and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that +resembles you? + +These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous +flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The +enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with +the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon +your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity, +reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your +lovely soul;--and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the +products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they +are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from +Infinity. + + + + +WHAT IS TRUTH? + + +I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the +ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of +glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality. + +But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died +soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon +a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I +myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as +uncorruptible as the coffers of India. + +And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I +became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the +dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and +hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true +Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly +and blindness you shall love me as I truly am." + +But I, furious, replied: "No!" The better to emphasise my refusal I +struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to +the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught +perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal. + + + + +ALREADY! + + +A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from +the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred +times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of +twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the +firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And +each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the +approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they +said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by +a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an +unmoving table?" + +There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their +sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the +image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass +with as much enthusiasm as the beasts. + +At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent +and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed +therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of +growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and +fruits. + +Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were +forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted +out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke. + +I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest from whom one has torn +his divinity, I could not, without heartbreaking bitterness, leave this +so monstrously seductive ocean, this sea so infinitely various in its +terrifying simplicity, which seemed to contain in itself and represent +by its joys, and attractions, and angers, and smiles, the moods and +agonies and ecstasies of all souls that have lived, that live, and that +shall yet live. + +In saying good-bye to this incomparable beauty I felt as though I had +been smitten to death; and that is why when each of my companions said: +"At last!" I could only cry "_Already!_" + +Here meanwhile was the land, the land with its noises, its passions, its +commodities, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of +promises, that sent to us a mysterious perfume of rose and musk, and +from whence the music of life flowed in an amorous murmuring. + + + + +THE DOUBLE CHAMBER. + + +A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly _spiritual_, where the +stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue. + +There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and +desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue +and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the +furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed +with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals. + +The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the +skies, the dropping suns. + +There are no artistic abominations upon the walls. Compared with the +pure dream, with an impression unanalysed, definite art, positive art, +is a blasphemy. Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious +obscurity of music. + +An infinitesimal odour of the most exquisite choice, mingled with a +floating humidity, swims in this atmosphere where the drowsing spirit is +lulled by the sensations one feels in a hothouse. + +The abundant muslin flows before the windows and the couch, and spreads +out in snowy cascades. Upon the couch lies the Idol, ruler of my dreams. +But why is she here?--who has brought her?--what magical power has +installed her upon this throne of delight and reverie? What matter--she +is there; and I recognise her. + +These indeed are the eyes whose flame pierces the twilight; the subtle +and terrible mirrors that I recognise by their horrifying malice. They +attract, they dominate, they devour the sight of whomsoever is imprudent +enough to look at them. I have often studied them; these Black Stars +that compel curiosity and admiration. + +To what benevolent demon, then, do I owe being thus surrounded with +mystery, with silence, with peace, and sweet odours? O beatitude! the +thing we name life, even in its most fortunate amplitude, has nothing in +common with this supreme life with which I am now acquainted, which I +taste minute by minute, second by second. + +Not so! Minutes are no more; seconds are no more. Time has vanished, and +Eternity reigns--an Eternity of delight. + +A heavy and terrible knocking reverberates upon the door, and, as in a +hellish dream, it seems to me as though I had received a blow from a +mattock. + +Then a Spectre enters: it is an usher who comes to torture me in the +name of the Law; an infamous concubine who comes to cry misery and to +add the trivialities of her life to the sorrow of mine; or it may be the +errand-boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder of a +manuscript. + +The chamber of paradise, the Idol, the ruler of dreams, the Sylphide, as +the great René said; all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking +of the Spectre. + +Horror; I remember, I remember! Yes, this kennel, this habitation of +eternal weariness, is indeed my own. Here is my senseless furniture, +dusty and tattered; the dirty fireplace without a flame or an ember; the +sad windows where the raindrops have traced runnels in the dust; the +manuscripts, erased or unfinished; the almanac with the sinister days +marked off with a pencil! + +And this perfume of another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a +so perfected sensitiveness; alas, its place is taken by an odour of +stale tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness. +Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation. + +In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar +object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like +all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries. + +Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the +hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories, +Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves. + +I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now; +and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable, +implacable Life!" + +There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good +news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye. + +Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me, +as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Woa, thou fool! Sweat, +then, thou slave! Live on, thou damnèd!" + + + + +AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. + + +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. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared--I +shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh +myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the +lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude +and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world. + +A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the +day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he +could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was +an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a +review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable +people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a +knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me; +and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the +precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time, +during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a +costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said: +"You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest, +foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you +will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have +boasted (why?) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and +indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy, +certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused +an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a +perfect fool. Heavens! it's well ended. + +Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I +should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the +silence and solitude. + +Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain +me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and +Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some +beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I +am not inferior to those I despise. + + + + +THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST. + + +How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough +to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose +vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen +than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns +his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the +incomparable chastity of the azure--a little sail trembling upon the +horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable +existence--the melodious monotone of the surge--all these things +thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the +reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and +picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions. + +These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external +objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within +pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too +tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations. + +And now the profundity of the sky dismays me! its limpidity exasperates +me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, +revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from +Beauty? + +Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my +desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel +where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished. + + + + +THE THYRSUS. + +TO FRANZ LISZT. + + +What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a +sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating +the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But +physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a +vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious +meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and +fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing +complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant +lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the +spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a +mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollæ, all +these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical +dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to +decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the +baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty +of the vine branches and the flowers? + +The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and +venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty. +Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over +the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles +in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm, +unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the +feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance. +Straight line and arabesque--intention and expression--the rigidity of +the will and the suppleness of the word--a variety of means united for a +single purpose--the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is +genius--what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to +separate you? + +Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the +pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your +wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City +or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles; +improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper +your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain, +philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of +immortality! + + + + +THE MARKSMAN. + + +As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the +neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a +few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most +ordinary and legitimate occupation of man?--So he gallantly offered his +hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to +whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great +part of his genius. + +Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far +into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously, +mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and +said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air, +and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, _I will +imagine to myself that it is you!_" + +He closed both eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly +decapitated. + +Then, bending towards his dear, adorable, and execrable wife, his +inevitable and pitiless muse, he kissed her respectfully upon the hand, +and added, "Ah, dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!" + + + + +THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY. + + +"Cemetery View Inn"--"A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but +it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper of this inn appreciates Horace +and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound +philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, +or some emblem of life's brevity." + +He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly +smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the +cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the +sunshine. + +The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said +the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon +the corruption beneath. + +The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life--the life of things +infinitely small--and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from +a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of +champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony. + +And then, beneath a sun which scorched the brain, and in that atmosphere +charged with the ardent perfume of death, he heard a voice whispering +out of the tomb where he sat. And this voice said: "Accursed be your +rifles and targets, you turbulent living ones, who care so little for +the dead in their divine repose! Accursed be your ambitions and +calculations, importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter near +the sanctuary of Death himself! Did you but know how easy the prize to +win, how facile the end to reach, and how all save Death is naught, not +so greatly would you fatigue yourselves, O ye laborious alive; nor would +you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago reached the End--the +only true end of life detestable!" + + + + +THE DESIRE TO PAINT. + + +Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this +desire. + +I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so +swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller +must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her. + +She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The +colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal +and profound. Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and +gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion +in the darkness. + +I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star +overthrowing light and happiness. But it is the moon that she makes one +dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with +her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a +cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the +depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet +peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from +the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly +constrain to dance upon the terrified grass. + +Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of +prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the +unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, the +smile of a large mouth; white, red, and delicious; a mouth that makes +one dream of the miracle of some superb flower unclosing in a volcanic +land. + +There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo them and win +them; but she makes one wish to die slowly beneath her steady gaze. + + + + +THE GLASS-VENDOR. + + +These 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 one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation +awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before +the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter +fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of +six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year +past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards +action, like an arrow from a bow. + +The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet +cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent +and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest +and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time +possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the +most absurd and even the most dangerous acts. + +One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one +time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether +the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His +experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only +too well. + +Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, _in order to see, to +know, to tempt Destiny_, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, +for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of +energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it +manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most +indolent and dreamy beings. + +Another so timid that he must cast down his eyes before the gaze of any +man, and summon all his poor will before he dare enter a café or pass +the pay-box of a theatre, where the ticket-seller seems, in his eyes, +invested with all the majesty of Minos, Æcus, and Rhadamanthus, will at +times throw himself upon the neck of some old man whom he sees in the +street, and embrace him with enthusiasm in sight of an astonished crowd. +Why? Because--because this countenance is irresistibly attractive to +him? Perhaps; but it is more legitimate to suppose that he himself does +not know why. + +I have been more than once a victim to these crises and outbreaks which +give us cause to believe that evil-meaning demons slip into us, to make +us the ignorant accomplices of their most absurd desires. One morning I +arose in a sullen mood, very sad, and tired of idleness, and thrust as +it seemed to me to the doing of some great thing, some brilliant +act--and then, alas, I opened the window. + +(I beg you to observe that in some people the spirit of mystification is +not the result of labour or combination, but rather of a fortuitous +inspiration which would partake, were it not for the strength of the +feeling, of the mood called hysterical by the physician and satanic by +those who think a little more profoundly than the physician; the mood +which thrusts us unresisting to a multitude of dangerous and +inconvenient acts.) + +The first person I noticed in the street was a glass-vendor whose shrill +and discordant cry mounted up to me through the heavy, dull atmosphere +of Paris. It would have been else impossible to account for the sudden +and despotic hatred of this poor man that came upon me. + +"Hello, there!" I cried, and bade him ascend. Meanwhile I reflected, not +without gaiety, that as my room was on the sixth landing, and the +stairway very narrow, the man would have some difficulty in ascending, +and in many a place would break off the corners of his fragile +merchandise. + +At length he appeared. I examined all his glasses with curiosity, and +then said to him: "What, have you no coloured glasses? Glasses of rose +and crimson and blue, magical glasses, glasses of Paradise? You are +insolent. You dare to walk in mean streets when you have no glasses that +would make one see beauty in life?" And I hurried him briskly to the +staircase, which he staggered down, grumbling. + +I went on to the balcony and caught up a little flower-pot, and when the +man appeared in the door-way beneath I let fall my engine of war +perpendicularly upon the edge of his pack, so that it was upset by the +shock and all his poor walking fortune broken to bits. It made a noise +like a palace of crystal shattered by lightning. Mad with my folly, I +cried furiously after him: "The life beautiful! the life beautiful!" + +Such nervous pleasantries are not without peril; often enough one pays +dearly for them. But what matters an eternity of damnation to him who +has found in one second an eternity of enjoyment? + + + + +THE WIDOWS. + + +Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted +principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted +glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted +souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus +betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the +well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's +cripples. + +To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their +avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there +is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the +place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions +for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn +towards all that is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft. + +An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected +lineaments; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last +fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound +wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience +deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded +effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported. + +Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor +widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. +Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; +a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is +forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who +exhibit a full complement of sorrow. + +Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the +hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I +do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours +an aged and afflicted woman of this kind: rigid and erect, wrapped in a +little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism. + +She was evidently condemned by her absolute loneliness to the habits of +an ancient celibacy; and the masculine characters of her habits added to +their austerity a piquant mysteriousness. In what miserable café she +dines I know not, nor in what manner. I followed her to a reading-room, +and for a long time watched her reading the papers, her active eyes, +that once burned with tears, seeking for news of a powerful and personal +interest. + +At length, in the afternoon, under a charming autumnal sky, one of those +skies that let fall hosts of memories and regrets, she seated herself +remotely in a garden, to listen, far from the crowd, to one of the +regimental bands whose music gratifies the people of Paris. This was +without doubt the small debauch of the innocent old woman (or the +purified old woman), the well-earned consolation for another of the +burdensome days without a friend, without conversation, without joy, +without a confidant, that God had allowed to fall upon her perhaps for +many years past--three hundred and sixty-five times a year! + +Yet one more: + +I can never prevent myself from throwing a glance, if not sympathetic at +least full of curiosity, over the crowd of outcasts who press around the +enclosure of a public concert. From the orchestra, across the night, +float songs of fête, of triumph, or of pleasure. The dresses of the +women sweep and shimmer; glances pass; the well-to-do, tired with doing +nothing, saunter about and make indolent pretence of listening to the +music. Here are only the rich, the happy; here is nothing that does not +inspire or exhale the pleasure of being alive, except the aspect of the +mob that presses against the outer barrier yonder, catching gratis, at +the will of the wind, a tatter of music, and watching the glittering +furnace within. + +There is a reflection of the joy of the rich deep in the eyes of the +poor that is always interesting. But to-day, beyond this people dressed +in blouses and calico, I saw one whose nobility was in striking contrast +with all the surrounding triviality. She was a tall, majestic woman, and +so imperious in all her air that I cannot remember having seen the like +in the collections of the aristocratic beauties of the past. A perfume +of exalted virtue emanated from all her being. Her face, sad and worn, +was in perfect keeping with the deep mourning in which she was dressed. +She also, like the plebeians she mingled with and did not see, looked +upon the luminous world with a profound eye, and listened with a toss of +her head. + +It was a strange vision. "Most certainly," I said to myself, "this +poverty, if poverty it be, ought not to admit of any sordid economy; so +noble a face answers for that. Why then does she remain in surroundings +with which she is so strikingly in contrast?" + +But in curiously passing near her I was able to divine the reason. The +tall widow held by the hand a child dressed like herself in black. +Modest as was the price of entry, this price perhaps sufficed to pay +for some of the needs of the little being, or even more, for a +superfluity, a toy. + +She will return on foot, dreaming and meditating--and alone, always +alone, for the child is turbulent and selfish, without gentleness or +patience, and cannot become, any more than another animal, a dog or a +cat, the confidant of solitary griefs. + + + + +THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY. + + +Last night two superb Satans and a She-devil not less extraordinary +ascended the mysterious stairway by which Hell gains access to the +frailty of sleeping man, and communes with him in secret. These three +postured gloriously before me, as though they had been upon a stage--and +a sulphurous splendour emanated from these beings who so disengaged +themselves from the opaque heart of the night. They bore with them so +proud a presence, and so full of mastery, that at first I took them for +three of the true Gods. + +The first Satan, by his face, was a creature of doubtful sex. The +softness of an ancient Bacchus shone in the lines of his body. His +beautiful langourous eyes, of a tenebrous and indefinite colour, were +like violets still laden with the heavy tears of the storm; his +slightly-parted lips were like heated censers, from whence exhaled the +sweet savour of many perfumes; and each time he breathed, exotic +insects drew, as they fluttered, strength from the ardours of his +breath. + +Twined about his tunic of purple stuff, in the manner of a cincture, was +an iridescent Serpent with lifted head and eyes like embers turned +sleepily towards him. Phials full of sinister fluids, alternating with +shining knives and instruments of surgery, hung from this living girdle. +He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red fluid, and +inscribed with a legend in these singular words: + +"DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE"; + +and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing his +pleasures and pains, and to spread abroad the contagion of his folly +upon the nights of the Sabbath. + +From rings upon his delicate ankles trailed a broken chain of gold, and +when the burden of this caused him to bend his eyes towards the earth, +he would contemplate with vanity the nails of his feet, as brilliant and +polished as well-wrought jewels. + +He looked at me with eyes inconsolably heartbroken and giving forth an +insidious intoxication, and cried in a chanting voice: "If thou wilt, if +thou wilt, I will make thee an overlord of souls; thou shalt be master +of living matter more perfectly than the sculptor is master of his clay; +thou shalt taste the pleasure, reborn without end, of obliterating +thyself in the self of another, and of luring other souls to lose +themselves in thine." + +But I replied to him: "I thank thee. I only gain from this venture, +then, beings of no more worth than my poor self? Though remembrance +brings me shame indeed, I would forget nothing; and even before I +recognised thee, thou ancient monster, thy mysterious cutlery, thy +equivocal phials, and the chain that imprisons thy feet, were symbols +showing clearly enough the inconvenience of thy friendship. Keep thy +gifts." + +The second Satan had neither the air at once tragical and smiling, the +lovely insinuating ways, nor the delicate and scented beauty of the +first. A gigantic man, with a coarse, eyeless face, his heavy paunch +overhung his hips and was gilded and pictured, like a tattooing, with a +crowd of little moving figures which represented the unnumbered forms of +universal misery. There were little sinew-shrunken men who hung +themselves willingly from nails; there were meagre gnomes, deformed and +under-sized, whose beseeching eyes begged an alms even more eloquently +than their trembling hands; there were old mothers who nursed clinging +abortions at their pendent breasts. And many others, even more +surprising. + +This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from whence +came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away in a +sighing made by many human voices. And he smiled unrestrainedly, showing +his broken teeth--the imbecile smile of a man who has dined too freely. +Then the creature said to me: + +"I can give thee that which gets all, which is worth all, which takes +the place of all." And he tapped his monstrous paunch, whence came a +sonorous echo as the commentary to his obscene speech. I turned away +with disgust and replied: "I need no man's misery to bring me happiness; +nor will I have the sad wealth of all the misfortunes pictured upon thy +skin as upon a tapestry." + +As for the She-devil, I should lie if I denied that at first I found in +her a certain strange charm, which to define I can but compare to the +charm of certain beautiful women past their first youth, who yet seem to +age no more, whose beauty keeps something of the penetrating magic of +ruins. She had an air at once imperious and sordid, and her eyes, though +heavy, held a certain power of fascination. I was struck most by her +voice, wherein I found the remembrance of the most delicious contralti, +as well as a little of the hoarseness of a throat continually laved with +brandy. + +"Wouldst thou know my power?" said the charming and paradoxical voice of +the false goddess. "Then listen." And she put to her mouth a gigantic +trumpet, enribboned, like a mirliton, with the titles of all the +newspapers in the world; and through this trumpet she cried my name so +that it rolled through space with the sound of a hundred thousand +thunders, and came re-echoing back to me from the farthest planet. + +"Devil!" cried I, half tempted, "that at least is worth something." But +it vaguely struck me, upon examining the seductive virago more +attentively, that I had seen her clinking glasses with certain drolls of +my acquaintance, and her blare of brass carried to my ears I know not +what memory of a fanfare prostituted. + +So I replied, with all disdain: "Get thee hence! I know better than wed +the light o' love of them that I will not name." + +Truly, I had the right to be proud of a so courageous renunciation. But +unfortunately I awoke, and all my courage left me. "In truth," I said, +"I must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have had such scruples. +Ah, if they would but return while I am awake, I would not be so +delicate." + +So I invoked the three in a loud voice, offering to dishonour myself as +often as necessary to obtain their favours; but I had without doubt too +deeply offended them, for they have never returned. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles +Baudelaire, by Charles Baudelaire + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, PROSE POEMS, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE *** + +***** This file should be named 36287-0.txt or 36287-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/2/8/36287/ + +Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at +http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously made +available by the Internet Archive. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/36287-0.zip b/old/36287-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a146e93 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/36287-0.zip diff --git a/old/36287-8.txt b/old/36287-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c83baa --- /dev/null +++ b/old/36287-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4453 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles +Baudelaire, by Charles Baudelaire + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire + with an Introductory Preface by James Huneker + +Author: Charles Baudelaire + +Editor: James Huneker + +Release Date: May 31, 2011 [EBook #36287] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, PROSE POEMS, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE *** + + + + +Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at +http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously made +available by the Internet Archive. + + + + + +THE POEMS AND PROSE POEMS + +OF + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE + + +WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE BY + +JAMES HUNEKER + + + +NEW YORK +BRENTANO'S +PUBLISHERS + +1919 + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by James Huneker + + +THE FLOWERS OF EVIL + +The Dance of Death +The Beacons +The Sadness of the Moon +Exotic Perfume +Beauty +The Balcony +The Sick Muse +The Venal Muse +The Evil Monk +The Temptation +The Irreparable +A Former Life +Don Juan in Hades +The Living Flame +Correspondences +The Flask +Reversibility +The Eyes of Beauty +Sonnet of Autumn +The Remorse of the Dead +The Ghost +To a Madonna +The Sky +Spleen +The Owls +Bien Loin d'Ici +Music +Contemplation +To a Brown Beggar-maid +The Swan +The Seven Old Men +The Little Old Women +A Madrigal of Sorrow +The Ideal +Mist and Rain +Sunset +The Corpse +An Allegory +The Accursed +La Beatrice +The Soul of Wine +The Wine of Lovers +The Death of Lovers +The Death of the Poor +The Benediction +Gypsies Travelling +Francisco Meæ Laudes +Robed in a Silken Robe +A Landscape +The Voyage + + +LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE + +The Stranger +Every Man his Chimæra +Venus and the Fool +Intoxication +The Gifts of the Moon +The Invitation to the Voyage +What is Truth? +Already! +The Double Chamber +At One o'Clock in the Morning +The Confiteor of the Artist +The Thyrsus +The Marksman +The Shooting-range and the Cemetery +The Desire to Paint +The Glass-vendor +The Widows +The Temptations; or, Eros, Plutus, and Glory + + + + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. + +BY JAMES HUNEKER. + + + + +I + + +For the sentimental no greater foe exists than the iconoclast who +dissipates literary legends. And he is abroad nowadays. Those golden +times when they gossiped of De Quincey's enormous opium consumption, of +the gin absorbed by gentle Charles Lamb, of Coleridge's dark ways, +Byron's escapades, and Shelley's atheism--alas! into what faded limbo +have they vanished. Poe, too, whom we saw in fancy reeling from Richmond +to Baltimore, Baltimore to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to New York. Those +familiar fascinating anecdotes have gone the way of all such jerry-built +spooks. We now know Poe to have been a man suffering at the time of his +death from cerebral lesion, a man who drank at intervals and little. Dr. +Guerrier of Paris has exploded a darling superstition about De Quincey's +opium-eating. He has demonstrated that no man could have lived so +long--De Quincey was nearly seventy-five at his death--and worked so +hard, if he had consumed twelve thousand drops of laudanum as often as +he said he did. Furthermore, the English essayist's description of the +drug's effects is inexact. He was seldom sleepy--a sure sign, asserts +Dr. Guerrier, that he was not altogether enslaved by the drug habit. +Sprightly in old age, his powers of labour were prolonged until past +three-score and ten. His imagination needed little opium to produce the +famous Confessions. Even Gautier's revolutionary red waistcoat worn at +the première of Hernani was, according to Gautier, a pink doublet. And +Rousseau has been whitewashed. So they are disappearing, those literary +legends, until, disheartened, we cry out: Spare us our dear, +old-fashioned, disreputable men of genius! + +But the legend of Charles Baudelaire is seemingly indestructible. This +French poet has suffered more from the friendly malignant biographer and +chroniclers than did Poe. Who shall keep the curs out of the cemetery? +asked Baudelaire after he had read Griswold on Poe. A few years later +his own cemetery was invaded and the world was put into possession of +the Baudelaire legend; that legend of the atrabilious, irritable poet, +dandy, maniac, his hair dyed green, spouting blasphemies; that grim, +despairing image of a diabolic, a libertine, saint, and drunkard. Maxime +du Camp was much to blame for the promulgation of these tales--witness +his Souvenirs littéraires. However, it may be confessed that part of the +Baudelaire legend was created by Charles Baudelaire. In the history of +literature it is difficult to parallel such a deliberate piece of +self-stultification. Not Villon, who preceded him, not Verlaine, who +imitated him, drew for the astonishment or disedification of the world a +like unflattering portrait. Mystifier as he was, he must have suffered +at times from acute cortical irritation. And, notwithstanding his +desperate effort to realize Poe's idea, he only proved Poe correct, who +had said that no man can bare his heart quite naked; there always will +be something held back, something false ostentatiously thrust forward. +The grimace, the attitude, the pomp of rhetoric are so many buffers +between the soul of man and the sharp reality of published confessions. +Baudelaire was no more exception to this rule than St. Augustine, +Bunyan, Rousseau, or Huysmans; though he was as frank as any of them, as +we may see in the printed diary, Mon coeur mis à nu (Posthumous Works, +Société du Mercure de France); and in the Journal, Fusées, Letters, and +other fragments exhumed by devoted Baudelarians. + +To smash legends, Eugène Crépet's biographical study, first printed in +1887, has been republished with new notes by his son, Jacques Crépet. +This is an exceedingly valuable contribution to Baudelaire lore; a +dispassionate life, however, has yet to be written, a noble task for +some young poet who will disentangle the conflicting lies originated by +Baudelaire--that tragic comedian--from the truth and thus save him from +himself. The Crépet volume is really but a series of notes; there are +some letters addressed to the poet by the distinguished men of his day, +supplementing the rather disappointing volume of Letters, 1841-1866, +published in 1908. There are also documents in the legal prosecution of +Baudelaire, with memories of him by Charles Asselineau, Léon Cladel, +Camille Lemonnier, and others. + +In November, 1850, Maxime du Camp and Gustave Flaubert found themselves +at the French Ambassador's, Constantinople. The two friends had taken a +trip in the Orient which later bore fruit in Salammbô. General Aupick, +the representative of the French Government, cordially the young men +received; they were presented to his wife, Madame Aupick. She was the +mother of Charles Baudelaire, and inquired rather anxiously of Du Camp: +"My son has talent, has he not?" Unhappy because her second marriage, a +brilliant one, had set her son against her, the poor woman welcomed from +such a source confirmation of her eccentric boy's gifts. Du Camp tells +the much-discussed story of a quarrel between the youthful Charles and +his stepfather, a quarrel that began at table. There were guests +present. After some words Charles bounded at the General's throat and +sought to strangle him. He was promptly boxed on the ears and succumbed +to a nervous spasm. A delightful anecdote, one that fills with joy +psychiatrists in search of a theory of genius and degeneration. Charles +was given some money and put on board a ship sailing to East India. He +became a cattle-dealer in the British army, and returned to France +years afterward with a Vénus noire, to whom he addressed extravagant +poems! All this according to Du Camp. Here is another tale, a comical +one. Baudelaire visited Du Camp in Paris, and his hair was violently +green. Du Camp said nothing. Angered by this indifference, Baudelaire +asked: "You find nothing abnormal about me?" "No," was the answer. "But +my hair--it is green!" "That is not singular, mon cher Baudelaire; every +one has hair more or less green in Paris." Disappointed in not creating +a sensation, Baudelaire went to a café, gulped down two large bottles of +Burgundy, and asked the waiter to remove the water, as water was a +disagreeable sight; then he went away in a rage. It is a pity to doubt +this green hair legend; presently a man of genius will not be able to +enjoy an epileptic fit in peace--as does a banker or a beggar. We are +told that St. Paul, Mahomet, Handel, Napoleon, Flaubert, Dostoiëvsky +were epileptoids; yet we do not encounter men of this rare kind among +the inmates of asylums. Even Baudelaire had his sane moments. + +The joke of the green hair has been disposed of by Crépet. Baudelaire's +hair thinning after an illness, he had his head shaved and painted with +salve of a green hue, hoping thereby to escape baldness. At the time +when he had embarked for Calcutta (May, 1841), he was not seventeen, but +twenty years of age. Du Camp said he was seventeen when he attacked +General Aupick. The dinner could not have taken place at Lyons because +the Aupick family had left that city six years before the date given by +Du Camp. Charles was provided with five thousand francs for his +expenses, instead of twenty--Du Camp's version--and he never was a +beef-drover in the British army, for a good reason--he never reached +India. Instead, he disembarked at the Isle of Bourbon, and after a short +stay suffered from homesickness and returned to France, after being +absent about ten months. But, like Flaubert, on his return home +Baudelaire was seized with the nostalgia of the East; over there he had +yearned for Paris. Jules Claretie recalls Baudelaire saying to him with +a grimace: "I love Wagner; but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung +up by his tail outside of a window, and trying to stick to the panes of +glass with its claws. There is an odd grating on the glass which I find +at the same time strange, irritating, and singularly harmonious." Is it +necessary to add that Baudelaire, notorious in Paris for his love of +cats, dedicating poems to cats, would never have perpetrated such +revolting cruelty? + +Another misconception, a critical one, is the case of Poe and +Baudelaire. The young Frenchman first became infatuated with Poe's +writings in 1846 or 1847--he gave these two dates, though several +stories of Poe had been translated into French as early as 1841 or 1842; +L'Orang-Outang was the first, which we know as The Murders in the Rue +Morgue; Madame Meunier also adapted several Poe stories for the reviews. +Baudelaire's labours as a translator lasted over ten years. That he +assimilated Poe, that he idolized Poe, is a commonplace of literary +gossip. But that Poe had overwhelming influence in the formation of his +poetic genius is not the truth. Yet we find such an acute critic as the +late Edmund Clarence Stedman writing, "Poe's chief influence upon +Baudelaire's own production relates to poetry." It is precisely the +reverse. Poe's influence affected Baudelaire's prose, notably in the +disjointed confessions, Mon coeur mis à nu, which vaguely recall the +American writer's Marginalia. The bulk in the poetry in Les Fleurs du +Mal was written before Baudelaire had read Poe, though not published in +book form until 1857. But in 1855 some of the poems saw the light in the +Revue des deux Mondes, while many of them had been put forth a decade or +fifteen years before as fugitive verse in various magazines. Stedman was +not the first to make this mistake. In Bayard Taylor's The Echo Club we +find on page 24 this criticism: "There was a congenital twist about Poe +... Baudelaire and Swinburne after him have been trying to surpass him +by increasing the dose; but his muse is the natural Pythia inheriting +her convulsions, while they eat all sorts of insane roots to produce +theirs." This must have been written about 1872, and after reading it +one would fancy that Poe and Baudelaire were rhapsodic wrigglers on the +poetic tripod, whereas their poetry is often reserved, even glacial. +Baudelaire, like Poe, sometimes "built his nests with the birds of +Night," and that was enough to condemn the work of both men by critics +of the didactic school. + +Once, when Baudelaire heard that an American man of letters(?) was in +Paris, he secured an introduction and called on him. Eagerly inquiring +after Poe, he learned that he was not considered a genteel person in +America, Baudelaire withdrew, muttering maledictions. Enthusiastic poet! +Charming literary person! Yet the American, whoever he was, represented +public opinion at the time. To-day criticisms of Poe are vitiated by the +desire to make him an angel. It is to be doubted whether without his +barren environment and hard fortunes we should have had Poe at all. He +had to dig down deep into the pit of his personality to reach the +central core of his music. But every ardent young soul entering +"literature" begins by a vindication of Poe's character. Poe was a man, +and he is now a classic. He was a half-charlatan as was Baudelaire. In +both the sublime and the sickly were never far asunder. The pair loved +to mystify, to play pranks on their contemporaries. Both were implacable +pessimists. Both were educated in affluence, and both had to face +unprepared the hardships of life. The hastiest comparison of their +poetic work will show that their only common ideal was the worship of an +exotic beauty. Their artistic methods of expression were totally +dissimilar. Baudelaire, like Poe, had a harp-like temperament which +vibrated in the presence of strange subjects. Above all, he was obsessed +by sex. Women, as angel of destruction, is the keynote of his poems. Poe +was almost sexless. His aerial creatures never footed the dusty highways +of the world. His lovely lines, "Helen, thy beauty is to me," could +never have been written by Baudelaire; while Poe would never have +pardoned the "fulgurant" grandeur, the Beethoven-like harmonies, the +Dantesque horrors of that "deep wide music of lost souls" in "Femmes +Damnées": + + "Descendes, descendes, lamentable victimes." + +Or this, which might serve as a text for one of John Martin's vast +sinister mezzotints: + + J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal + Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore, + Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal + Une miraculeuse aurore; + + J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal + Un être, qui n'était que lumière, or et gaze, + Terrasser rénorme Satan; + Mais mon coeur que jamais ne visite l'extase, + Est un théâtre où l'on attend + Toujours, toujours en vain l'Etre aux ailes de gaze. + +George Saintsbury thus sums up the differences between Poe and +Baudelaire: "Both authors--Poe and De Quincey--fell short of Baudelaire +himself as regards depth and fulness of passion, but both have a +superficial likeness to him in eccentricity of temperameut and affection +for a certain peculiar mixture of grotesque and horror." Poe is without +passion, except a passion for the macabre; what Huysmans calls "The +October of the sensations"; whereas, there is a gulf of despair and +terror and humanity in Baudelaire, which shakes your nerves, yet +stimulates the imagination. However, profounder as a poet, he was no +match for Poe in what might be termed intellectual prestidigitation. The +mathematical Poe, the Poe of the ingenious detective tales, tales +extraordinary, the Poe of the swift flights into the cosmic blue, the +Poe the prophet and mystic--in these the American was more versatile +than his French translator. That Baudelaire said, "Evil be thou my +good," is doubtless true. He proved all things and found them vanity. He +is the poet of original sin, a worshipper of Satan for the sake of +paradox; his Litanies to Satan ring childish to us--in his heart he was +a believer. His was "an infinite reverse aspiration," and mixed up with +his pose was a disgust for vice, for life itself. He was the last of the +Romanticists; Sainte-Beuve called him the Kamchatka of Romanticism; its +remotest hyperborean peak. Romanticism is dead to-day, as dead as +Naturalism; but Baudelaire is alive, and read. His glistening +phosphorescent trail is over French poetry and he is the begetter of a +school:--Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Carducci, Arthur Rimbaud, +Jules Laforgue, Gabriel D'Annunzio, Aubrey Beardsley, Verhaeren, and +many of the youthful crew. He affected Swinburne, and in Huysmans, who +was not a poet, his splenetic spirit lives. Baudelaire's motto might be +the obverse of Browning's lines: "The Devil is in heaven. All's wrong +with the world." + +When Goethe said of Hugo and the Romanticists that they came +from Chateaubriand, he should have substituted the name of +Rousseau--"Romanticism, it is Rousseau," exclaims Pierre Lasserre. But +there is more of Byron and Petrus Borel--a forgotten half-mad poet--in +Baudelaire; though, for a brief period, in 1848, he became a Rousseau +reactionary, sported the workingman's blouse, cut his hair, shouldered a +musket, went to the barricades, wrote inflammatory editorials calling +the proletarian "Brother!" (oh, Baudelaire!) and, as the Goncourts +recorded in their diary, had the head of a maniac. How seriously we may +take this swing of the pendulum is to be noted in a speech of the poet's +at the time of the Revolution: "Come," he said, "let us go shoot General +Aupick!" It was his stepfather that he thought of, not the eternal +principles of Liberty. This may be a false anecdote; many such were +foisted upon Baudelaire. For example, his exclamations at cafés or in +public places, such as: "Have you ever eaten a baby? I find it pleasing +to the palate!" or, "The night I killed my father!" Naturally, people +stared and Baudelaire was happy--he had startled a bourgeois. The +cannibalistic idea he may have borrowed from Swift's amusing pamphlet, +for this French poet knew English literature. + +Gautier compares the poems to a certain tale of Hawthorne's in which +there is a garden of poisoned flowers. But Hawthorne worked in his +laboratory of evil wearing mask and gloves; he never descended into the +mud and sin of the street. Baudelaire ruined his health, smudged his +soul, yet remained withal, as Anatole France says, "a divine poet." How +childish, yet how touching is his resolution--he wrote in his diary of +prayer's dynamic force--when he was penniless, in debt, threatened with +imprisonment, sick, nauseated with sin: "To make every morning my prayer +to God, the reservoir of all force, and all justice; to my father, to +Mariette, and to Poe as intercessors." (Evidently, Maurice Barrès +encountered here his theory of Intercessors.) Baudelaire loved the +memory of his father as much as Stendhal hated his own. He became +reconciled with his mother after the death of General Aupick, in 1857. +He felt in 1862 that his own intellectual eclipse was approaching, for +he wrote: "I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror. To-day +imbecility's wing fanned me as it passed." The sense of the vertiginous +gulf was abiding with him; read his poem, "Pascal avait son gouffre." + +In preferring the Baudelaire translations of Poe to the original--and +they give the impression of being original works--Stedman agreed with +Asselineau that the French is more concise than the English. The prose +of Poe and Baudelaire is clear, sober, rhythmic; Baudelaire's is more +lapidary, finer in contour, richer coloured, more supple, though without +the "honey and tiger's blood" of Barbey d'Aurevilly. Baudelaire's soul +was patiently built up as a fabulous bird might build its nest--bits of +straw, the sobbing of women, clay, cascades of black stars, rags, +leaves, rotten wood, corroding dreams, a spray of roses, a sparkle of +pebble, a gleam of blue sky, arabesques of incense and verdigris, +despairing hearts and music and the abomination of desolation, for its +ground-tones. But this soul-nest is also a cemetery of the seven +sorrows. He loves the clouds ... les nuages ... là bas.... It was là bas +with him even in the tortures of his wretched love-life. Corruption and +death were ever floating in his consciousness. He was like Flaubert, who +saw everywhere the hidden skeleton. Félicien Hops has best interpreted +Baudelaire; the etcher and poet were closely knit spirits. Rodin, too, +is a Baudelarian. If there could be such an anomaly as a native +wood-note wildly evil, it would be the lyric and astringent voice of +this poet. His sensibility was both catholic and morbid, though he could +be frigid in the face of the most disconcerting misfortunes. He was a +man for whom the invisible word existed; if Gautier was pagan, +Baudelaire was a strayed spirit from mediæval days. The spirit rules, +and, as Paul Bourget said, "he saw God." A Manichean in his worship of +evil, he nevertheless abased his soul: "Oh! Lord God! Give me the force +and courage to contemplate my heart and my body without disgust," he +prays: but as some one remarked to Rochefoucauld, "Where you end, +Christianity begins." + +Baudelaire built his ivory tower on the borders of a poetic Maremma, +which every miasma of the spirit pervaded, every marsh-light and +glow-worm inhabited. Like Wagner, Baudelaire painted in his sultry music +the profundities of abysms, the vastness of space. He painted, too, the +great nocturnal silences of the soul. + +Pacem summum tenent! He never reached peace on the heights. Let us +admit that souls of his kind are encased in sick frames; their steel is +too shrewd for the scabbard; yet the enigma for us is none the less +unfathomable. Existence for such natures is a sort of muffled delirium. +To affiliate him with Poe, De Quincey, Hoffman, James Thomson, +Coleridge, and the rest of the sombre choir does not explain him; he is, +perhaps, nearer Donne and Villon than any of the others--strains of the +metaphysical and sinister and supersubtle are to be discovered in him. +The disharmony of brain and body, the spiritual bilocation, are only too +easy to diagnose; but the remedy? Hypocrite lecteur--mon semblable--mon +frère! When the subtlety, force, grandeur, of his poetic production be +considered, together with its disquieting, nervous, vibrating qualities, +it is not surprising that Victor Hugo wrote to the poet: "You invest the +heaven of art with we know not what deadly rays; you create a new +shudder." Hugo might have said that he turned Art into an Inferno. +Baudelaire is the evil archangel of poetry. In his heaven of fire, glass +and ebony he is the blazing Lucifer. "A glorious devil, large in heart +and brain, that did love beauty only..." once sang Tennyson, though not +of the Frenchman. + + + + +II + + +As long ago as 1869, and in our "barbarous gas-lit country," as +Baudelaire named the land of Poe, an unsigned review appeared in which +this poet was described as "unique and as interesting as Hamlet. He is +that rare and unknown being, a genuine poet--a poet in the midst of +things that have disordered his spirit--a poet excessively developed in +his taste for and by beauty ... very responsive to the ideal, very +greedy of sensation." A better description of Baudelaire does not exist +The Hamlet-motive, particularly, is one that sounded throughout the +disordered symphony of the poet's life. + +He was, later, revealed--also reviled--to American readers by Henry +James, who completely missed his significance. This was in 1878, when +appeared the first edition of French Poets and Novelists. Previous to +that there had been some desultory discussion, a few essays in the +magazines, and in 1875 a sympathetic paper by Professor James Albert +Harrison of the University of Virginia. He denounced the Frenchman for +his reprehensible taste, though he did not mention his beautiful verse +nor his originality in the matter of criticism. Baudelaire, in his eyes, +was not only immoral, but he had, with the approbation of Sainte-Beuve, +introduced Poe as a great man to the French nation. (See Baudelaire's +letter to Sainte-Beuve in the newly published Letters, 1841-1866.) +Perhaps "Mr. Dick Minim" and his projected Academy of Criticism might +make clear these devious problems. + +The Etudes Critiques of Edmond Schérer were collected in 1863. In them +we find this unhappy, uncritical judgment: "Baudelaire, lui, n'a rien, +ni le coeur, ni l'esprit, ni l'idée, ni le mot, ni la raison, ni la +fantaisie, ni la verve, ni même la facture ... son unique titre c'est +d'avoir contribué à créer l'esthétique de la débauche." It is not our +intention to dilate upon the injustice of this criticism. It is +Baudelaire the critic of æsthetics in whom we are interested. Yet I +cannot forbear saying that if all the negations of Schérer had been +transformed into affirmations, only justice would have been accorded +Baudelaire, who was not alone a poet, the most original of his century, +but also a critic of the first rank, one who welcomed Richard Wagner +when Paris hooted him and his fellow composer, Hector Berlioz, played +the rôle of the envious; one who fought for Edouard Manet, Leconte de +Lisle, Gustave Flaubert, Eugène Delacroix; fought with pen for the +modern etchers, illustrators, Meryon, Daumier, Félicien Rops, Gavarni, +and Constantin Guys. He literally identified himself with De Quincey and +Poe, translating them so wonderfully well that some unpatriotic persons +like the French better than the originals. So much was Baudelaire +absorbed in Poe that a writer of his times asserted that the translator +would meet the same fate as the American poet. A singular, vigorous +spirit is Baudelaire's, whose poetry with its "icy ecstasy" is profound +and harmonious, whose criticism is penetrated by a catholic quality, who +anticipated modern critics in his abhorrence of schools and +environments, preferring to isolate the man and uniquely study him. He +would have subscribed to Swinburne's generous pronouncement: "I have +never been able to see what should attract man to the profession of +criticism but the noble pleasure of praising." The Frenchman has said +that it would be impossible for a critic to become a poet; and it is +impossible for a poet not to contain a critic. + +Théophile Gautier's study prefixed to the definitive edition of Les +Fleurs du Mal is not only the most sympathetic exposition of Baudelaire +as man and genius, but it is also the high-water mark of Gautier's gifts +as a critical essayist. We learn therein how the young Charles, an +incorrigible dandy, came to visit Hôtel Pimodan about 1844. In this +Hôtel Pimodan a dilettante, Ferdinand Boissard, held high revel. His +fantastically decorated apartments were frequented by the painters, +poets, sculptors, romancers, of the day--that is, carefully selected +ones such as Liszt, George Sand, Mérimée, and others whose verve or +genius gave them the privilege of saying Open Sesame! to this cave of +forty Supermen. Balzac has in his Peau de Chagrin pictured the same sort +of scenes which were supposed to occur weekly at the Pimodan. Gautier +eloquently describes the meeting of these kindred artistic souls, where +the beautiful Jewess, Maryx, who had posed for Ary Scheffer's Mignon +and for Paul Delaroche's La Gloire, met the superb Madame Sabatier, the +only woman that Baudelaire loved, and the original of that extraordinary +group of Clésinger's--the sculptor and son-in-law of George Sand--la +Femme au Serpent, a Salammbô à la mode in marble. Hasheesh was eaten, so +Gautier writes, by Boissard and Baudelaire. As for the creator of +Mademoiselle Maupin, he was too robust for such nonsense. He had to work +for his living at journalism, and he died in harness, an irreproachable +father, while the unhappy Baudelaire, the inheritor of an intense, +unstable temperament, soon devoured his patrimony of 75,000 francs, and +for the remaining years of his life was between the devil of his dusky +Jenny Duval and the deep sea of hopeless debt. + +It was at these Pimodan gatherings, which were no doubt much less wicked +than the participants would have us believe, that Baudelaire encountered +Emile Deroy, a painter of skill, who made his portrait, and encouraged +the fashionable young fellow to continue his art studies. We have seen +an album containing sketches by the poet. They betray talent of about +the same order as Thackeray's, with a superadded note of the +"horrific"--that favourite epithet of the early Poe critics. Baudelaire +admired Thackeray, and when the Englishman praised the illustrations of +Guys, he was delighted. Deroy taught his pupil the commonplaces of a +painter's technique; also how to compose a palette--a rather meaningless +phrase nowadays. At least, he did not write of the arts without some +technical experience. Delacroix took up his enthusiastic disciple, and +when the Salons of Baudelaire appeared in 1845, 1846, 1855, and 1859, +the praise and blame they evoked were testimonies to the training and +knowledge of their author. A new spirit had been born. + +The names of Diderot and Baudelaire were coupled. Neither academic nor +spouting the jargon of the usual critic, the Salons of Baudelaire are +the production of a humanist. Some would put them above Diderot's. Mr. +Saintsbury, after Swinburne the warmest advocate of Baudelaire among the +English, thinks that the French poet in his picture criticism observed +too little and imagined too much. "In other words," he adds, "to read a +criticism of Baudelaire's without the title affixed is by no means a +sure method of recognizing the picture afterward." Now, word-painting +was the very thing that Baudelaire avoided. It was his friend Gautier, +with the plastic style, who attempted the well-nigh impossible feat of +competing in his verbal descriptions with the certitudes of canvas and +marble. And, if he with his verbal imagination did not entirely succeed, +how could a less adept manipulator of the vocabulary? We do not agree +with Mr. Saintsbury. No one can imagine too much when the imagination is +that of a poet. Baudelaire divined the work of the artist and set it +down scrupulously in a prose of exceeding rectitude. He did not paint +pictures in prose. He did not divagate. He did not overburden his pages +with technical terms. But the spirit of his subject he did disengage in +a few swift phrases. The polemics of historical schools were a cross for +him to bear, and he wore his prejudices lightly. Like a true critic, he +judged more by form than theme. There are no types; there is only life, +he asserted, and long before Jules Laforgue. He was ever art-for-art, +yet, having breadth of comprehension and a Heine-like capacity for +seeing both sides of his own nature with its idiosyncrasies, he could +write: "The puerile utopia of the school of art-for-art, in excluding +morality, and often even passion, was necessarily sterile. All +literature which refuses to advance fraternally between science and +philosophy is a homicidal and a suicidal literature." + +Baudelaire, then, was no less sound a critic of the plastic arts than of +music and literature. Like his friend Flaubert, he had a horror of +democracy, of the democratisation of the arts, of all the sentimental +fuss and fuddle of a pseudo-humanitarianism. During the 1848 agitation +the former dandy of 1840 put on a blouse and spoke of barricades. Those +things were in the air. Wagner rang the alarm-bells during the Dresden +uprising. Chopin wrote for the pianoforte a revolutionary étude. Brave +lads! Poets and musicians fight their battles best in the region of the +ideal. Baudelaire's little attack of the equality-measles soon vanished. +He lectured his brother poets and artists on the folly and injustice of +abusing or despising the bourgeois (being a man of paradox, he dedicated +a volume of his Salons to the bourgeois), but he would not have +contradicted Mr. George Moore for declaring that "in art the democrat +is always reactionary. In 1830 the democrats were against Victor Hugo +and Delacrois." And Les Fleurs du Mal, that book of opals, blood, and +evil swamp-flowers, will never be savoured by the mob. + +In his Souvenirs de Jeunesse, Champfleury speaks of the promenades in +the Louvre he enjoyed the company with Baudelaire. Bronzino was one of +the poet's preferences. He was also attracted by El Greco--not an +unnatural admiration, considering the sombre extravagance of his own +genius. Of Goya he has written in exalted phrases. Velasquez was his +touchstone. Being of a perverse nature, his Derves ruined by abuse of +drink and drugs, the landscapes of his imagination were more beautiful +than Nature herself. The country itself, he declared, was odious. Like +Whistler, whom he often met--see the Hommage à Delacrois by +Fantin-Latour, with its portraits of Whistler, Baudelaire, Manet, +Bracquemond the etcher, Legros, Delacrois, Cordier, Duranty the critic, +and De Balleroy--he could not help showing his aversion to "foolish +sunsets." In a word, Baudelaire, into whose brain had entered too much +moonlight, was the father of a lunar school of poetry, criticism and +fiction. His Samuel Cramer, in La Fanfarlo, is the literary progenitor +of Jean, Duc d'Esseintes, in Huysmans's _A Rebours_. Huysmans at first +modelled himself upon Baudelaire. His Le Drageoir aux Epices is a +continuation of Petits Poèmes en Prose. And to Baudelaire's account must +be laid much artificial morbid writing. Despite his pursuit of +perfection in form, his influence has been too often baneful to +impressionable artists in embryo. A lover of Gallic Byronism, and +high-priest of the Satanic school, there was no extravagance, absurd or +terrible, that he did not commit, from etching a four-part fugue on ice +to skating hymns in honour of Lucifer. In his criticism alone was he the +sane logical Frenchman. And while he did not live to see the success of +the Impressionist group, he surely would have acclaimed their theory and +practice. Was he not an impressionist himself? + +As Richard Wagner was his god in music, so Delacroix quite overflowed +his æsthetic consciousness. Read Volume II of his collected works, +_Curiosités Esthétiques_, which contains his Salons; also his essay, _De +l'Essence du Rire_ (worthy to be placed side by side with George +Meredith's essay on Comedy). Caricaturists, French and foreign, are +considered in two chapters at the close of the volume. Baudelaire was as +conscientious as Gautier. He trotted around miles of mediocre canvas, +saying an encouraging word to the less talented, boiling over with holy +indignation or indulging in glacial irony, before the rash usurpers +occupying the seats of the mighty, and pouncing on new genius with +promptitude. Upon Delacroix he lavished the largesse of his admiration. +He smiled at the platitudes of Horace Vernet, and only shook his head +over the Schnetzes and other artisans of the day. He welcomed William +Hausollier, now so little known. He praised Devéria, Chasseriau--who +waited years before he came into his own; his preferred landscapists +were Corot, Rousseau and Troyon. He impolitely spoke of Ary Scheffer and +the "apes of sentiment"; while his discussions of Hogarth, Cruikshank, +Pinelli and Breughel proclaims his versatility of vision. In his essay +Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne he was the first among critics to recognize +the peculiar quality called "modernity," that naked vibration which +informs the novels of Goncourt, Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale, +and the pictures of Manet, Monet, Degas and Raffaelli with their +evocations of a new, nervous Paris. It is in his Volume III, entitled +L'Art Romantique, that so many things dear to the new century were then +subjects of furious quarrels. This book contains much just and brilliant +writing. It was easy for Nietzsche to praise Wagner in Germany in 1876, +but dangerous at Paris in 1861 to declare war on Wagner's adverse +critics. This Baudelaire did. + +The relations of Baudelaire and Edouard Manet were exceedingly cordial. +In a letter to Théophile Thoré, the art critic (Letters, p. 361), we +find Baudelaire defending his friend from the accusation that his +pictures were pastiches of Goya. He wrote: "Manet has never seen Goya, +never El Greco; he was never in the Pourtalés Gallery." Which may have +been true at the time, 1864, nevertheless Manet had visited Madrid and +spent much time studying Velasquez and abusing Spanish cookery. +(Consider, too, Goya's Balcony with Girls and Manet's famous Balcony.) +Raging at the charge of imitation, Baudelaire said in this same epistle: +"They accuse even me of imitating Edgar Poe.... Do you know why I so +patiently translated Poe? Because he resembled me." The poet italicized +these words. With stupefaction, therefore, he admired the mysterious +coincidences of Manet's work with that of Goya and El Greco. + +He took Manet seriously. He wrote to him in a paternal and severe tone. +Recall his reproof when urging the painter to exhibit his work. "You +complain about attacks, but are you the first to endure them? Have you +more genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by +derision. And in order not to make you too proud I must tell you that +they are models, each in his way, and in a very rich world, while you +are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." (Letters, p. 436.) + +Would Baudelaire recall these prophetic words if he were able to revisit +the glimpses of the Champs Elysées at the Autumn Salons? What would he +think of Cézanne? Odilon Redon he would understand, for he is the +transposer of Baudelairianism to terms of design and colour. And perhaps +the poet whose verse is saturated with tropical hues--he, when young, +sailed in southern seas--might appreciate the monstrous debauch of form +and colour in the Tahitian canvases of Paul Gauguin. + +Baudelaire's preoccupation with pictorial themes may be noted in his +verse. He is par excellence the poet of æsthetics. To Daumier he +inscribed a poem; and to the sculptor Ernest Christophe, to Delacroix +(Sur Tasse en Prison), to Manet, to Guys (Rêve Parisien), to an unknown +master (Une Martyre); and Watteau, a Watteau à rebours, is seen in Un +Voyage à Cythère; while in Les Phares this poet of the ideal, spleen +music, and perfume, shows his adoration for Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci, +Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Puget, Goya, Delacroix--"Delacroix, lac de sang +hanté des mauvais anges." And what is more exquisite than his quatrain +to Lola de Valence, a poetic inscription for the picture of Edouard +Manet, with its last line as vaporous, as subtle as Verlaine: "Le charme +inattendu d'un bijou rose et noir!" Heine called himself the last of the +Romantics. The first of the "Moderns" and the last of the Romantics was +the many-sided Charles Baudelaire. + + + + +III + + +He was born at Paris, April 9, 1821 (Flaubert's birth year), and not +April 21, as Gautier has it. His father was Joseph Francis Baudelaire, +or Baudelaire, who occupied a government position. A cultivated art +lover, his taste was apparent in the home he made for his second wife, +Caroline Archimbaut-Dufays, an orphan and the daughter of a military +officer. There was a considerable difference in the years of this pair; +the mother was twenty-seven, the father sixty-two, at the birth of their +only child. By his first marriage the elder Baudelaire had one son, +Claude, who, like his half-brother Charles, died of paralysis, though a +steady man of business. That great modern neurosis, called Commerce, has +its mental wrecks, too, and no one pays attention; but when a poet falls +by the wayside is the chase begun by neurologists and other soul-hunters +seeking victims. After the death of Baudelaire's father, the widow, +within a year, married the handsome, ambitious Aupick, then chef de +bataillon, lieutenant-colonel, decorated with the Legion of Honour, and +later general and ambassador to Madrid, Constantinople, and London. +Charles was a nervous, frail youth, but unlike most children of genius, +he was a scholar and won brilliant honours at school. His stepfather was +proud of him. From the Royal College of Lyons, Charles went to the Lycée +Louis-le-Grand, Paris, but was expelled in 1839, on various +discreditable charges. Troubles soon began at home. He was irascible, +vain, precocious, and given to dissipation. He quarreled with General +Aupick, and disdained his mother. But she was to blame, she has +confessed; she had quite forgotten the boy in the flush of her second +love. He could not forget, or forgive what he called her infidelity to +the memory of his father. Hamlet-like, he was inconsolable. The good +Bishop of Montpellier, who knew the family, said that Charles was a +little crazy--second marriages usually bring woe in their train. "When a +mother has such a son, she doesn't re-marry," said the young poet +Charles signed himself Baudelaire-Dufays, or sometimes Dufais. He wrote +in his journal: "My ancestors, idiots or maniacs ... all victims of +terrible passions"; which was one of his exaggerations. His grandfather +on the paternal side was a Champenois peasant, his mother's family +presumably Norman, but not much is known of her forbears. Charles +believed himself lost from the time his half-brother was stricken. He +also believed that his instability of temperament--and he studied his +"case" as would a surgeon--was the result of his parents' disparity in +years. + +After his return from the East, where he did not learn English as has +been said--his mother taught him as a boy to converse in and write the +language--he came into his little inheritance, about fifteen thousand +dollars. Two years later he was so heavily in debt that his family asked +for a guardian on the ground of incompetency. He had been swindled, +being young and green. How had he squandered his money? Not exactly on +opera-glasses, like Gérard de Nerval, but on clothes, pictures, +furniture, books. The remnant was set aside to pay his debts. Charles +would be both poet and dandy. He dressed expensively but soberly, in the +English fashion; his linen dazzling, the prevailing hue of his +habiliments black. In height he was medium, his eyes brown, searching, +luminous, the eye of a nyctalops, "eyes like ravens"; nostrils +palpitating, cleft chin, mouth expressive, sensual jaw, strong and +square. His hair was black, curly, glossy, his forehead high, square and +white. In the Deroy portrait he wears a beard; he is there what Catulle +Mendès nicknamed him: "His Excellence, Monseigneur Brummel!" Later he +was the elegiac Satan, the author of L'Imitation de N.S. le Diable; or +the Baudelaire of George Moore: "the clean-shaven face of the mock +priest, the slow cold eyes and the sharp cunning sneer of the cynical +libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness +of temptation." In the heyday of his blood he was perverse and +deliberate. Let us credit him with contradicting the Byronic notion that +ennui could best be cured by dissipation; in sin Baudelaire found the +saddest of all consolations. Mendès laughs at the legend of Baudelaire's +violence, of his being given to explosive phrases. Despite Gautier's +stories about the Hôtel Pimodan and its club of hasheesh-eaters, M. +Mendès denies that Baudelaire was a victim of the hemp. What the +majority of mankind does not know concerning the habits of literary +workers is this prime fact: men who work hard, writing verse--and there +is no mental toil comparable to it--cannot drink, or indulge in opium, +without inevitable collapse. The old-fashioned ideas of "inspiration," +spontaneity, easy improvisation, the sudden bolt from heaven, are +delusions still hugged by the world. To be told that Chopin filed +at his music for years, that Beethoven in his smithy forged his +thunderbolts by the sweat of his brow, that Manet toiled like a +labourer on the dock, that Baudelaire was a mechanic in his devotion +to poetic work, that Gautier was a hard-working journalist, are +disillusions for the sentimental. Minerva springing full-fledged from +Jupiter's skull to the desk of the poet is a pretty fancy; but Balsac +and Flaubert did not encourage this fancy. Work literally killed Poe, as +it killed Jules de Goncourt, Flaubert and Daudet. Maupassant went insane +because he would work and he would play the same day. Baudelaire worked +and worried. His debts haunted him his life long. His constitution was +flawed--Sainte-Beuve told him that he had worn out his nerves--from the +start, he was détraqué; but that his entire life was one huge debauch is +a nightmare of the moral police in some red cotton nightcap country. + +His period of mental production was not brief nor barren. He was a +student. Du Camp's charge that he was an ignorant man is disproved by +the variety and quality of his published work. His range of sympathies +was large. His mistake, in the eyes of his colleagues, was to write so +well about the seven arts. Versatility is seldom given its real +name--which is protracted labour. Baudelaire was one of the elect, an +aristocrat, who dealt with the quintessence of art; his delicate air of +a bishop, his exquisite manners, his modulated voice, aroused unusual +interest and admiration. He was a humanist of distinction; he has left a +hymn to Saint Francis in the Latin of the decadence. Baudelaire, like +Chopin, made more poignant the phrase, raised to a higher intensity the +expressiveness of art. + +Women played a commanding rôle in his life. They always do with any poet +worthy of the name, though few have been so frank in acknowledging this +as Baudelaire. Yet he was in love more with Woman than the individual. +The legend of the beautiful creature he brought from the East resolves +itself into the dismal affair with Jeanne Duval. He met her in Paris, +after he had been in the East. She sang at a café concert in Paris. She +was more brown than black. She was not handsome, not intelligent, not +good; yet he idealized her, for she was the source of half his +inspiration. To her were addressed those marvellous evocations of the +Orient, of perfume, tresses, delicious dawns on strange far-away seas +and "superb Byzant," domes that devils built. Baudelaire is the poet of +perfumes; he is also the patron saint of ennui. No one has so chanted +the praise of odours. His soul swims on perfume as do other souls on +music, he has sung. As he grew older he seemed to hunt for more acrid +odours; he often presents an elaborately chased vase the carving of +which transports us, but from which the head is quickly averted. Jeanne, +whom he never loved, no matter what may be said, was a sorceress. But +she was impossible; she robbed, betrayed him; he left her a dozen times +only to return. He was a capital draughtsman with a strong nervous line +and made many pen-and-ink drawings of her. They are not prepossessing. +In her rapid decline she was not allowed to want. Madame Aupick paid her +expenses in the hospital. A sordid history. She was a veritable flower +of evil for Baudelaire. Yet poetry, like music, would be colourless, +scentless, if it sounded no dissonances. Fancy art reduced to the +beatific and banal chord of C major! + +He fell in love with the celebrated Madame Sabatier, a reigning beauty, +at whose salon artistic Paris assembled. She had been christened by +Gautier Madame la Présidente, and her sumptuous beauty was portrayed by +Ricard in his La Femme au Chien. She returned Baudelaire's love. They +soon parted. Again a riddle which the published letters hardly solve. +One letter, however, does show that Baudelaire had tried to be faithful, +and failed. He could not extort from his exhausted soul the sentiment; +but he put its music on paper. His most seductive lyrics were addressed +to Madame Sabatier: "A la très chère, à la très-belle," a hymn saturated +with love. Music, spleen, perfumes--"colour, sound, perfumes call to +each other as deep to deep; perfumes like the flesh of children, soft as +hautboys, green as the meadows"--criminals, outcasts, the charm of +childhood, the horrors of love, pride, and rebellion, Eastern +landscapes, cats, soothing and false; cats, the true companions of +lonely poets; haunted clocks, shivering dusks, and gloomier +dawns--Paris in a hundred phases--these and many other themes this +strange-souled poet, this "Dante, pacer of the shore," of Paris has +celebrated in finely wrought verse and profound phrases. In a single +line he contrives atmosphere; the very shape of his sentence, the ring +of the syllables, arouse the deepest emotion. A master of harmonic +undertones is Baudelaire. His successors have excelled him in making +their music more fluid, more lyrical, more vapourous--many young French +poets pass through their Baudelarian green-sickness--but he alone knows +the secrets of moulding those metallic, free sonnets, which have the +resistance of bronze; and of the despairing music that flames from the +mouths of lost souls trembling on the wharves of hell. He is the supreme +master of irony and troubled voluptuousness. + +Baudelaire is a masculine poet. He carved rather than sang; the plastic +arts spoke to his soul. A lover and maker of images. Like Poe, his +emotions transformed themselves into ideas. Bourget classified him as +mystic, libertine, and analyst. He was born with a wound in his soul, to +use the phrase of Père Lacordaire. (Curiously enough, he actually +contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat +in the French Academy. Sainte-Beuve dissuaded him from this folly.) +Recall Baudelaire's prayer: "Thou, O Lord, my God, grant me the grace to +produce some fine lines which will prove to myself that I am not the +last of men, that I am not inferior to those I contemn." Individualist, +egoist, anarchist, his only thought was letters. Jules Laforgue thus +described Baudelaire: "Cat, Hindoo, Yankee, Episcopal, Alchemist." Yes, +an alchemist who suffocated in the fumes he created. He was of Gothic +imagination, and could have said with Rolla: "Je suis venu trop tard +dans un monde trop vieux." He had an unassuaged thirst for the absolute. +The human soul was his stage, he its interpreting orchestra. + +In 1857 The Flowers of Evil was published by Poulet-Malassis, who +afterward went into bankruptcy--a warning to publishers with a taste for +fine literature. The titles contemplated were Limbes, or Lesbiennes. +Hippolyte Babou suggested the one we know. These poems were suppressed +on account of six, and poet and publisher summoned. As the municipal +government had made a particular ass of itself in the prosecution of +Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary, the Baudelaire matter was +disposed of in haste. He was condemned to a fine of three hundred +francs, a fine which was never paid, as the objectionable poems were +removed. They were printed in the Belgian edition, and may be read in +the new volume, OEuvres. Posthumes. + +Baudelaire was infuriated over the judgment, for he knew that his book +was dramatic in expression. He had expected, like Flaubert, to emerge +from the trial with flying colours; therefore to be classed as one who +wrote objectionable literature was a shock. "Flaubert had the Empress +back of him," he complained; which was true; the Empress Eugénie, also +the Princess Mathilde. But he worked as ever and put forth those +polished intaglios called Poems in Prose, for the form of which he had +taken a hint from Aloys Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit. He filled this +form with a new content; not alone pictures, but moods, are to be found +in those miniatures. Pity is their keynote, a tenderness for the abject +and lowly, a revelation of sensibility that surprised those critics who +had discerned in Baudelaire only a sculptor of evil. In one of his poems +he described a landscape of metal, of marble and water; a babel of +staircases and arcades, a palace of infinity, surrounded by the silence +of eternity. This depressing yet magical dream was utilized by Huysmans +in his A Rebours. But in the tiny landscapes of the Prose Poems there is +nothing rigid or artificial. Indeed, the poet's deliberate attitude of +artificiality is dropped. He is human. Not that the deep fundamental +note of humanity is ever absent in his poems; the eternal diapason is +there even when least overheard. Baudelaire is more human than Poe. His +range of sympathy is wider. In this he transcends him as a poet, though +his subject-matter often issues from the very dregs of life. Brother to +pitiable wanderers, there are, nevertheless, no traces of cant, no +"Russian pity" à la Dostoiëvsky, no humanitarian or socialistic +rhapsodies in his work. Baudelaire is an egoist He hated the sentimental +sapping of altruism. His prose-poem, Crowds, with its "bath of +multitude," may have been suggested by Poe; but in Charles Lamb we find +the idea: "Are there no solitudes out of caves and the desert? or +cannot the heart, in the midst of crowds, feel frightfully alone?" + +His best critical work is the Richard Wagner and Tannhauser, as +significant an essay as Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. And +Baudelaire's polemic appeared at a more critical period in Wagner's +career. Wagner sent a brief hearty letter of thanks to the critic, and +later made his acquaintance. To Wagner, Baudelaire introduced a young +Wagnerian, Villiers de l'Isle Adam. This Wagner letter is included in +the volume of Crépet; but there are no letters published from Baudelaire +to Franz Liszt, though they were friends. In Weimar I saw at the Liszt +Museum several from Baudelaire which should have been included in the +Letters. The poet understood Liszt and his reforms as he understood +Wagner. The German composer admired the French poet, and his Kundry, in +the sultry second act of Parsifal, has a Baudelairian hue, especially in +the temptation scene. + +The end was at hand. Baudelaire had been steadily, rather, unsteadily, +going downhill; a desperate figure, a dandy in shabby attire. He went +out only after dark, he haunted the exterior boulevards, associated +with birds of nocturnal plumage. He drank without thirst, ate without +hunger, as he has said. A woeful decadence for this aristocrat of life +and letters. Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged +his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre. He fled to +Brussels, there to rehabilitate his dwindling fortunes. He gave a few +lectures, and met Rops, Lemonnier, drank to forget, and forgot to work. +He abused Brussels, Belgium, its people. A country, he cried, where the +trees are black, the flowers without odour, and where there is no +conversation! He, the brilliant causeur, the chief blaguer of a circle +in which young James McNeill Whistler was reduced to the rôle of a +listener--this most spiritual among artists, found himself a failure in +the Belgian capital. It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that +Baudelaire was the creator of many of the paradoxes attributed, not only +to Whistler, but to an entire school--if one may employ such a phrase. +The frozen imperturbability of the poet, his cutting enunciation, his +power of blasphemy, his hatred of Nature, his love of the artificial, +have been copied by the æsthetic blades of our day. He it was who first +taunted Nature with being an imitator of art, with always being the +same. Oh, the imitative sunsets! Oh, the quotidian eating and drinking! +And as pessimist, too, he led the mode. Baudelaire, like Flaubert, +grasped the murky torch of pessimism once held by Chateaubriand, +Benjamin Constant, and Senancour. Doubtless, all this stemmed from +Byronism. And now it is as stale as Byronism. + +His health failed, and he lacked money enough to pay for doctor's +prescriptions; he even owed for the room in his hotel. At Namur, where +he was visiting the father-in-law of Felician Rops (March, 1866), he +suffered from an attack of paralysis. He was removed to Brussels. His +mother, who lived at Honneur, in mourning for her husband, came to his +aid. Taken to France, he was placed in a sanatorium. Aphasia set in. He +could only ejaculate a mild oath, and when he caught sight of himself in +the mirror he would bow pleasantly as if to a stranger. His friends +rallied, and they were among the most distinguished people in Paris, the +élite of souls. Ladies visited him, one or two playing Wagner on the +piano--which must have added a fresh nuance to death--and they brought +him flowers. He expressed his love for flowers and music to the last. He +could not bear the sight of his mother; she revived in him some painful +memories, but that passed, and he clamoured for her when she was absent. +If anyone mentioned the names of Wagner or Manet, he smiled. And with a +fixed stare, as if peering through some invisible window opening upon +eternity, he died, August 31, 1867, aged forty-six. + +Barbey d'Aurevilly himself a Satanist and dandy (oh, those comical old +attitudes of literature), had prophesied that the author of Fleurs du +Mal would either blow out his brains or prostrate himself at the foot of +the cross. (Later he said the same of Huysmans.) Baudelaire had the +alternative course forced upon him by fate after he had attempted +spiritual suicide for how many years? (He once tried actual suicide, but +the slight cut in his throat looked so ugly to him that he went no +farther.) His soul had been a battle-field for the powers of good and +evil. That at the end he brought the wreck of both soul and body to his +God should not be a subject for comment. He was an extraordinary poet +with a bad conscience, who lived miserably and was buried with honours. +Then it was that his worth was discovered (funeral orations over a +genius are a species of public staircase-wit). His reputation waxes with +the years. He is an exotic gem in the crown of French poetry. Of him +Swinburne has chanted Ave Atque Vale: + + Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, + Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? + + * * * * * + + + + +THE FLOWERS OF EVIL + + + + + THE DANCE OF DEATH. + + + Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves, + Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves + With all the careless and high-stepping grace, + And the extravagant courtesan's thin face. + + Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed? + Her floating robe, in royal amplitude, + Palls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod + With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod. + + The swarms that hum about her collar-bones + As the lascivious streams caress the stones, + Conceal from every scornful jest that flies, + Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes + + Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays + Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways, + Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebræ. + O charm of nothing decked in folly! they + + Who laugh and name you a Caricature, + They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure, + The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone + That is most dear to me, tall skeleton! + + Come you to trouble with your potent sneer + The feast of Life! or are you driven here, + To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir + And goad your moving corpse on with a spur? + + Or do you hope, when sing the violins, + And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins, + To drive some mocking nightmare far apart, + And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart? + + Fathomless well of fault and foolishness! + Eternal alembic of antique distress! + Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides + The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides. + + And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find, + Among us here, no lover to your mind; + Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave? + The charms of horror please none but the brave. + + Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir, + Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller + Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath, + The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth. + + For he who has not folded in his arms + A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms, + Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent, + When Horror comes the way that Beauty went. + + O irresistible, with fleshless face, + Say to these dancers in their dazzled race: + "Proud lovers with the paint above your bones, + Ye shall taste death, musk-scented skeletons! + + Withered Antinous, dandies with plump faces, + Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces, + Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath, + Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death. + + From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream, + The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream; + They do not see, within the opened sky, + The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high. + + In every clime and under every sun, + Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run; + And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye + And mingles with your madness, irony!" + + + + + THE BEACONS. + + + RUBENS, 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, + + LEONARD DA VINCI, sombre and fathomless glass, + Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile, + Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass, + Among the ice and pines that guard some isle. + + REMBRANDT, sad hospital that a murmuring fills, + Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls, + Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils, + And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls. + + Strong MICHELANGELO, a vague far place + Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules; + Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace, + And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease. + + The fighter's anger, the faun's impudence, + Thou makest of all these a lovely thing; + Proud heart, sick body, mind's magnificence: + PUGET, the convict's melancholy king. + + WATTEAU, the carnival of illustrious hearts, + Fluttering like moths upon the wings of chance; + Bright lustres light the silk that flames and darts, + And pour down folly on the whirling dance. + + GOYA, a nightmare full of things unknown; + The foetus witches broil on Sabbath night; + Old women at the mirror; children lone + Who tempt old demons with their limbs delight. + + DELACROIX, lake of blood ill angels haunt, + Where ever-green, o'ershadowing woods arise; + Under the surly heaven strange fanfares chaunt + And pass, like one of Weber's strangled sighs. + + And malediction, blasphemy and groan, + Ecstasies, cries, Te Deums, and tears of brine, + Are echoes through a thousand labyrinths flown; + For mortal hearts an opiate divine; + + A shout cried by a thousand sentinels, + An order from a thousand bugles tossed, + A beacon o'er a thousand citadels, + A call to huntsmen in deep woodlands lost. + + It is the mightiest witness that could rise + To prove our dignity, O Lord, to Thee; + This sob that rolls from age to age, and dies + Upon the verge of Thy Eternity! + + + + + THE SADNESS OF THE MOON. + + + The Moon more indolently dreams to-night + Than a fair woman on her couch at rest. + Caressing, with a hand distraught and light, + Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast. + + Upon her silken avalanche of down, + Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh; + And watches the white visions past her flown, + Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky. + + And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep, + Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow, + Some pious poet, enemy of sleep, + + Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow + Whence gleams of iris and of opal start, + And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart. + + + + + EXOTIC PERFUME. + + + 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. + + Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs + Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down. + Where men are upright, maids have never grown + Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows. + + Led by that perfume to these lands of ease, + I see a port where many ships have flown + With sails outwearied of the wandering seas; + + While the faint odours from green tamarisks blown, + Float to my soul and in my senses throng, + And mingle vaguely with the sailor's song. + + + + + BEAUTY. + + + I 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, + My throne is in the heaven's azure deep; + I hate all movements that disturb my pose, + I smile not ever, neither do I weep. + + Before my monumental attitudes, + That breathe a soul into the plastic arts, + My poets pray in austere studious moods, + + For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts, + Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies, + The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes. + + + + + THE BALCONY. + + + Mother 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, + Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses! + + The eves illumined by the burning coal, + The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings-- + How soft your breast was then, how sweet your soul! + Ah, and we said imperishable things, + Those eves illumined by the burning coal. + + Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm, + And space profound, and strong life's pulsing flood, + In bending o'er you, queen of every charm, + I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood. + The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm. + + The film of night flowed round and over us, + And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet; + I drank your breath, ah! sweet and poisonous, + And in my hands fraternal slept your feet-- + Night, like a film, flowed round and over us. + + I can recall those happy days forgot, + And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past. + Your languid beauties now would move me not + Did not your gentle heart and body cast + The old spell of those happy days forgot. + + Can vows and perfumes, kisses infinite, + Be reborn from the gulf we cannot sound; + As rise to heaven suns once again made bright + After being plunged in deep seas and profound? + Ah, vows and perfumes, kisses infinite! + + + + + THE SICK MUSE. + + + Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day? + Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn, + Upon thy brow in alternation play, + Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn. + + Have the green lemure and the goblin red, + Poured on thee love and terror from their urn? + Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread + Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne? + + Would that thy breast where so deep thoughts arise, + Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs; + Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave + + In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave, + When Phoebus shared his alternating reign + With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain. + + + + + THE VENAL MUSE. + + + Muse of my heart, lover of palaces, + When January comes with wind and sleet, + During the snowy eve's long wearinesses, + Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet? + + Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shoulders + In the moon-beams that through the window fly? + Or when thy purse dries up, thy palace moulders, + Reap the far star-gold of the vaulted sky? + + For thou, to keep thy body to thy soul, + Must swing a censer, wear a holy stole, + And chaunt Te Deums with unbelief between. + + Or, like a starving mountebank, expose + Thy beauty and thy tear-drowned smile to those + Who wait thy jeste to drive away thy spleen. + + + + + THE EVIL MONK. + + + The ancient cloisters on their lofty walls + Had holy Truth in painted frescoes shown, + And, seeing these, the pious in those halls + Felt their cold, lone austereness less alone. + + At that time when Christ's seed flowered all around, + More than one monk, forgotten in his hour, + Taking for studio the burial-ground, + Glorified Death with simple faith and power. + + And my soul is a sepulchre where I, + Ill cenobite, have spent eternity: + On the vile cloister walls no pictures rise. + + O when may I cast off this weariness, + And make the pageant of my old distress + For these hands labour, pleasure for these eyes? + + + + + THE TEMPTATION. + + + The Demon, in my chamber high. + This morning came to visit me, + And, thinking he would find some fault, + He whispered: "I would know of thee + + Among the many lovely things + That make the magic of her face, + Among the beauties, black and rose, + That make her body's charm and grace, + + Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply + To the Abhorred, O soul of mine: + "No single beauty is the best + When she is all one flower divine. + + When all things charm me I ignore + Which one alone brings most delight; + She shines before me like the dawn, + And she consoles me like the night. + + The harmony is far too great, + That governs all her body fair, + For impotence to analyse + And say which note is sweetest there. + + O mystic metamorphosis! + My senses into one sense flow-- + Her voice makes perfume when she speaks, + Her breath is music faint and low!" + + + + + THE IRREPARABLE. + + + Can we suppress the old Remorse + Who bends our heart beneath his stroke, + Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse, + Or as the acorn on the oak? + Can we suppress the old Remorse! + + Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell, + May we drown this our ancient foe, + Destructive glutton, gorging well, + Patient as the ants, and slow? + What wine, what philtre, or what spell? + + Tell it, enchantress, if you can, + Tell me, with anguish overcast, + Wounded, as a dying man, + Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past. + Tell it, enchantress, if you can, + + To him the wolf already tears + Who sees the carrion pinions wave, + This broken warrior who despairs + To have a cross above his grave-- + This wretch the wolf already tears. + + Can one illume a leaden sky, + Or tear apart the shadowy veil + Thicker than pitch, no star on high, + Not one funereal glimmer pale + Can one illume a leaden sky? + + Hope lit the windows of the Inn, + But now that shining flame is dead; + And how shall martyred pilgrims win + Along the moonless road they tread? + Satan has darkened all the Inn! + + Witch, do you love accursèd hearts? + Say, do you know the reprobate? + Know you Remorse, whose venomed darts + Make souls the targets for their hate? + Witch, do you know accursèd hearts? + + The Might-have-been with tooth accursed + Gnaws at the piteous souls of men, + The deep foundations suffer first, + And all the structure crumbles then + Beneath the bitter tooth accursed. + + + II. + + Often, when seated at the play, + And sonorous music lights the stage, + I see the frail hand of a Fay + With magic dawn illume the rage + Of the dark sky. Oft at the play + + A being made of gauze and fire + Casts to the earth a Demon great. + And my heart, whence all hopes expire, + Is like a stage where I await, + In vain, the Fay with wings of fire! + + + + + A FORMER LIFE. + + + Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, + By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, + Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows, + Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired. + + The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies + Mingled its music, turbulent and rich, + Solemn and mystic, with the colours which + The setting sun reflected in my eyes. + + And there I lived amid voluptuous calms, + In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave, + Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave, + + Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms. + They were my slaves--the only care they had + To know what secret grief had made me sad. + + + + + DON JUAN IN HADES. + + + When Juan sought the subterranean flood. + And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore. + Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stood + With one strong, vengeful hand on either oar. + + With open robes and bodies agonised, + Lost women writhed beneath that darkling sky; + There were sounds as of victims sacrificed: + Behind him all the dark was one long cry. + + And Sganarelle, with laughter, claimed his pledge; + Don Luis, with trembling finger in the air, + Showed to the souls who wandered in the sedge + The evil son who scorned his hoary hair. + + Shivering with woe, chaste Elvira the while, + Near him untrue to all but her till now, + Seemed to beseech him for one farewell smile + Lit with the sweetness of the first soft vow. + + And clad in armour, a tall man of stone + Held firm the helm, and clove the gloomy flood; + But, staring at the vessel's track alone, + Bent on his sword the unmoved hero stood. + + + + + THE LIVING FLAME. + + + They pass before me, these Eyes full of light, + Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise; + The holy brothers pass before my sight, + And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes. + + They keep me from all sin and error grave, + They set me in the path whence Beauty came; + They are my servants, and I am their slave, + And all my soul obeys the living flame. + + Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light + As candles lighted at full noon; the sun + Dims not your flame phantastical and bright. + + You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done; + Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn, + Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim! + + + + + CORRESPONDENCES. + + + In Nature's temple living pillars rise, + And words are murmured none have understood. + And man must wander through a tangled wood + Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes. + + As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim + Mingle to one deep sound and fade away; + Vast as the night and brilliant as the day, + Colour and sound and perfume speak to him. + + Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child, + Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green; + Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild, + + Have all the expansion of things infinite: + As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin, + Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight. + + + + + THE FLASK. + + + There are some powerful odours that can pass + Out of the stoppered flagon; even glass + To them is porous. Oft when some old box + Brought from the East is opened and the locks + And hinges creak and cry; or in a press + In some deserted house, where the sharp stress + Of odours old and dusty fills the brain; + An ancient flask is brought to light again, + And forth the ghosts of long-dead odours creep. + There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep + A thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides, + Phantoms of old the folding darkness hides, + Who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold, + Rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold. + + A memory that brings languor flutters here: + The fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear + Thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit + Where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet, + Arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost + Of an old passion, long since loved and lost. + So I, when vanished from man's memory + Deep in some dark and sombre chest I lie. + An empty flagon they have cast aside, + Broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride, + Will be your shroud, beloved pestilence! + The witness of your might and virulence, + Sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup + Of life and death my heart has drunken up! + + + + + REVERSIBILITY. + + + Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? + Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite, + And the vague terrors of the fearful night + That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf? + Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? + + Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? + With hands clenched in the shade and tears of gall, + When Vengeance beats her hellish battle-call, + And makes herself the captain of our fate, + Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? + + Angel of health, did ever you know pain, + Which like an exile trails his tired footfalls + The cold length of the white infirmary walls, + With lips compressed, seeking the sun in vain? + Angel of health, did ever you know pain? + + Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? + Know you the fear of age, the torment vile + Of reading secret horror in the smile + Of eyes your eyes have loved since long ago? + Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? + + Angel of happiness, and joy, and light, + Old David would have asked for youth afresh + From the pure touch of your enchanted flesh; + I but implore your prayers to aid my plight, + Angel of happiness, and joy, and light. + + + + + THE EYES OF BEAUTY. + + + 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. + + In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er, + That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate + By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more + Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate. + + It is a ruin where the jackals rest, + And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay-- + A perfume swims about your naked breast! + + Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way! + With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared + Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared! + + + + + SONNET OF AUTUMN. + + + They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: + "Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?" + Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise + All save that antique brute-like faith of thine; + + And will not bare the secret of their shame + To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long, + Nor their black legend write for thee in flame! + Passion I hate, a spirit does me wrong. + + Let us love gently. Love, from his retreat, + Ambushed and shadowy, bends his fatal bow, + And I too well his ancient arrows know: + + Crime, horror, folly. O pale marguerite, + Thou art as I, a bright sun fallen low, + O my so white, my so cold Marguerite. + + + + + THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD. + + + O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep + In the deep heart of a black marble tomb; + When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep + Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom; + + And when the stone upon thy trembling breast, + And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace, + Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest, + And holds those feet from their adventurous race; + + Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie, + (For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend) + During long nights when sleep is far from thee, + + Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend + The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"-- + And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek. + + + + + THE GHOST. + + + Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove + I will return to thy alcove. + And glide upon the night to thee, + Treading the shadows silently. + + And I will give to thee, my own, + Kisses as icy as the moon, + And the caresses of a snake + Cold gliding in the thorny brake. + + And when returns the livid morn + Thou shalt find all my place forlorn + And chilly, till the falling night. + + Others would rule by tenderness + Over thy life and youthfulness, + But I would conquer thee by fright! + + + + + TO A MADONNA. + + (_An Ex-Voto in the Spanish taste_.) + + + Madonna, mistress. I would build for thee + An altar deep in the sad soul of me; + And in the darkest corner of my heart, + From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart, + Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine + For thee to stand erect in, Image divine! + And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crowned + Wrought of the gold of my smooth Verse, set round + With starry crystal rhymes; and I will make, + O mortal maid, a Mantle for thy sake, + And weave it of my jealousy, a gown + Heavy, barbaric, stiff, and weighted down + With my distrust, and broider round the hem + Not pearls, but all my tears in place of them. + And then thy wavering, trembling robe shall be + All the desires that rise and fall in me + From mountain-peaks to valleys of repose, + Kissing thy lovely body's white and rose. + For thy humiliated feet divine, + Of my Respect I'll make thee Slippers fine + Which, prisoning them within a gentle fold, + + Shall keep their imprint like a faithful mould. + And if my art, unwearying and discreet, + Can make no Moon of Silver for thy feet + To have for Footstool, then thy heel shall rest + Upon the snake that gnaws within my breast, + Victorious Queen of whom our hope is born! + And thou shalt trample down and make a scorn + Of the vile reptile swollen up with hate. + And thou shalt see my thoughts, all consecrate, + Like candles set before thy flower-strewn shrine, + O Queen of Virgins, and the taper-shine + Shall glimmer star-like in the vault of blue, + With eyes of flame for ever watching you. + While all the love and worship in my sense + Will be sweet smoke of myrrh and frankincense. + Ceaselessly up to thee, white peak of snow, + My stormy spirit will in vapours go! + + And last, to make thy drama all complete, + That love and cruelty may mix and meet, + I, thy remorseful torturer, will take + All the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them make + In darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen, + And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen, + That spot profound whence love and mercy start, + I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart! + + + + + THE SKY. + + + Where'er he be, on water or on land, + Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold; + One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band, + Shadowy beggar or Croesus rich with gold; + + Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er + His little brain may be, alive or dead; + Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere, + And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead. + + The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall; + The lighted ceiling of a music-hall + Where every actor treads a bloody soil-- + + The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot; + The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot + Where the vast human generations boil! + + + + + SPLEEN. + + + I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins + Flows aged blood; who rules a land of rains; + Who, young in years, is old in all distress; + Who flees good counsel to find weariness + Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred + Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird; + Whose weary face emotion moves no more + E'en when his people die before his door. + His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile + Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile; + The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good, + Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood + No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom + Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb. + The sage who takes his gold essays in vain + To purge away the old corrupted strain, + His baths of blood, that in the days of old + The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold, + Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains, + For green Lethean water fills his veins. + + + + + THE OWLS. + + + Under the overhanging yews, + The dark owls sit in solemn state. + Like stranger gods; by twos and twos + Their red eyes gleam. They meditate. + + Motionless thus they sit and dream + Until that melancholy hour + When, with the sun's last fading gleam, + The nightly shades assume their power. + + From their still attitude the wise + Will learn with terror to despise + All tumult, movement, and unrest; + + For he who follows every shade, + Carries the memory in his breast, + Of each unhappy journey made. + + + + + BIEN LOIN D'ICI. + + + Here 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. + + Dorothy's chamber undefiled. + The winds and waters sing afar + Their song of sighing strange and wild + To lull to sleep the petted child. + + From head to foot with subtle care, + Slaves have perfumed her delicate skin + With odorous oils and benzoin. + And flowers faint in a corner there. + + + + + MUSIC. + + + Music doth oft 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, + And through the cordage wail, + I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me + Beneath her sombre veil. + + I feel the tremblings of all passions known + To ships before the breeze; + Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown + + I pass the abysmal seas + That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair + Of my despair! + + + + + CONTEMPLATION. + + + Thou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still, + The eve is thine which even now drops down, + To carry peace or care to human will, + And in a misty veil enfolds the town. + + While the vile mortals of the multitude, + By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on, + Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood-- + Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone + + Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years, + In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim; + And from the water, smiling through her tears, + + Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim; + And in the east, her long shroud trailing light, + List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night. + + + + + TO A BROWN BEGGAR-MAID. + + + White maiden with the russet hair, + Whose garments, through their holes, declare + That poverty is part of you, + And beauty too. + + To me, a sorry bard and mean, + Your youthful beauty, frail and lean, + With summer freckles here and there, + Is sweet and fair. + + Your sabots tread the roads of chance, + And not one queen of old romance + Carried her velvet shoes and lace + With half your grace. + + In place of tatters far too short + Let the proud garments worn at Court + Fall down with rustling fold and pleat + About your feet; + + In place of stockings, worn and old, + Let a keen dagger all of gold + Gleam in your garter for the eyes + Of roués wise; + + Let ribbons carelessly untied + Reveal to us the radiant pride + Of your white bosom purer far + Than any star; + + Let your white arms uncovered shine. + Polished and smooth and half divine; + And let your elfish fingers chase + With riotous grace + + The purest pearls that softly glow. + The sweetest sonnets of Belleau, + Offered by gallants ere they fight + For your delight; + + And many fawning rhymers who + Inscribe their first thin book to you + Will contemplate upon the stair + Your slipper fair; + + And many a page who plays at cards, + And many lords and many bards, + Will watch your going forth, and burn + For your return; + + And you will count before your glass + More kisses than the lily has; + And more than one Valois will sigh + When you pass by. + + But meanwhile you are on the tramp, + Begging your living in the damp, + Wandering mean streets and alleys o'er, + From door to door; + + And shilling bangles in a shop + Cause you with eager eyes to stop, + And I, alas, have not a son + To give to you. + + Then go, with no more ornament, + Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent, + Than your own fragile naked grace + And lovely face. + + + + + THE SWAN. + + + Andromache, I think of you! The stream, + The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days + Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief, + The lying Simoïs flooded by your tears, + Made all my fertile memory blossom forth + As I passed by the new-built Carrousel. + Old Paris is no more (a town, alas, + Changes more quickly than man's heart may change); + Yet in my mind I still can see the booths; + The heaps of brick and rough-hewn capitals; + The grass; the stones all over-green with moss; + The _débris_, and t&e square-set heaps of tiles. + + There a menagerie was once outspread; + And there I saw, one morning at the hour + When toil awakes beneath the cold, clear sky, + And the road roars upon the silent air, + A swan who had escaped his cage, and walked + On the dry pavement with his webby feet, + And trailed his spotless plumage on the ground. + + And near a waterless stream the piteous swan + Opened his beak, and bathing in the dust + His nervous wings, he cried (his heart the while + Filled with a vision of his own fair lake): + "O water, when then wilt thou come in rain? + Lightning, when wilt thou glitter?" + + Sometimes yet + I see the hapless bird--strange, fatal myth-- + Like him that Ovid writes of, lifting up + Unto the cruelly blue, ironic heavens, + With stretched, convulsive neck a thirsty face, + As though he sent reproaches up to God! + + + II. + + Paris may change; my melancholy is fixed. + New palaces, and scaffoldings, and blocks, + And suburbs old, are symbols all to me + Whose memories are as heavy as a stone. + And so, before the Louvre, to vex my soul, + The image came of my majestic swan + With his mad gestures, foolish and sublime, + As of an exile whom one great desire + Gnaws with no truce. And then I thought of you, + Andromache! torn from your hero's arms; + Beneath the hand of Pyrrhus in his pride; + + Bent o'er an empty tomb in ecstasy; + Widow of Hector--wife of Helenus! + And of the negress, wan and phthisical, + Tramping the mud, and with her haggard eyes + Seeking beyond the mighty walls of fog + The absent palm-trees of proud Africa; + Of all who lose that which they never find; + Of all who drink of tears; all whom grey grief + Gives suck to as the kindly wolf gave suck; + Of meagre orphans who like blossoms fade. + And one old Memory like a crying horn + Sounds through the forest where my soul is lost.... + I think of sailors on some isle forgotten; + Of captives; vanquished ... and of many more. + + + + + THE SEVEN OLD MEN. + + + O swarming city, city full of dreams, + Where in full day the spectre walks and speaks; + Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins + My story flows as flows the rising sap. + + One morn, disputing with my tired soul, + And like a hero stiffening all my nerves, + I trod a suburb shaken by the jar + Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified + The houses either side of that sad street, + So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood + Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist, + Unclean and yellow, inundated space-- + A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul. + Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags + Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks + Should have brought alms in floods upon his head, + Without the misery gleaming in his eye, + Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed + To have been washed with gall; the bitter frost + Sharpened his glance; and from his chin a beard + Sword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth. + He was not bent but broken: his backbone + Made a so true right angle with his legs, + That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gave + The finish to the picture, made him seem + Like some infirm and stumbling quadruped + Or a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mud + He walked with troubled and uncertain gait, + As though his sabots trod upon the dead, + Indifferent and hostile to the world. + + His double followed him: tatters and stick + And back and eye and beard, all were the same; + Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable, + These centenarian twins, these spectres odd, + Trod the same pace toward some end unknown. + To what fell complot was I then exposed! + Humiliated by what evil chance? + For as the minutes one by one went by + Seven times I saw this sinister old man + Repeat his image there before my eyes! + + Let him who smiles at my inquietude, + Who never trembled at a fear like mine, + Know that in their decrepitude's despite + These seven old hideous monsters had the mien + Of beings immortal. + Then, I thought, must I, + Undying, contemplate the awful eighth; + Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double; + Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself + And his own son! In terror then I turned + My back upon the infernal band, and fled + To my own place, and closed my door; distraught + And like a drunkard who sees all things twice, + With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick, + Wounded by mystery and absurdity! + + In vain my reason tried to cross the bar, + The whirling storm but drove her back again; + And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck, + Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea. + + + + + THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN. + + + Deep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns, + Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns, + I watch, obedient to my fatal mood, + For the decrepit, strange and charming beings, + The dislocated monsters that of old + Were lovely women--Laïs or Eponine! + Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be, + Let us still love them, for they still have souls. + They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags, + Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind, + They tremble when an omnibus rolls by, + And at their sides, a relic of the past, + A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs. + They trot about, most like to marionettes; + They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast; + Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bell + Where hangs and swings a demon without pity. + Though they be broken they have piercing eyes, + That shine like pools where water sleeps at night; + The astonished and divine eyes of a child + Who laughs at all that glitters in the world. + + Have you not seen that most old women's shrouds + Are little like the shroud of a dead child? + Wise Death, in token of his happy whim, + Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet. + And when I see a phantom, frail and wan, + Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris, + It ever seems as though the delicate thing + Trod with soft steps towards a cradle new. + And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form, + How many times must workmen change the shape + Of boxes where at length such limbs are laid? + These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears; + Crucibles where the cooling metal pales-- + Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to him + Whose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster. + + + II. + + The love-sick vestal of the old "Frasciti"; + Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose name + Only the prompter knows and he is dead; + Bygone celebrities that in bygone days + The Tivoli o'ershadowed in their bloom; + All charm me; yet among these beings frail + Three, turning pain to honey-sweetness, said + To the Devotion that had lent them wings: + "Lift me, O powerful Hippogriffe, to the skies"-- + One by her country to despair was driven; + One by her husband overwhelmed with grief; + One wounded by her child, Madonna-like; + Each could have made a river with her tears. + + + III. + + Oft have I followed one of these old women, + One among others, when the falling sun + Reddened the heavens with a crimson wound-- + Pensive, apart, she rested on a bench + To hear the brazen music of the band, + Played by the soldiers in the public park + To pour some courage into citizens' hearts, + On golden eves when all the world revives. + Proud and erect she drank the music in, + The lively and the warlike call to arms; + Her eyes blinked like an ancient eagle's eyes; + Her forehead seemed to await the laurel crown! + + + IV. + + Thus you do wander, uncomplaining Stoics, + Through all the chaos of the living town: + Mothers with bleeding hearts, saints, courtesans, + Whose names of yore were on the lips of all; + Who were all glory and all grace, and now + None know you; and the brutish drunkard stops, + Insulting you with his derisive love; + And cowardly urchins call behind your back. + Ashamed of living, withered shadows all, + With fear-bowed backs you creep beside the walls, + And none salute you, destined to loneliness! + Refuse of Time ripe for Eternity! + But I, who watch you tenderly afar, + With unquiet eyes on your uncertain steps, + As though I were your father, I--O wonder!-- + Unknown to you taste secret, hidden joy. + I see your maiden passions bud and bloom, + Sombre or luminous, and your lost days + Unroll before me while my heart enjoys + All your old vices, and my soul expands + To all the virtues that have once been yours. + Ruined! and my sisters! O congenerate hearts, + Octogenarian Eves o'er whom is stretched + God's awful claw, where will you be to-morrow? + + + + + A MADRIGAL OF SORROW. + + + What do I care though you be wise? + Be sad, be beautiful; your tears + But add one more charm to your eyes, + As streams to valleys where they rise; + And fairer every flower appears + + After the storm. I love you most + When joy has fled your brow downcast; + When your heart is in horror lost, + And o'er your present like a ghost + Floats the dark shadow of the past. + + I love you when the teardrop flows, + Hotter than blood, from your large eye; + When I would hush you to repose + Your heavy pain breaks forth and grows + Into a loud and tortured cry. + + And then, voluptuousness divine! + Delicious ritual and profound! + I drink in every sob like wine, + And dream that in your deep heart shine + The pearls wherein your eyes were drowned. + + I know your heart, which overflows + With outworn loves long cast aside, + Still like a furnace flames and glows, + And you within your breast enclose + A damnèd soul's unbending pride; + + But till your dreams without release + Reflect the leaping flames of hell; + Till in a nightmare without cease + You dream of poison to bring peace, + And love cold steel and powder well; + + And tremble at each opened door, + And feel for every man distrust, + And shudder at the striking hour-- + Till then you have not felt the power + Of Irresistible Disgust. + + My queen, my slave, whose love is fear, + When you awaken shuddering, + Until that awful hour be here, + You cannot say at midnight drear: + "I am your equal, O my King!" + + + + + THE IDEAL. + + + Not all the beauties in old prints vignetted, + The worthless products of an outworn age, + With slippered feet and fingers castanetted, + The thirst of hearts like this heart can assuage. + + To Gavarni, the poet of chloroses, + I leave his troupes of beauties sick and wan; + I cannot find among these pale, pale roses, + The red ideal mine eyes would gaze upon. + + Lady Macbeth, the lovely star of crime, + The Greek poet's dream born in a northern clime-- + Ah, she could quench my dark heart's deep desiring; + + Or Michelangelo's dark daughter Night, + In a strange posture dreamily admiring + Her beauty fashioned for a giant's delight! + + + + + MIST AND RAIN. + + + Autumns and winters, springs of mire and rain, + Seasons of sleep, I sing your praises loud, + For thus I love to wrap my heart and brain + In some dim tomb beneath a vapoury shroud + + In the wide plain where revels the cold wind, + Through long nights when the weathercock whirls round, + More free than in warm summer day my mind + Lifts wide her raven pinions from the ground. + + Unto a heart filled with funereal things + That since old days hoar frosts have gathered on, + Naught is more sweet, O pallid, queenly springs, + + Than the long pageant of your shadows wan, + Unless it be on moonless eves to weep + On some chance bed and rock our griefs to sleep. + + + + + SUNSET. + + + Fair is the sun when first he flames above, + Flinging his joy down in a happy beam; + And happy he who can salute with love + The sunset far more glorious than a dream. + + Flower, stream, and furrow!--I have seen them all + In the sun's eye swoon like one trembling heart-- + Though it be late let us with speed depart + To catch at least one last ray ere it fall! + + But I pursue the fading god in vain, + For conquering Night makes firm her dark domain, + Mist and gloom fall, and terrors glide between, + + And graveyard odours in the shadow swim, + And my faint footsteps on the marsh's rim, + Bruise the cold snail and crawling toad unseen. + + + + + THE CORPSE. + + + Remember, my Beloved, what thing we met + By the roadside on that sweet summer day; + There on a grassy couch with pebbles set, + A loathsome body lay. + + The wanton limbs stiff-stretched into the air, + Steaming with exhalations vile and dank, + In ruthless cynic fashion had laid bare + The swollen side and flank. + + On this decay the sun shone hot from heaven + As though with chemic heat to broil and burn, + And unto Nature all that she had given + A hundredfold return. + + The sky smiled down upon the horror there + As on a flower that opens to the day; + So awful an infection smote the air, + Almost you swooned away. + + The swarming flies hummed on the putrid side, + Whence poured the maggots in a darkling stream, + That ran along these tatters of life's pride + With a liquescent gleam. + + And like a wave the maggots rose and fell, + The murmuring flies swirled round in busy strife: + It seemed as though a vague breath came to swell + And multiply with life + + The hideous corpse. From all this living world + A music as of wind and water ran, + Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirled + By the swift winnower's fan. + + And then the vague forms like a dream died out, + Or like some distant scene that slowly falls + Upon the artist's canvas, that with doubt + He only half recalls. + + A homeless dog behind the boulders lay + And watched us both with angry eyes forlorn, + Waiting a chance to come and take away + The morsel she had torn. + + And you, even you, will be like this drear thing, + A vile infection man may not endure; + Star that I yearn to! Sun that lights my spring! + O passionate and pure! + + Yes, such will you be, Queen of every grace! + When the last sacramental words are said; + And beneath grass and flowers that lovely face + Moulders among the dead. + + Then, O Beloved, whisper to the worm + That crawls up to devour you with a kiss, + That I still guard in memory the dear form + Of love that comes to this! + + + + + AN ALLEGORY. + + + Here is a woman, richly clad and fair, + Who in her wine dips her long, heavy hair; + Love's claws, and that sharp poison which is sin, + Are dulled against the granite of her skin. + Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon, + For their sharp scythe-like talons every one + Pass by her in their all-destructive play; + Leaving her beauty till a later day. + Goddess she walks; sultana in her leisure; + She has Mohammed's faith that heaven is pleasure, + And bids all men forget the world's alarms + Upon her breast, between her open arms. + She knows, and she believes, this sterile maid, + Without whom the world's onward dream would fade, + That bodily beauty is the supreme gift + Which may from every sin the terror lift. + Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies; + And when black Night shall roll before her eyes, + She will look straight in Death's grim face forlorn, + Without remorse or hate--as one new born. + + + + + THE ACCURSED. + + + Like pensive herds at rest upon the sands, + These to the sea-horizons turn their eyes; + Out of their folded feet and clinging hands + Bitter sharp tremblings and soft languors rise. + + Some tread the thicket by the babbling stream, + Their hearts with untold secrets ill at ease; + Calling the lover of their childhood's dream, + They wound the green bark of the shooting trees. + + Others like sisters wander, grave and slow, + Among the rocks haunted by spectres thin, + Where Antony saw as larvæ surge and flow + The veined bare breasts that tempted him to sin. + + Some, when the resinous torch of burning wood + Flares in lost pagan caverns dark and deep, + Call thee to quench the fever in their blood, + Bacchus, who singest old remorse to sleep! + + Then there are those the scapular bedights, + Whose long white vestments hide the whip's red stain, + Who mix, in sombre woods on lonely nights, + The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain. + + O virgins, demons, monsters, martyrs! ye + Who scorn whatever actual appears; + Saints, satyrs, seekers of Infinity, + So full of cries, so full of bitter tears; + + Te whom my soul has followed into hell, + I love and pity, O sad sisters mine, + Tour thirsts unquenched, your pains no tongue can tell, + And your great hearts, those urns of love divine! + + + + + LA BEATRICE. + + + In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew, + I to the winds my cries of anguish threw; + And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart, + Pricked gently with the poignard o'er my heart. + Then in full noon above my head a cloud + Descended tempest-swollen, and a crowd + Of wild, lascivious spirits huddled there, + The cruel and curious demons of the air, + Who coldly to consider me began; + Then, as a crowd jeers some unhappy man, + Exchanging gestures, winking with their eyes-- + I heard a laughing and a whispering rise: + + "Let us at leisure contemplate this clown, + This shadow of Hamlet aping Hamlet's frown, + With wandering eyes and hair upon the wind. + Is't not a pity that this empty mind, + This tramp, this actor out of work, this droll, + Because he knows how to assume a rôle + Should dream that eagles and insects, streams and woods, + Stand still to hear him chaunt his dolorous moods? + + Even unto us, who made these ancient things, + The fool his public lamentation sings." + + With pride as lofty as the towering cloud, + I would have stilled these clamouring demons loud, + And turned in scorn my sovereign head away + Had I not seen--O sight to dim the day!-- + There in the middle of the troupe obscene + The proud and peerless beauty of my Queen! + She laughed with them at all my dark distress, + And gave to each in turn a vile caress. + + + + + THE SOUL OF WINE. + + + One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine: + "Man, unto thee, dear disinherited, + I sing a song of love and light divine-- + Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red. + + "I know thou labourest on the hill of fire, + In sweat and pain beneath a flaming sun, + To give the life and soul my vines desire, + And I am grateful for thy labours done. + + "For I find joys unnumbered when I lave + The throat of man by travail long outworn, + And his hot bosom is a sweeter grave + Of sounder sleep than my cold caves forlorn. + + "Hearest thou not the echoing Sabbath sound? + The hope that whispers in my trembling breast? + Thy elbows on the table! gaze around; + Glorify me with joy and be at rest. + + "To thy wife's eyes I'll bring their long-lost gleam, + I'll bring back to thy child his strength and light, + To him, life's fragile athlete I will seem + Rare oil that firms his muscles for the fight. + + "I flow in man's heart as ambrosia flows; + The grain the eternal Sower casts in the sod-- + From our first loves the first fair verse arose, + Flower-like aspiring to the heavens and God!" + + + + + THE WINE OF LOVERS. + + + Space rolls to-day her splendour round! + Unbridled, spurless, without bound, + Mount we upon the wings of wine + For skies fantastic and divine! + + Let us, like angels tortured by + Some wild delirious phantasy, + Follow the far-off mirage born + In the blue crystal of the morn. + + And gently balanced on the wing + Of the wild whirlwind we will ride, + Rejoicing with the joyous thing. + + My sister, floating side by side, + Fly we unceasing whither gleams + The distant heaven of my dreams. + + + + + THE DEATH OF LOVERS. + + + There shall be couches whence faint odours rise, + Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound; + Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies + The death-bed of our love shall breathe around. + + And guarding their last embers till the end, + Our hearts shall be the torches of the shrine, + And their two leaping flames shall fade and blend + In the twin mirrors of your soul and mine. + + And through the eve of rose and mystic blue + A beam of love shall pass from me to you, + Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell; + + And later still an angel, flinging wide + The gates, shall bring to life with joyful spell + The tarnished mirrors and the flames that died. + + + + + THE DEATH OF THE POOR. + + + Death is consoler and Death brings to life; + The end of all, the solitary hope; + We, drunk with Death's elixir, face the strife, + Take heart, and mount till eve the weary slope. + + Across the storm, the hoar-frost, and the snow, + Death on our dark horizon pulses clear; + Death is the famous hostel we all know, + Where we may rest and sleep and have good cheer. + + Death is an angel whose magnetic palms + Bring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calms + To smooth the beds of naked men and poor. + + Death is the mystic granary of God; + The poor man's purse; his fatherland of yore; + The Gate that opens into heavens un trod! + + + + + THE BENEDICTION. + + + When by the high decree of powers supreme, + The Poet came into this world outworn, + She who had borne him, in a ghastly dream, + Clenched blasphemous hands at God, and cried in scorn: + + "O rather had I borne a writhing knot + Of unclean vipers, than my breast should nurse + This vile derision, of my joy begot + To be my expiation and my curse! + + "Since of all women thou hast made of me + Unto my husband a disgust and shame; + Since I may not cast this monstrosity, + Like an old love-epistle, to the flame; + + "I will pour out thine overwhelming hate + On this the accursed weapon of thy spite; + This stunted tree I will so desecrate + That not one tainted bud shall see the light!" + + So foaming with the foam of hate and shame, + Blind unto God's design inexorable, + With her own hands she fed the purging flame + To crimes maternal consecrate in hell. + + Meanwhile beneath an Angel's care unseen + The child disowned grows drunken with the sun; + His food and drink, though they be poor and mean, + With streams of nectar and ambrosia run. + + Speaking to clouds and playing with the wind, + With joy he sings the sad Way of the Rood; + His shadowing pilgrim spirit weeps behind + To see him gay as birds are in the wood. + + Those he would love looked sideways and with fear, + Or, taking courage from his aspect mild, + Sought who should first bring to his eye the tear, + And spent their anger on the dreaming child. + + With all the bread and wine the Poet must eat + They mingled earth and ash and excrement, + All things he touched were spurned beneath their feet; + They mourned if they must tread the road he went. + + His wife ran crying in the public square: + "Since he has found me worthy to adore, + Shall I not be as antique idols were, + With gold and with bright colours painted o'er? + + "I will be drunk with nard and frankincense. + With myrrh, and knees bowed down, and flesh and wine. + Can I not, smiling, in his love-sick sense, + Usurp the homage due to beings divine? + + "I will lay on him my fierce, fragile hand + When I am weary of the impious play; + For well these harpy talons understand + To furrow to his heart their crimson way. + + "I'll tear the red thing beating from his breast, + To cast it with disdain upon the ground, + Like a young bird torn trembling from the nest-- + His heart shall go to gorge my favourite hound." + + To the far heaven, where gleams a splendid throne, + The Poet uplifts his arms in calm delight, + And the vast beams from his pure spirit flown, + Wrap all the furious peoples from his sight: + + "Thou, O my God, be blest who givest pain, + The balm divine for each imperfect heart, + The strong pure essence cleansing every stain + Of sin that keeps us from thy joys apart. + + "Among the numbers of thy legions blest, + I know a place awaits the poet there; + Him thou hast bid attend the eternal feast + That Thrones and Virtues and Dominions share. + + "I know the one thing noble is a grief + Withstanding earth's and hell's destructive tooth, + And I, through all my dolorous life and brief, + To gain the mystic crown, must cry the truth. + + "The jewels lost in Palmyra of old, + Metals unknown, pearls of the outer sea, + Are far too dim to set within the gold + Of the bright crown that Time prepares for me. + + "For it is wrought of pure unmingled light, + Dipped in the white flame whence all flame is born-- + The flame that makes all eyes, though diamond-bright, + Seem obscure mirrors, darkened and forlorn." + + + + + GYPSIES TRAVELLING. + + + The tribe prophetic with the eyes of fire + Went forth last night; their little ones at rest + Each on his mother's back, with his desire + Set on the ready treasure of her breast. + + Laden with shining arms the men-folk tread + By the long wagons where their goods lie hidden; + They watch the heaven with eyes grown wearied + Of hopeless dreams that come to them unbidden. + + The grasshopper, from out his sandy screen, + Watching them pass redoubles his shrill song; + Dian, who loves them, makes the grass more green, + + And makes the rock run water for this throng + Of ever-wandering ones whose calm eyes see + Familiar realms of darkness yet to be. + + + + + FRANCISCÆ MEÆ LAUDES. + + + Novis te cantabo chordis, + O novelletum quod ludia + In solitudine cordis. + + Esto sertis implicata, + O foemina delicata + Per quam solvuntur peccata + + Sicut beneficum Lethe, + Hauriam oscula de te, + Quæ imbuta es magnete. + + Quum vitiorum tempestas + Turbabat omnes semitas, + Apparuisti, Deitas, + + Velut stella salutaris + In naufragiis amaris.... + Suspendam cor tuis aris! + + Piscina plena virtutis, + Fons æternæ juventutis, + Labris vocem redde mutis! + + Quod erat spurcum, cremasti; + Quod rudius, exæquasti; + Quod debile, confirmasti! + + In fame mea taberna, + In nocte mea lucerna, + Recte me semper guberna. + + Adde nunc vires viribus, + Dulce balneum suavibus, + Unguentatum odoribus! + + Meos circa I umbos mica, + O castitatis lorica, + Aqua tincta seraphica; + + Patera gemmis corusca, + Panis salsus, mollis esca, + Divinum vinum, Francisca! + + + + + ROBED IN A SILKEN ROBE. + + + Robed in a silken robe that shines and shakes, + She seems to dance whene'er she treads the sod, + Like the long serpent that a fakir makes + Dance to the waving cadence of a rod. + + As the sad sand upon the desert's verge, + Insensible to mortal grief and strife; + As the long weeds that float among the surge, + She folds indifference round her budding life. + + Her eyes are carved of minerals pure and cold, + And in her strange symbolic nature where + An angel mingles with the sphinx of old, + + Where all is gold and steel and light and air, + For ever, like a vain star, unafraid + Shines the cold hauteur of the sterile maid. + + + + + A LANDSCAPE. + + + I would, when I compose my solemn verse, + Sleep near the heaven as do astrologers, + Near the high bells, and with a dreaming mind + Hear their calm hymns blown to me on the wind. + + Out of my tower, with chin upon my hands, + I'll watch the singing, babbling human bands; + And see clock-towers like spars against the sky, + And heavens that bring thoughts of eternity; + + And softly, through the mist, will watch the birth + Of stars in heaven and lamplight on the earth; + The threads of smoke that rise above the town; + The moon that pours her pale enchantment down. + + Seasons will pass till Autumn fades the rose; + And when comes Winter with his weary snows, + I'll shut the doors and window-casements tight, + And build my faery palace in the night. + + Then I will dream of blue horizons deep; + Of gardens where the marble fountains weep; + Of kisses, and of ever-singing birds-- + A sinless Idyll built of innocent words. + + And Trouble, knocking at my window-pane + And at my closet door, shall knock in vain; + I will not heed him with his stealthy tread, + Nor from my reverie uplift my head; + + For I will plunge deep in the pleasure still + Of summoning the spring-time with my will, + Drawing the sun out of my heart, and there + With burning thoughts making a summer air. + + + + + THE VOYAGE. + + + The world is equal to the child's desire + Who plays with pictures by his nursery fire-- + How vast the world by lamplight seems! How small + When memory's eyes look back, remembering all!-- + + One morning we set forth with thoughts aflame, + Or heart o'erladen with desire or shame; + And cradle, to the song of surge and breeze, + Our own infinity on the finite seas. + + Some flee the memory of their childhood's home; + And others flee their fatherland; and some, + Star-gazers drowned within a woman's eyes, + Flee from the tyrant Circe's witcheries; + + And, lest they still be changed to beasts, take flight + For the embrasured heavens, and space, and light, + Till one by one the stains her kisses made + In biting cold and burning sunlight fade. + + But the true voyagers are they who part + From all they love because a wandering heart + Drives them to fly the Fate they cannot fly; + Whose call is ever "On!"--they know not why. + + Their thoughts are like the clouds that veil a star; + They dream of change as warriors dream of war; + And strange wild wishes never twice the same: + Desires no mortal man can give a name. + + + II. + + We are like whirling tops and rolling balls-- + For even when the sleepy night-time falls, + Old Curiosity still thrusts us on, + Like the cruel Angel who goads forth the sun. + + The end of fate fades ever through the air, + And, being nowhere, may be anywhere + Where a man runs, hope waking in his breast, + For ever like a madman, seeking rest. + + Our souls are wandering ships outwearied; + And one upon the bridge asks: "What's ahead?" + The topman's voice with an exultant sound + Cries: "Love and Glory!"--then we run aground. + + Each isle the pilot signals when 'tis late, + Is El Dorado, promised us by fate-- + Imagination, spite of her belief, + Finds, in the light of dawn, a barren reef. + + Oh the poor seeker after lands that flee! + Shall we not bind and cast into the sea + This drunken sailor whose ecstatic mood + Makes bitterer still the water's weary flood? + + Such is an old tramp wandering in the mire, + Dreaming the paradise of his own desire, + Discovering cities of enchanted sleep + Where'er the light shines on a rubbish heap. + + + III. + + Strange voyagers, what tales of noble deeds + Deep in your dim sea-weary eyes one reads! + Open the casket where your memories are, + And show each jewel, fashioned from a star; + + For I would travel without sail or wind, + And so, to lift the sorrow from my mind, + Let your long memories of sea-days far fled + Pass o'er my spirit like a sail outspread. + + What have you seen? + + + IV. + + "We have seen waves and stars, + And lost sea-beaches, and known many wars, + And notwithstanding war and hope and fear, + We were as weary there as we are here. + + "The lights that on the violet sea poured down, + The suns that set behind some far-off town, + Lit in our hearts the unquiet wish to fly + Deep in the glimmering distance of the sky; + + "The loveliest countries that rich cities bless, + Never contained the strange wild loveliness + By fate and chance shaped from the floating cloud-- + And we were always sorrowful and proud! + + "Desire from joy gains strength in weightier measure. + Desire, old tree who draw'st thy sap from pleasure, + Though thy bark thickens as the years pass by, + Thine arduous branches rise towards the sky; + + "And wilt thou still grow taller, tree more fair + Than the tall cypress? + + --Thus have we, with care, + Gathered some flowers to please your eager mood, + Brothers who dream that distant things are good! + + "We have seen many a jewel-glimmering throne; + And bowed to Idols when wild horns were blown + In palaces whose faery pomp and gleam + To your rich men would be a ruinous dream; + + "And robes that were a madness to the eyes; + Women whose teeth and nails were stained with dyes; + Wise jugglers round whose neck the serpent winds--" + + + V. + + And then, and then what more? + + + VI. + + "O childish minds! + + "Forget not that which we found everywhere, + From top to bottom of the fatal stair, + Above, beneath, around us and within, + The weary pageant of immortal sin. + + "We have seen woman, stupid slave and proud, + Before her own frail, foolish beauty bowed; + And man, a greedy, cruel, lascivious fool, + Slave of the slave, a ripple in a pool; + + "The martyrs groan, the headsman's merry mood; + And banquets seasoned and perfumed with blood; + Poison, that gives the tyrant's power the slip; + And nations amorous of the brutal whip; + + "Many religions not unlike our own, + All in full flight for heaven's resplendent throne; + And Sanctity, seeking delight in pain, + Like a sick man of his own sickness vain; + + "And mad mortality, drunk with its own power, + As foolish now as in a bygone hour, + Shouting, in presence of the tortured Christ: + 'I curse thee, mine own Image sacrificed.' + + "And silly monks in love with Lunacy, + Fleeing the troops herded by destiny, + Who seek for peace in opiate slumber furled-- + Such is the pageant of the rolling world!" + + + VII. + + O bitter knowledge that the wanderers gain! + The world says our own age is little and vain; + For ever, yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, + 'Tis horror's oasis in the sands of sorrow. + + Must we depart? If you can rest, remain; + Part, if you must. Some fly, some cower in vain, + Hoping that Time, the grim and eager foe, + Will pass them by; and some run to and fro + + Like the Apostles or the Wandering Jew; + Go where they will, the Slayer goes there too! + And there are some, and these are of the wise, + Who die as soon as birth has lit their eyes. + + But when at length the Slayer treads us low, + We will have hope and cry, "'Tis time to go!" + As when of old we parted for Cathay + With wind-blown hair and eyes upon the bay. + + We will embark upon the Shadowy Sea, + Like youthful wanderers for the first time free-- + Hear you the lovely and funereal voice + That sings: _O come all ye whose wandering joys_ + _Are set upon the scented Lotus flower_, + _For here we sell the fruit's miraculous boon_; + _Come ye and drink the sweet and sleepy power_ + _Of the enchanted, endless afternoon_. + + + VIII. + + O Death, old Captain, it is time, put forth! + We have grown weary of the gloomy north; + Though sea and sky are black as ink, lift sail! + Our hearts are full of light and will not fail. + + O pour thy sleepy poison in the cup! + The fire within the heart so burns us up + That we would wander Hell and Heaven through, + Deep in the Unknown seeking something _new_! + + * * * * * + + + + +LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE + + + + +THE STRANGER. + + +Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, +your sister, or your brother? + +"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother." + +Your friends, then? + +"You use a word that until now has had no meaning for me." + +Your country? + +"I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated." + +Then Beauty? + +"Her I would love willingly, goddess and immortal." + +Gold? + +"I hate it as you hate your God." + +What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love? + +"I love the clouds--the clouds that pass--yonder--the marvellous +clouds." + + + + +EVERY MAN HIS CHIMÆRA. + + +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. + +Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimæra as heavy as a sack of +flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier. + +But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and +oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with +her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head +reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by +which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy. + +I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied +that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they +went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to +walk. + +Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the +ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had +said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary +faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the +heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as +the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned +to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere +of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the +curiosity of the human eye. + +During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this +mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor +was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing +Chimæras. + + + + +VENUS AND THE FOOL. + + +How admirable the day! The vast park swoons beneath the burning eye of +the sun, as youth beneath the lordship of love. + +There is no rumour of the universal ecstasy of all things. The waters +themselves are as though drifting into sleep. Very different from the +festivals of humanity, here is a silent revel. + +It seems as though an ever-waning light makes all objects glimmer more +and more, as though the excited flowers burn with a desire to rival the +blue of the sky by the vividness of their colours; as though the heat, +making perfumes visible, drives them in vapour towards their star. + +Yet, in the midst of this universal joy, I have perceived one afflicted +thing. + +At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those motley fools, those +willing clowns whose business it is to bring laughter upon kings when +weariness or remorse possesses them, lies wrapped in his gaudy and +ridiculous garments, coined with his cap and bells, huddled against the +pedestal, and raises towards the goddess his eyes filled with tears. + +And his eyes say: "I am the last and most alone of all mortals, inferior +to the meanest of animals in that I am denied either love or friendship. +Yet I am made, even I, for the understanding and enjoyment of immortal +Beauty. O Goddess, have pity upon my sadness and my frenzy." + +The implacable Venus gazed into I know not what distances with her +marble eyes. + + + + +INTOXICATION. + + +One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. +If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your +shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. +But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But +be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green +grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should +waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, +of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that +flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that +speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and +timepiece will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be +the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without +cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will." + + + + +THE GIFTS OF THE MOON. + + +The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in +your cradle, and said to herself: "I am well pleased with this child." + +And she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the +window-pane without noise. She bent over you with the supple tenderness +of a mother and laid her colours upon your face. Therefrom your eyes +have remained green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. From +contemplation of your visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she +so tenderly wounded you upon the breast that you have ever kept a +certain readiness to tears. + +In the amplitude of her joy, the Moon filled all your chamber as with a +phosphorescent air, a luminous poison; and all this living radiance +thought and said: "You shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. +You shall love all that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, +and night; the vast green sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; +the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous +flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves +swooning upon the piano and lament with the sweet, hoarse voices of +women. + +"And you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. You +shall be the Queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also I have +wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green +ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where +they are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem +to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the +will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images of their own folly." + +And that is why I am couched at your feet, O spoiled child, beloved and +accursed, seeking in all your being the reflection of that august +divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all +_lunatics_. + + + + +THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE. + + +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 patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate +vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy. + +A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and +honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is +opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the +unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where +even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all +things, my beloved, are like you. + +Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold +miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguish of curiosity? +It is a land which resembles you, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil +and honest, where phantasy has built and decorated an occidental China, +where life is sweet to breathe, and happiness married to silence. It is +there that one would live; there that one would die. + +Yes, it is there that one must go to breathe, to dream, and to lengthen +one's hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written the +"Invitation to the Waltz"; where is he who will write the "Invitation to +the Voyage," that one may offer it to his beloved, to the sister of his +election? + +Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live,--yonder, +where slower hours contain more thoughts, where the clocks strike the +hours of happiness with a more profound and significant solemnity. + +Upon the shining panels, or upon skins gilded with a sombre opulence, +beatified paintings have a discreet life, as calm and profound as the +souls of the artists who created them. + +The setting suns that colour the rooms and salons with so rich a light, +shine through veils of rich tapestry, or through high leaden-worked +windows of many compartments. The furniture is massive, curious, and +bizarre, armed with locks and secrets, like profound and refined souls. +The mirrors, the metals, the ail ver work and the china, play a mute and +mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from the corners, +from the chinks in the drawers, from the folds of drapery, a singular +perfume escapes, a Sumatran _revenez-y_, which is like the soul of the +apartment. + +A true country of Cockaigne, I have said; where all is rich, correct and +shining, like a beautiful conscience, or a splendid set of silver, or a +medley of jewels. The treasures of the world flow there, as in the house +of a laborious man who has well merited the entire world. A singular +land, as superior to others as Art is superior to Nature; where Nature +is made over again by dream; where she is corrected, embellished, +refashioned. + +Let them seek and seek again, let them extend the limits of their +happiness for ever, these alchemists who work with flowers! Let them +offer a prize of sixty or a hundred thousand florins to whosoever can +solve their ambitious problems! As for me, I have found my _black tulip_ +and my _blue dahlia_! + +Incomparable flower, tulip found at last, symboli-cal dahlia, it is +there, is it not, in this so calm and dreamy land that you live and +blossom? Will you not there be framed in your proper analogy, and will +you not be mirrored, to speak like the mystics, in your own +_correspondence_? + +Dreams!--always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul, +the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him +his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from +birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with +positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in +and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that +resembles you? + +These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous +flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The +enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with +the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon +your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity, +reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your +lovely soul;--and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the +products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they +are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from +Infinity. + + + + +WHAT IS TRUTH? + + +I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the +ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of +glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality. + +But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died +soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon +a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I +myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as +uncorruptible as the coffers of India. + +And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I +became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the +dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and +hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true +Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly +and blindness you shall love me as I truly am." + +But I, furious, replied: "No!" The better to emphasise my refusal I +struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to +the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught +perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal. + + + + +ALREADY! + + +A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from +the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred +times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of +twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the +firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And +each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the +approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they +said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by +a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an +unmoving table?" + +There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their +sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the +image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass +with as much enthusiasm as the beasts. + +At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent +and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed +therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of +growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and +fruits. + +Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were +forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted +out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke. + +I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest from whom one has torn +his divinity, I could not, without heartbreaking bitterness, leave this +so monstrously seductive ocean, this sea so infinitely various in its +terrifying simplicity, which seemed to contain in itself and represent +by its joys, and attractions, and angers, and smiles, the moods and +agonies and ecstasies of all souls that have lived, that live, and that +shall yet live. + +In saying good-bye to this incomparable beauty I felt as though I had +been smitten to death; and that is why when each of my companions said: +"At last!" I could only cry "_Already!_" + +Here meanwhile was the land, the land with its noises, its passions, its +commodities, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of +promises, that sent to us a mysterious perfume of rose and musk, and +from whence the music of life flowed in an amorous murmuring. + + + + +THE DOUBLE CHAMBER. + + +A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly _spiritual_, where the +stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue. + +There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and +desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue +and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the +furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed +with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals. + +The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the +skies, the dropping suns. + +There are no artistic abominations upon the walls. Compared with the +pure dream, with an impression unanalysed, definite art, positive art, +is a blasphemy. Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious +obscurity of music. + +An infinitesimal odour of the most exquisite choice, mingled with a +floating humidity, swims in this atmosphere where the drowsing spirit is +lulled by the sensations one feels in a hothouse. + +The abundant muslin flows before the windows and the couch, and spreads +out in snowy cascades. Upon the couch lies the Idol, ruler of my dreams. +But why is she here?--who has brought her?--what magical power has +installed her upon this throne of delight and reverie? What matter--she +is there; and I recognise her. + +These indeed are the eyes whose flame pierces the twilight; the subtle +and terrible mirrors that I recognise by their horrifying malice. They +attract, they dominate, they devour the sight of whomsoever is imprudent +enough to look at them. I have often studied them; these Black Stars +that compel curiosity and admiration. + +To what benevolent demon, then, do I owe being thus surrounded with +mystery, with silence, with peace, and sweet odours? O beatitude! the +thing we name life, even in its most fortunate amplitude, has nothing in +common with this supreme life with which I am now acquainted, which I +taste minute by minute, second by second. + +Not so! Minutes are no more; seconds are no more. Time has vanished, and +Eternity reigns--an Eternity of delight. + +A heavy and terrible knocking reverberates upon the door, and, as in a +hellish dream, it seems to me as though I had received a blow from a +mattock. + +Then a Spectre enters: it is an usher who comes to torture me in the +name of the Law; an infamous concubine who comes to cry misery and to +add the trivialities of her life to the sorrow of mine; or it may be the +errand-boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder of a +manuscript. + +The chamber of paradise, the Idol, the ruler of dreams, the Sylphide, as +the great René said; all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking +of the Spectre. + +Horror; I remember, I remember! Yes, this kennel, this habitation of +eternal weariness, is indeed my own. Here is my senseless furniture, +dusty and tattered; the dirty fireplace without a flame or an ember; the +sad windows where the raindrops have traced runnels in the dust; the +manuscripts, erased or unfinished; the almanac with the sinister days +marked off with a pencil! + +And this perfume of another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a +so perfected sensitiveness; alas, its place is taken by an odour of +stale tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness. +Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation. + +In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar +object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like +all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries. + +Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the +hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories, +Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves. + +I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now; +and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable, +implacable Life!" + +There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good +news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye. + +Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me, +as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Woa, thou fool! Sweat, +then, thou slave! Live on, thou damnèd!" + + + + +AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. + + +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. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared--I +shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh +myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the +lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude +and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world. + +A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the +day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he +could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was +an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a +review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable +people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a +knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me; +and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the +precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time, +during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a +costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said: +"You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest, +foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you +will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have +boasted (why?) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and +indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy, +certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused +an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a +perfect fool. Heavens! it's well ended. + +Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I +should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the +silence and solitude. + +Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain +me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and +Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some +beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I +am not inferior to those I despise. + + + + +THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST. + + +How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough +to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose +vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen +than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns +his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the +incomparable chastity of the azure--a little sail trembling upon the +horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable +existence--the melodious monotone of the surge--all these things +thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the +reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and +picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions. + +These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external +objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within +pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too +tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations. + +And now the profundity of the sky dismays me! its limpidity exasperates +me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, +revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from +Beauty? + +Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my +desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel +where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished. + + + + +THE THYRSUS. + +TO FRANZ LISZT. + + +What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a +sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating +the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But +physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a +vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious +meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and +fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing +complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant +lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the +spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a +mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollæ, all +these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical +dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to +decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the +baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty +of the vine branches and the flowers? + +The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and +venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty. +Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over +the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles +in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm, +unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the +feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance. +Straight line and arabesque--intention and expression--the rigidity of +the will and the suppleness of the word--a variety of means united for a +single purpose--the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is +genius--what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to +separate you? + +Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the +pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your +wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City +or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles; +improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper +your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain, +philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of +immortality! + + + + +THE MARKSMAN. + + +As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the +neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a +few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most +ordinary and legitimate occupation of man?--So he gallantly offered his +hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to +whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great +part of his genius. + +Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far +into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously, +mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and +said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air, +and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, _I will +imagine to myself that it is you!_" + +He closed both eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly +decapitated. + +Then, bending towards his dear, adorable, and execrable wife, his +inevitable and pitiless muse, he kissed her respectfully upon the hand, +and added, "Ah, dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!" + + + + +THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY. + + +"Cemetery View Inn"--"A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but +it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper of this inn appreciates Horace +and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound +philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, +or some emblem of life's brevity." + +He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly +smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the +cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the +sunshine. + +The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said +the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon +the corruption beneath. + +The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life--the life of things +infinitely small--and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from +a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of +champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony. + +And then, beneath a sun which scorched the brain, and in that atmosphere +charged with the ardent perfume of death, he heard a voice whispering +out of the tomb where he sat. And this voice said: "Accursed be your +rifles and targets, you turbulent living ones, who care so little for +the dead in their divine repose! Accursed be your ambitions and +calculations, importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter near +the sanctuary of Death himself! Did you but know how easy the prize to +win, how facile the end to reach, and how all save Death is naught, not +so greatly would you fatigue yourselves, O ye laborious alive; nor would +you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago reached the End--the +only true end of life detestable!" + + + + +THE DESIRE TO PAINT. + + +Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this +desire. + +I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so +swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller +must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her. + +She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The +colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal +and profound. Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and +gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion +in the darkness. + +I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star +overthrowing light and happiness. But it is the moon that she makes one +dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with +her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a +cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the +depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet +peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from +the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly +constrain to dance upon the terrified grass. + +Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of +prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the +unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, the +smile of a large mouth; white, red, and delicious; a mouth that makes +one dream of the miracle of some superb flower unclosing in a volcanic +land. + +There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo them and win +them; but she makes one wish to die slowly beneath her steady gaze. + + + + +THE GLASS-VENDOR. + + +These 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 one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation +awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before +the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter +fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of +six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year +past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards +action, like an arrow from a bow. + +The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet +cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent +and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest +and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time +possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the +most absurd and even the most dangerous acts. + +One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one +time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether +the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His +experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only +too well. + +Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, _in order to see, to +know, to tempt Destiny_, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, +for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of +energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it +manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most +indolent and dreamy beings. + +Another so timid that he must cast down his eyes before the gaze of any +man, and summon all his poor will before he dare enter a café or pass +the pay-box of a theatre, where the ticket-seller seems, in his eyes, +invested with all the majesty of Minos, Æcus, and Rhadamanthus, will at +times throw himself upon the neck of some old man whom he sees in the +street, and embrace him with enthusiasm in sight of an astonished crowd. +Why? Because--because this countenance is irresistibly attractive to +him? Perhaps; but it is more legitimate to suppose that he himself does +not know why. + +I have been more than once a victim to these crises and outbreaks which +give us cause to believe that evil-meaning demons slip into us, to make +us the ignorant accomplices of their most absurd desires. One morning I +arose in a sullen mood, very sad, and tired of idleness, and thrust as +it seemed to me to the doing of some great thing, some brilliant +act--and then, alas, I opened the window. + +(I beg you to observe that in some people the spirit of mystification is +not the result of labour or combination, but rather of a fortuitous +inspiration which would partake, were it not for the strength of the +feeling, of the mood called hysterical by the physician and satanic by +those who think a little more profoundly than the physician; the mood +which thrusts us unresisting to a multitude of dangerous and +inconvenient acts.) + +The first person I noticed in the street was a glass-vendor whose shrill +and discordant cry mounted up to me through the heavy, dull atmosphere +of Paris. It would have been else impossible to account for the sudden +and despotic hatred of this poor man that came upon me. + +"Hello, there!" I cried, and bade him ascend. Meanwhile I reflected, not +without gaiety, that as my room was on the sixth landing, and the +stairway very narrow, the man would have some difficulty in ascending, +and in many a place would break off the corners of his fragile +merchandise. + +At length he appeared. I examined all his glasses with curiosity, and +then said to him: "What, have you no coloured glasses? Glasses of rose +and crimson and blue, magical glasses, glasses of Paradise? You are +insolent. You dare to walk in mean streets when you have no glasses that +would make one see beauty in life?" And I hurried him briskly to the +staircase, which he staggered down, grumbling. + +I went on to the balcony and caught up a little flower-pot, and when the +man appeared in the door-way beneath I let fall my engine of war +perpendicularly upon the edge of his pack, so that it was upset by the +shock and all his poor walking fortune broken to bits. It made a noise +like a palace of crystal shattered by lightning. Mad with my folly, I +cried furiously after him: "The life beautiful! the life beautiful!" + +Such nervous pleasantries are not without peril; often enough one pays +dearly for them. But what matters an eternity of damnation to him who +has found in one second an eternity of enjoyment? + + + + +THE WIDOWS. + + +Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted +principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted +glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted +souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus +betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the +well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's +cripples. + +To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their +avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there +is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the +place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions +for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn +towards all that is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft. + +An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected +lineaments; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last +fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound +wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience +deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded +effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported. + +Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor +widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. +Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; +a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is +forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who +exhibit a full complement of sorrow. + +Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the +hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I +do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours +an aged and afflicted woman of this kind: rigid and erect, wrapped in a +little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism. + +She was evidently condemned by her absolute loneliness to the habits of +an ancient celibacy; and the masculine characters of her habits added to +their austerity a piquant mysteriousness. In what miserable café she +dines I know not, nor in what manner. I followed her to a reading-room, +and for a long time watched her reading the papers, her active eyes, +that once burned with tears, seeking for news of a powerful and personal +interest. + +At length, in the afternoon, under a charming autumnal sky, one of those +skies that let fall hosts of memories and regrets, she seated herself +remotely in a garden, to listen, far from the crowd, to one of the +regimental bands whose music gratifies the people of Paris. This was +without doubt the small debauch of the innocent old woman (or the +purified old woman), the well-earned consolation for another of the +burdensome days without a friend, without conversation, without joy, +without a confidant, that God had allowed to fall upon her perhaps for +many years past--three hundred and sixty-five times a year! + +Yet one more: + +I can never prevent myself from throwing a glance, if not sympathetic at +least full of curiosity, over the crowd of outcasts who press around the +enclosure of a public concert. From the orchestra, across the night, +float songs of fête, of triumph, or of pleasure. The dresses of the +women sweep and shimmer; glances pass; the well-to-do, tired with doing +nothing, saunter about and make indolent pretence of listening to the +music. Here are only the rich, the happy; here is nothing that does not +inspire or exhale the pleasure of being alive, except the aspect of the +mob that presses against the outer barrier yonder, catching gratis, at +the will of the wind, a tatter of music, and watching the glittering +furnace within. + +There is a reflection of the joy of the rich deep in the eyes of the +poor that is always interesting. But to-day, beyond this people dressed +in blouses and calico, I saw one whose nobility was in striking contrast +with all the surrounding triviality. She was a tall, majestic woman, and +so imperious in all her air that I cannot remember having seen the like +in the collections of the aristocratic beauties of the past. A perfume +of exalted virtue emanated from all her being. Her face, sad and worn, +was in perfect keeping with the deep mourning in which she was dressed. +She also, like the plebeians she mingled with and did not see, looked +upon the luminous world with a profound eye, and listened with a toss of +her head. + +It was a strange vision. "Most certainly," I said to myself, "this +poverty, if poverty it be, ought not to admit of any sordid economy; so +noble a face answers for that. Why then does she remain in surroundings +with which she is so strikingly in contrast?" + +But in curiously passing near her I was able to divine the reason. The +tall widow held by the hand a child dressed like herself in black. +Modest as was the price of entry, this price perhaps sufficed to pay +for some of the needs of the little being, or even more, for a +superfluity, a toy. + +She will return on foot, dreaming and meditating--and alone, always +alone, for the child is turbulent and selfish, without gentleness or +patience, and cannot become, any more than another animal, a dog or a +cat, the confidant of solitary griefs. + + + + +THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY. + + +Last night two superb Satans and a She-devil not less extraordinary +ascended the mysterious stairway by which Hell gains access to the +frailty of sleeping man, and communes with him in secret. These three +postured gloriously before me, as though they had been upon a stage--and +a sulphurous splendour emanated from these beings who so disengaged +themselves from the opaque heart of the night. They bore with them so +proud a presence, and so full of mastery, that at first I took them for +three of the true Gods. + +The first Satan, by his face, was a creature of doubtful sex. The +softness of an ancient Bacchus shone in the lines of his body. His +beautiful langourous eyes, of a tenebrous and indefinite colour, were +like violets still laden with the heavy tears of the storm; his +slightly-parted lips were like heated censers, from whence exhaled the +sweet savour of many perfumes; and each time he breathed, exotic +insects drew, as they fluttered, strength from the ardours of his +breath. + +Twined about his tunic of purple stuff, in the manner of a cincture, was +an iridescent Serpent with lifted head and eyes like embers turned +sleepily towards him. Phials full of sinister fluids, alternating with +shining knives and instruments of surgery, hung from this living girdle. +He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red fluid, and +inscribed with a legend in these singular words: + +"DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE"; + +and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing his +pleasures and pains, and to spread abroad the contagion of his folly +upon the nights of the Sabbath. + +From rings upon his delicate ankles trailed a broken chain of gold, and +when the burden of this caused him to bend his eyes towards the earth, +he would contemplate with vanity the nails of his feet, as brilliant and +polished as well-wrought jewels. + +He looked at me with eyes inconsolably heartbroken and giving forth an +insidious intoxication, and cried in a chanting voice: "If thou wilt, if +thou wilt, I will make thee an overlord of souls; thou shalt be master +of living matter more perfectly than the sculptor is master of his clay; +thou shalt taste the pleasure, reborn without end, of obliterating +thyself in the self of another, and of luring other souls to lose +themselves in thine." + +But I replied to him: "I thank thee. I only gain from this venture, +then, beings of no more worth than my poor self? Though remembrance +brings me shame indeed, I would forget nothing; and even before I +recognised thee, thou ancient monster, thy mysterious cutlery, thy +equivocal phials, and the chain that imprisons thy feet, were symbols +showing clearly enough the inconvenience of thy friendship. Keep thy +gifts." + +The second Satan had neither the air at once tragical and smiling, the +lovely insinuating ways, nor the delicate and scented beauty of the +first. A gigantic man, with a coarse, eyeless face, his heavy paunch +overhung his hips and was gilded and pictured, like a tattooing, with a +crowd of little moving figures which represented the unnumbered forms of +universal misery. There were little sinew-shrunken men who hung +themselves willingly from nails; there were meagre gnomes, deformed and +under-sized, whose beseeching eyes begged an alms even more eloquently +than their trembling hands; there were old mothers who nursed clinging +abortions at their pendent breasts. And many others, even more +surprising. + +This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from whence +came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away in a +sighing made by many human voices. And he smiled unrestrainedly, showing +his broken teeth--the imbecile smile of a man who has dined too freely. +Then the creature said to me: + +"I can give thee that which gets all, which is worth all, which takes +the place of all." And he tapped his monstrous paunch, whence came a +sonorous echo as the commentary to his obscene speech. I turned away +with disgust and replied: "I need no man's misery to bring me happiness; +nor will I have the sad wealth of all the misfortunes pictured upon thy +skin as upon a tapestry." + +As for the She-devil, I should lie if I denied that at first I found in +her a certain strange charm, which to define I can but compare to the +charm of certain beautiful women past their first youth, who yet seem to +age no more, whose beauty keeps something of the penetrating magic of +ruins. She had an air at once imperious and sordid, and her eyes, though +heavy, held a certain power of fascination. I was struck most by her +voice, wherein I found the remembrance of the most delicious contralti, +as well as a little of the hoarseness of a throat continually laved with +brandy. + +"Wouldst thou know my power?" said the charming and paradoxical voice of +the false goddess. "Then listen." And she put to her mouth a gigantic +trumpet, enribboned, like a mirliton, with the titles of all the +newspapers in the world; and through this trumpet she cried my name so +that it rolled through space with the sound of a hundred thousand +thunders, and came re-echoing back to me from the farthest planet. + +"Devil!" cried I, half tempted, "that at least is worth something." But +it vaguely struck me, upon examining the seductive virago more +attentively, that I had seen her clinking glasses with certain drolls of +my acquaintance, and her blare of brass carried to my ears I know not +what memory of a fanfare prostituted. + +So I replied, with all disdain: "Get thee hence! I know better than wed +the light o' love of them that I will not name." + +Truly, I had the right to be proud of a so courageous renunciation. But +unfortunately I awoke, and all my courage left me. "In truth," I said, +"I must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have had such scruples. +Ah, if they would but return while I am awake, I would not be so +delicate." + +So I invoked the three in a loud voice, offering to dishonour myself as +often as necessary to obtain their favours; but I had without doubt too +deeply offended them, for they have never returned. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles +Baudelaire, by Charles Baudelaire + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, PROSE POEMS, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE *** + +***** This file should be named 36287-8.txt or 36287-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/2/8/36287/ + +Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at +http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously made +available by the Internet Archive. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire + with an Introductory Preface by James Huneker + +Author: Charles Baudelaire + +Editor: James Huneker + +Release Date: May 31, 2011 [EBook #36287] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, PROSE POEMS, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE *** + + + + +Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at +http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously made +available by the Internet Archive. + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h1>THE POEMS AND PROSE POEMS</h1> + +<h3>OF</h3> + +<h2>CHARLES BAUDELAIRE</h2> + + +<h4>WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE BY</h4> + +<h3>JAMES HUNEKER</h3> + + + +<h5>NEW YORK</h5> +<h5>BRENTANO'S</h5> +<h5>PUBLISHERS</h5> + +<h5>1919</h5> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p class="margin"> +<span class="caption">CONTENTS</span><br /><br /> +<a href="#CHARLES_BAUDELAIRE"><b>CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by James Huneker</b></a><br /><br /> +<a href="#THE_FLOWERS_OF_EVIL"><b>THE FLOWERS OF EVIL</b></a><br /><br /> +<a href="#THE_DANCE_OF_DEATH"><b>The Dance of Death</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_BEACONS"><b>The Beacons</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SADNESS_OF_THE_MOON"><b>The Sadness of the Moon</b></a><br /> +<a href="#EXOTIC_PERFUME"><b>Exotic Perfume</b></a><br /> +<a href="#BEAUTY"><b>Beauty</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_BALCONY"><b>The Balcony</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SICK_MUSE"><b>The Sick Muse</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_VENAL_MUSE"><b>The Venal Muse</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_EVIL_MONK"><b>The Evil Monk</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_TEMPTATION"><b>The Temptation</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_IRREPARABLE"><b>The Irreparable</b></a><br /> +<a href="#A_FORMER_LIFE"><b>A Former Life</b></a><br /> +<a href="#DON_JUAN_IN_HADES"><b>Don Juan in Hades</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_LIVING_FLAME"><b>The Living Flame</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CORRESPONDENCES"><b>Correspondences</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_FLASK"><b>The Flask</b></a><br /> +<a href="#REVERSIBILITY"><b>Reversibility</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_EYES_OF_BEAUTY"><b>The Eyes of Beauty</b></a><br /> +<a href="#SONNET_OF_AUTUMN"><b>Sonnet of Autumn</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_REMORSE_OF_THE_DEAD"><b>The Remorse of the Dead</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_GHOST"><b>The Ghost</b></a><br /> +<a href="#TO_A_MADONNA"><b>To a Madonna</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SKY"><b>The Sky</b></a><br /> +<a href="#SPLEEN"><b>Spleen</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_OWLS"><b>The Owls</b></a><br /> +<a href="#BIEN_LOIN_DICI"><b>Bien Loin D'Ici</b></a><br /> +<a href="#MUSIC"><b>Music</b></a><br /> +<a href="#CONTEMPLATION"><b>Contemplation</b></a><br /> +<a href="#TO_A_BROWN_BEGGAR-MAID"><b>To a Brown Beggar-maid</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SWAN"><b>The Swan</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SEVEN_OLD_MEN"><b>The Seven Old Men</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_LITTLE_OLD_WOMEN"><b>The Little Old Women</b></a><br /> +<a href="#A_MADRIGAL_OF_SORROW"><b>A Madrigal of Sorrow</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_IDEAL"><b>The Ideal</b></a><br /> +<a href="#MIST_AND_RAIN"><b>Mist and Rain</b></a><br /> +<a href="#SUNSET"><b>Sunset</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_CORPSE"><b>The Corpse</b></a><br /> +<a href="#AN_ALLEGORY"><b>An Allegory</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_ACCURSED"><b>The Accursed</b></a><br /> +<a href="#LA_BEATRICE"><b>La Beatrice</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SOUL_OF_WINE"><b>The Soul of Wine</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_WINE_OF_LOVERS"><b>The Wine of Lovers</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_DEATH_OF_LOVERS"><b>The Death of Lovers</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_DEATH_OF_THE_POOR"><b>The Death of The Poor</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_BENEDICTION"><b>The Benediction</b></a><br /> +<a href="#GYPSIES_TRAVELLING"><b>Gypsies Travelling</b></a><br /> +<a href="#FRANCISCAE_MEAE_LAUDES"><b>Franciscæ Meæ Laudes</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ROBED_IN_A_SILKEN_ROBE"><b>Robed in a Silken Robe</b></a><br /> +<a href="#A_LANDSCAPE"><b>A Landscape</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_VOYAGE"><b>The Voyage</b></a><br /><br /> +<a href="#LITTLE_POEMS_IN_PROSE"><b>LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE</b></a><br /><br /> +<a href="#THE_STRANGER"><b>The Stranger</b></a><br /> +<a href="#EVERY_MAN_HIS_CHIMAERA"><b>Every Man His Chimæra</b></a><br /> +<a href="#VENUS_AND_THE_FOOL"><b>Venus and the Fool</b></a><br /> +<a href="#INTOXICATION"><b>Intoxication</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_GIFTS_OF_THE_MOON"><b>The Gifts of the Moon</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_INVITATION_TO_THE_VOYAGE"><b>The Invitation to the Voyage</b></a><br /> +<a href="#WHAT_IS_TRUTH"><b>What Is Truth?</b></a><br /> +<a href="#ALREADY"><b>Already!</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_DOUBLE_CHAMBER"><b>The Double Chamber</b></a><br /> +<a href="#AT_ONE_OCLOCK_IN_THE_MORNING"><b>At One O'clock in the Morning</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_CONFITEOR_OF_THE_ARTIST"><b>The Confiteor of the Artist</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_THYRSUS"><b>The Thyrsus</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_MARKSMAN"><b>The Marksman</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_SHOOTING-RANGE_AND_THE_CEMETERY"><b>THe Shooting-range and the Cemetery</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_DESIRE_TO_PAINT"><b>The Desire to Paint</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_GLASS-VENDOR"><b>The Glass-Vendor</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_WIDOWS"><b>The Widows</b></a><br /> +<a href="#THE_TEMPTATIONS_OR_EROS_PLUTUS_AND_GLORY"><b>The Temptations; or, Eros, Plutus, and Glory</b></a><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHARLES_BAUDELAIRE" id="CHARLES_BAUDELAIRE"></a>CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.</h2> + +<h4>BY JAMES HUNEKER.</h4> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>I</h3> + + +<p>For the sentimental no greater foe exists than the iconoclast who +dissipates literary legends. And he is abroad nowadays. Those golden +times when they gossiped of De Quincey's enormous opium consumption, of +the gin absorbed by gentle Charles Lamb, of Coleridge's dark ways, +Byron's escapades, and Shelley's atheism—alas! into what faded limbo +have they vanished. Poe, too, whom we saw in fancy reeling from Richmond +to Baltimore, Baltimore to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to New York. Those +familiar fascinating anecdotes have gone the way of all such jerry-built +spooks. We now know Poe to have been a man suffering at the time of his +death from cerebral lesion, a man who drank at intervals and little. Dr. +Guerrier of Paris has exploded a darling superstition about De Quincey's +opium-eating. He has demonstrated that no man could have lived so +long—De Quincey was nearly seventy-five at his death—and worked so +hard, if he had consumed twelve thousand drops of laudanum as often as +he said he did. Furthermore, the English essayist's description of the +drug's effects is inexact. He was seldom sleepy—a sure sign, asserts +Dr. Guerrier, that he was not altogether enslaved by the drug habit. +Sprightly in old age, his powers of labour were prolonged until past +three-score and ten. His imagination needed little opium to produce the +famous Confessions. Even Gautier's revolutionary red waistcoat worn at +the première of Hernani was, according to Gautier, a pink doublet. And +Rousseau has been whitewashed. So they are disappearing, those literary +legends, until, disheartened, we cry out: Spare us our dear, +old-fashioned, disreputable men of genius!</p> + +<p>But the legend of Charles Baudelaire is seemingly indestructible. This +French poet has suffered more from the friendly malignant biographer and +chroniclers than did Poe. Who shall keep the curs out of the cemetery? +asked Baudelaire after he had read Griswold on Poe. A few years later +his own cemetery was invaded and the world was put into possession of +the Baudelaire legend; that legend of the atrabilious, irritable poet, +dandy, maniac, his hair dyed green, spouting blasphemies; that grim, +despairing image of a diabolic, a libertine, saint, and drunkard. Maxime +du Camp was much to blame for the promulgation of these tales—witness +his Souvenirs littéraires. However, it may be confessed that part of the +Baudelaire legend was created by Charles Baudelaire. In the history of +literature it is difficult to parallel such a deliberate piece of +self-stultification. Not Villon, who preceded him, not Verlaine, who +imitated him, drew for the astonishment or disedification of the world a +like unflattering portrait. Mystifier as he was, he must have suffered +at times from acute cortical irritation. And, notwithstanding his +desperate effort to realize Poe's idea, he only proved Poe correct, who +had said that no man can bare his heart quite naked; there always will +be something held back, something false ostentatiously thrust forward. +The grimace, the attitude, the pomp of rhetoric are so many buffers +between the soul of man and the sharp reality of published confessions. +Baudelaire was no more exception to this rule than St. Augustine, +Bunyan, Rousseau, or Huysmans; though he was as frank as any of them, as +we may see in the printed diary, Mon cÅ“ur mis à nu (Posthumous Works, +Société du Mercure de France); and in the Journal, Fusées, Letters, and +other fragments exhumed by devoted Baudelarians.</p> + +<p>To smash legends, Eugène Crépet's biographical study, first printed in +1887, has been republished with new notes by his son, Jacques Crépet. +This is an exceedingly valuable contribution to Baudelaire lore; a +dispassionate life, however, has yet to be written, a noble task for +some young poet who will disentangle the conflicting lies originated by +Baudelaire—that tragic comedian—from the truth and thus save him from +himself. The Crépet volume is really but a series of notes; there are +some letters addressed to the poet by the distinguished men of his day, +supplementing the rather disappointing volume of Letters, 1841-1866, +published in 1908. There are also documents in the legal prosecution of +Baudelaire, with memories of him by Charles Asselineau, Léon Cladel, +Camille Lemonnier, and others.</p> + +<p>In November, 1850, Maxime du Camp and Gustave Flaubert found themselves +at the French Ambassador's, Constantinople. The two friends had taken a +trip in the Orient which later bore fruit in Salammbô. General Aupick, +the representative of the French Government, cordially the young men +received; they were presented to his wife, Madame Aupick. She was the +mother of Charles Baudelaire, and inquired rather anxiously of Du Camp: +"My son has talent, has he not?" Unhappy because her second marriage, a +brilliant one, had set her son against her, the poor woman welcomed from +such a source confirmation of her eccentric boy's gifts. Du Camp tells +the much-discussed story of a quarrel between the youthful Charles and +his stepfather, a quarrel that began at table. There were guests +present. After some words Charles bounded at the General's throat and +sought to strangle him. He was promptly boxed on the ears and succumbed +to a nervous spasm. A delightful anecdote, one that fills with joy +psychiatrists in search of a theory of genius and degeneration. Charles +was given some money and put on board a ship sailing to East India. He +became a cattle-dealer in the British army, and returned to France +years afterward with a Vénus noire, to whom he addressed extravagant +poems! All this according to Du Camp. Here is another tale, a comical +one. Baudelaire visited Du Camp in Paris, and his hair was violently +green. Du Camp said nothing. Angered by this indifference, Baudelaire +asked: "You find nothing abnormal about me?" "No," was the answer. "But +my hair—it is green!" "That is not singular, mon cher Baudelaire; every +one has hair more or less green in Paris." Disappointed in not creating +a sensation, Baudelaire went to a café, gulped down two large bottles of +Burgundy, and asked the waiter to remove the water, as water was a +disagreeable sight; then he went away in a rage. It is a pity to doubt +this green hair legend; presently a man of genius will not be able to +enjoy an epileptic fit in peace—as does a banker or a beggar. We are +told that St. Paul, Mahomet, Handel, Napoleon, Flaubert, Dostoiëvsky +were epileptoids; yet we do not encounter men of this rare kind among +the inmates of asylums. Even Baudelaire had his sane moments.</p> + +<p>The joke of the green hair has been disposed of by Crépet. Baudelaire's +hair thinning after an illness, he had his head shaved and painted with +salve of a green hue, hoping thereby to escape baldness. At the time +when he had embarked for Calcutta (May, 1841), he was not seventeen, but +twenty years of age. Du Camp said he was seventeen when he attacked +General Aupick. The dinner could not have taken place at Lyons because +the Aupick family had left that city six years before the date given by +Du Camp. Charles was provided with five thousand francs for his +expenses, instead of twenty—Du Camp's version—and he never was a +beef-drover in the British army, for a good reason—he never reached +India. Instead, he disembarked at the Isle of Bourbon, and after a short +stay suffered from homesickness and returned to France, after being +absent about ten months. But, like Flaubert, on his return home +Baudelaire was seized with the nostalgia of the East; over there he had +yearned for Paris. Jules Claretie recalls Baudelaire saying to him with +a grimace: "I love Wagner; but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung +up by his tail outside of a window, and trying to stick to the panes of +glass with its claws. There is an odd grating on the glass which I find +at the same time strange, irritating, and singularly harmonious." Is it +necessary to add that Baudelaire, notorious in Paris for his love of +cats, dedicating poems to cats, would never have perpetrated such +revolting cruelty?</p> + +<p>Another misconception, a critical one, is the case of Poe and +Baudelaire. The young Frenchman first became infatuated with Poe's +writings in 1846 or 1847—he gave these two dates, though several +stories of Poe had been translated into French as early as 1841 or 1842; +L'Orang-Outang was the first, which we know as The Murders in the Rue +Morgue; Madame Meunier also adapted several Poe stories for the reviews. +Baudelaire's labours as a translator lasted over ten years. That he +assimilated Poe, that he idolized Poe, is a commonplace of literary +gossip. But that Poe had overwhelming influence in the formation of his +poetic genius is not the truth. Yet we find such an acute critic as the +late Edmund Clarence Stedman writing, "Poe's chief influence upon +Baudelaire's own production relates to poetry." It is precisely the +reverse. Poe's influence affected Baudelaire's prose, notably in the +disjointed confessions, Mon cÅ“ur mis à nu, which vaguely recall the +American writer's Marginalia. The bulk in the poetry in Les Fleurs du +Mal was written before Baudelaire had read Poe, though not published in +book form until 1857. But in 1855 some of the poems saw the light in the +Revue des deux Mondes, while many of them had been put forth a decade or +fifteen years before as fugitive verse in various magazines. Stedman was +not the first to make this mistake. In Bayard Taylor's The Echo Club we +find on page 24 this criticism: "There was a congenital twist about Poe +... Baudelaire and Swinburne after him have been trying to surpass him +by increasing the dose; but his muse is the natural Pythia inheriting +her convulsions, while they eat all sorts of insane roots to produce +theirs." This must have been written about 1872, and after reading it +one would fancy that Poe and Baudelaire were rhapsodic wrigglers on the +poetic tripod, whereas their poetry is often reserved, even glacial. +Baudelaire, like Poe, sometimes "built his nests with the birds of +Night," and that was enough to condemn the work of both men by critics +of the didactic school.</p> + +<p>Once, when Baudelaire heard that an American man of letters(?) was in +Paris, he secured an introduction and called on him. Eagerly inquiring +after Poe, he learned that he was not considered a genteel person in +America, Baudelaire withdrew, muttering maledictions. Enthusiastic poet! +Charming literary person! Yet the American, whoever he was, represented +public opinion at the time. To-day criticisms of Poe are vitiated by the +desire to make him an angel. It is to be doubted whether without his +barren environment and hard fortunes we should have had Poe at all. He +had to dig down deep into the pit of his personality to reach the +central core of his music. But every ardent young soul entering +"literature" begins by a vindication of Poe's character. Poe was a man, +and he is now a classic. He was a half-charlatan as was Baudelaire. In +both the sublime and the sickly were never far asunder. The pair loved +to mystify, to play pranks on their contemporaries. Both were implacable +pessimists. Both were educated in affluence, and both had to face +unprepared the hardships of life. The hastiest comparison of their +poetic work will show that their only common ideal was the worship of an +exotic beauty. Their artistic methods of expression were totally +dissimilar. Baudelaire, like Poe, had a harp-like temperament which +vibrated in the presence of strange subjects. Above all, he was obsessed +by sex. Women, as angel of destruction, is the keynote of his poems. Poe +was almost sexless. His aerial creatures never footed the dusty highways +of the world. His lovely lines, "Helen, thy beauty is to me," could +never have been written by Baudelaire; while Poe would never have +pardoned the "fulgurant" grandeur, the Beethoven-like harmonies, the +Dantesque horrors of that "deep wide music of lost souls" in "Femmes +Damnées":</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">"Descendes, descendes, lamentable victimes."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>Or this, which might serve as a text for one of John Martin's vast +sinister mezzotints:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Une fée allumer dans un ciel infernal</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Une miraculeuse aurore;</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un théâtre banal</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Un être, qui n'était que lumière, or et gaze,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Terrasser rénorme Satan;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Mais mon cÅ“ur que jamais ne visite l'extase,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Est un théâtre où l'on attend</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Toujours, toujours en vain l'Etre aux ailes de gaze.</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>George Saintsbury thus sums up the differences between Poe and +Baudelaire: "Both authors—Poe and De Quincey—fell short of Baudelaire +himself as regards depth and fulness of passion, but both have a +superficial likeness to him in eccentricity of temperameut and affection +for a certain peculiar mixture of grotesque and horror." Poe is without +passion, except a passion for the macabre; what Huysmans calls "The +October of the sensations"; whereas, there is a gulf of despair and +terror and humanity in Baudelaire, which shakes your nerves, yet +stimulates the imagination. However, profounder as a poet, he was no +match for Poe in what might be termed intellectual prestidigitation. The +mathematical Poe, the Poe of the ingenious detective tales, tales +extraordinary, the Poe of the swift flights into the cosmic blue, the +Poe the prophet and mystic—in these the American was more versatile +than his French translator. That Baudelaire said, "Evil be thou my +good," is doubtless true. He proved all things and found them vanity. He +is the poet of original sin, a worshipper of Satan for the sake of +paradox; his Litanies to Satan ring childish to us—in his heart he was +a believer. His was "an infinite reverse aspiration," and mixed up with +his pose was a disgust for vice, for life itself. He was the last of the +Romanticists; Sainte-Beuve called him the Kamchatka of Romanticism; its +remotest hyperborean peak. Romanticism is dead to-day, as dead as +Naturalism; but Baudelaire is alive, and read. His glistening +phosphorescent trail is over French poetry and he is the begetter of a +school:—Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Carducci, Arthur Rimbaud, +Jules Laforgue, Gabriel D'Annunzio, Aubrey Beardsley, Verhaeren, and +many of the youthful crew. He affected Swinburne, and in Huysmans, who +was not a poet, his splenetic spirit lives. Baudelaire's motto might be +the obverse of Browning's lines: "The Devil is in heaven. All's wrong +with the world."</p> + +<p>When Goethe said of Hugo and the Romanticists that they came from +Chateaubriand, he should have substituted the name of +Rousseau—"Romanticism, it is Rousseau," exclaims Pierre Lasserre. But +there is more of Byron and Petrus Borel—a forgotten half-mad poet—in +Baudelaire; though, for a brief period, in 1848, he became a Rousseau +reactionary, sported the workingman's blouse, cut his hair, shouldered a +musket, went to the barricades, wrote inflammatory editorials calling +the proletarian "Brother!" (oh, Baudelaire!) and, as the Goncourts +recorded in their diary, had the head of a maniac. How seriously we may +take this swing of the pendulum is to be noted in a speech of the poet's +at the time of the Revolution: "Come," he said, "let us go shoot General +Aupick!" It was his stepfather that he thought of, not the eternal +principles of Liberty. This may be a false anecdote; many such were +foisted upon Baudelaire. For example, his exclamations at cafés or in +public places, such as: "Have you ever eaten a baby? I find it pleasing +to the palate!" or, "The night I killed my father!" Naturally, people +stared and Baudelaire was happy—he had startled a bourgeois. The +cannibalistic idea he may have borrowed from Swift's amusing pamphlet, +for this French poet knew English literature.</p> + +<p>Gautier compares the poems to a certain tale of Hawthorne's in which +there is a garden of poisoned flowers. But Hawthorne worked in his +laboratory of evil wearing mask and gloves; he never descended into the +mud and sin of the street. Baudelaire ruined his health, smudged his +soul, yet remained withal, as Anatole France says, "a divine poet." How +childish, yet how touching is his resolution—he wrote in his diary of +prayer's dynamic force—when he was penniless, in debt, threatened with +imprisonment, sick, nauseated with sin: "To make every morning my prayer +to God, the reservoir of all force, and all justice; to my father, to +Mariette, and to Poe as intercessors." (Evidently, Maurice Barrès +encountered here his theory of Intercessors.) Baudelaire loved the +memory of his father as much as Stendhal hated his own. He became +reconciled with his mother after the death of General Aupick, in 1857. +He felt in 1862 that his own intellectual eclipse was approaching, for +he wrote: "I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror. To-day +imbecility's wing fanned me as it passed." The sense of the vertiginous +gulf was abiding with him; read his poem, "Pascal avait son gouffre."</p> + +<p>In preferring the Baudelaire translations of Poe to the original—and +they give the impression of being original works—Stedman agreed with +Asselineau that the French is more concise than the English. The prose +of Poe and Baudelaire is clear, sober, rhythmic; Baudelaire's is more +lapidary, finer in contour, richer coloured, more supple, though without +the "honey and tiger's blood" of Barbey d'Aurevilly. Baudelaire's soul +was patiently built up as a fabulous bird might build its nest—bits of +straw, the sobbing of women, clay, cascades of black stars, rags, +leaves, rotten wood, corroding dreams, a spray of roses, a sparkle of +pebble, a gleam of blue sky, arabesques of incense and verdigris, +despairing hearts and music and the abomination of desolation, for its +ground-tones. But this soul-nest is also a cemetery of the seven +sorrows. He loves the clouds ... les nuages ... là bas.... It was là bas +with him even in the tortures of his wretched love-life. Corruption and +death were ever floating in his consciousness. He was like Flaubert, who +saw everywhere the hidden skeleton. Félicien Hops has best interpreted +Baudelaire; the etcher and poet were closely knit spirits. Rodin, too, +is a Baudelarian. If there could be such an anomaly as a native +wood-note wildly evil, it would be the lyric and astringent voice of +this poet. His sensibility was both catholic and morbid, though he could +be frigid in the face of the most disconcerting misfortunes. He was a +man for whom the invisible word existed; if Gautier was pagan, +Baudelaire was a strayed spirit from mediæval days. The spirit rules, +and, as Paul Bourget said, "he saw God." A Manichean in his worship of +evil, he nevertheless abased his soul: "Oh! Lord God! Give me the force +and courage to contemplate my heart and my body without disgust," he +prays: but as some one remarked to Rochefoucauld, "Where you end, +Christianity begins."</p> + +<p>Baudelaire built his ivory tower on the borders of a poetic Maremma, +which every miasma of the spirit pervaded, every marsh-light and +glow-worm inhabited. Like Wagner, Baudelaire painted in his sultry music +the profundities of abysms, the vastness of space. He painted, too, the +great nocturnal silences of the soul.</p> + +<p>Pacem summum tenent! He never reached peace on the heights. Let us +admit that souls of his kind are encased in sick frames; their steel is +too shrewd for the scabbard; yet the enigma for us is none the less +unfathomable. Existence for such natures is a sort of muffled delirium. +To affiliate him with Poe, De Quincey, Hoffman, James Thomson, +Coleridge, and the rest of the sombre choir does not explain him; he is, +perhaps, nearer Donne and Villon than any of the others—strains of the +metaphysical and sinister and supersubtle are to be discovered in him. +The disharmony of brain and body, the spiritual bilocation, are only too +easy to diagnose; but the remedy? Hypocrite lecteur—mon semblable—mon +frère! When the subtlety, force, grandeur, of his poetic production be +considered, together with its disquieting, nervous, vibrating qualities, +it is not surprising that Victor Hugo wrote to the poet: "You invest the +heaven of art with we know not what deadly rays; you create a new +shudder." Hugo might have said that he turned Art into an Inferno. +Baudelaire is the evil archangel of poetry. In his heaven of fire, glass +and ebony he is the blazing Lucifer. "A glorious devil, large in heart +and brain, that did love beauty only..." once sang Tennyson, though not +of the Frenchman.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>II</h3> + + +<p>As long ago as 1869, and in our "barbarous gas-lit country," as +Baudelaire named the land of Poe, an unsigned review appeared in which +this poet was described as "unique and as interesting as Hamlet. He is +that rare and unknown being, a genuine poet—a poet in the midst of +things that have disordered his spirit—a poet excessively developed in +his taste for and by beauty ... very responsive to the ideal, very +greedy of sensation." A better description of Baudelaire does not exist +The Hamlet-motive, particularly, is one that sounded throughout the +disordered symphony of the poet's life.</p> + +<p>He was, later, revealed—also reviled—to American readers by Henry +James, who completely missed his significance. This was in 1878, when +appeared the first edition of French Poets and Novelists. Previous to +that there had been some desultory discussion, a few essays in the +magazines, and in 1875 a sympathetic paper by Professor James Albert +Harrison of the University of Virginia. He denounced the Frenchman for +his reprehensible taste, though he did not mention his beautiful verse +nor his originality in the matter of criticism. Baudelaire, in his eyes, +was not only immoral, but he had, with the approbation of Sainte-Beuve, +introduced Poe as a great man to the French nation. (See Baudelaire's +letter to Sainte-Beuve in the newly published Letters, 1841-1866.) +Perhaps "Mr. Dick Minim" and his projected Academy of Criticism might +make clear these devious problems.</p> + +<p>The Etudes Critiques of Edmond Schérer were collected in 1863. In them +we find this unhappy, uncritical judgment: "Baudelaire, lui, n'a rien, +ni le cÅ“ur, ni l'esprit, ni l'idée, ni le mot, ni la raison, ni la +fantaisie, ni la verve, ni même la facture ... son unique titre c'est +d'avoir contribué à créer l'esthétique de la débauche." It is not our +intention to dilate upon the injustice of this criticism. It is +Baudelaire the critic of æsthetics in whom we are interested. Yet I +cannot forbear saying that if all the negations of Schérer had been +transformed into affirmations, only justice would have been accorded +Baudelaire, who was not alone a poet, the most original of his century, +but also a critic of the first rank, one who welcomed Richard Wagner +when Paris hooted him and his fellow composer, Hector Berlioz, played +the rôle of the envious; one who fought for Edouard Manet, Leconte de +Lisle, Gustave Flaubert, Eugène Delacroix; fought with pen for the +modern etchers, illustrators, Meryon, Daumier, Félicien Rops, Gavarni, +and Constantin Guys. He literally identified himself with De Quincey and +Poe, translating them so wonderfully well that some unpatriotic persons +like the French better than the originals. So much was Baudelaire +absorbed in Poe that a writer of his times asserted that the translator +would meet the same fate as the American poet. A singular, vigorous +spirit is Baudelaire's, whose poetry with its "icy ecstasy" is profound +and harmonious, whose criticism is penetrated by a catholic quality, who +anticipated modern critics in his abhorrence of schools and +environments, preferring to isolate the man and uniquely study him. He +would have subscribed to Swinburne's generous pronouncement: "I have +never been able to see what should attract man to the profession of +criticism but the noble pleasure of praising." The Frenchman has said +that it would be impossible for a critic to become a poet; and it is +impossible for a poet not to contain a critic.</p> + +<p>Théophile Gautier's study prefixed to the definitive edition of Les +Fleurs du Mal is not only the most sympathetic exposition of Baudelaire +as man and genius, but it is also the high-water mark of Gautier's gifts +as a critical essayist. We learn therein how the young Charles, an +incorrigible dandy, came to visit Hôtel Pimodan about 1844. In this +Hôtel Pimodan a dilettante, Ferdinand Boissard, held high revel. His +fantastically decorated apartments were frequented by the painters, +poets, sculptors, romancers, of the day—that is, carefully selected +ones such as Liszt, George Sand, Mérimée, and others whose verve or +genius gave them the privilege of saying Open Sesame! to this cave of +forty Supermen. Balzac has in his Peau de Chagrin pictured the same sort +of scenes which were supposed to occur weekly at the Pimodan. Gautier +eloquently describes the meeting of these kindred artistic souls, where +the beautiful Jewess, Maryx, who had posed for Ary Scheffer's Mignon +and for Paul Delaroche's La Gloire, met the superb Madame Sabatier, the +only woman that Baudelaire loved, and the original of that extraordinary +group of Clésinger's—the sculptor and son-in-law of George Sand—la +Femme au Serpent, a Salammbô à la mode in marble. Hasheesh was eaten, so +Gautier writes, by Boissard and Baudelaire. As for the creator of +Mademoiselle Maupin, he was too robust for such nonsense. He had to work +for his living at journalism, and he died in harness, an irreproachable +father, while the unhappy Baudelaire, the inheritor of an intense, +unstable temperament, soon devoured his patrimony of 75,000 francs, and +for the remaining years of his life was between the devil of his dusky +Jenny Duval and the deep sea of hopeless debt.</p> + +<p>It was at these Pimodan gatherings, which were no doubt much less wicked +than the participants would have us believe, that Baudelaire encountered +Emile Deroy, a painter of skill, who made his portrait, and encouraged +the fashionable young fellow to continue his art studies. We have seen +an album containing sketches by the poet. They betray talent of about +the same order as Thackeray's, with a superadded note of the +"horrific"—that favourite epithet of the early Poe critics. Baudelaire +admired Thackeray, and when the Englishman praised the illustrations of +Guys, he was delighted. Deroy taught his pupil the commonplaces of a +painter's technique; also how to compose a palette—a rather meaningless +phrase nowadays. At least, he did not write of the arts without some +technical experience. Delacroix took up his enthusiastic disciple, and +when the Salons of Baudelaire appeared in 1845, 1846, 1855, and 1859, +the praise and blame they evoked were testimonies to the training and +knowledge of their author. A new spirit had been born.</p> + +<p>The names of Diderot and Baudelaire were coupled. Neither academic nor +spouting the jargon of the usual critic, the Salons of Baudelaire are +the production of a humanist. Some would put them above Diderot's. Mr. +Saintsbury, after Swinburne the warmest advocate of Baudelaire among the +English, thinks that the French poet in his picture criticism observed +too little and imagined too much. "In other words," he adds, "to read a +criticism of Baudelaire's without the title affixed is by no means a +sure method of recognizing the picture afterward." Now, word-painting +was the very thing that Baudelaire avoided. It was his friend Gautier, +with the plastic style, who attempted the well-nigh impossible feat of +competing in his verbal descriptions with the certitudes of canvas and +marble. And, if he with his verbal imagination did not entirely succeed, +how could a less adept manipulator of the vocabulary? We do not agree +with Mr. Saintsbury. No one can imagine too much when the imagination is +that of a poet. Baudelaire divined the work of the artist and set it +down scrupulously in a prose of exceeding rectitude. He did not paint +pictures in prose. He did not divagate. He did not overburden his pages +with technical terms. But the spirit of his subject he did disengage in +a few swift phrases. The polemics of historical schools were a cross for +him to bear, and he wore his prejudices lightly. Like a true critic, he +judged more by form than theme. There are no types; there is only life, +he asserted, and long before Jules Laforgue. He was ever art-for-art, +yet, having breadth of comprehension and a Heine-like capacity for +seeing both sides of his own nature with its idiosyncrasies, he could +write: "The puerile utopia of the school of art-for-art, in excluding +morality, and often even passion, was necessarily sterile. All +literature which refuses to advance fraternally between science and +philosophy is a homicidal and a suicidal literature."</p> + +<p>Baudelaire, then, was no less sound a critic of the plastic arts than of +music and literature. Like his friend Flaubert, he had a horror of +democracy, of the democratisation of the arts, of all the sentimental +fuss and fuddle of a pseudo-humanitarianism. During the 1848 agitation +the former dandy of 1840 put on a blouse and spoke of barricades. Those +things were in the air. Wagner rang the alarm-bells during the Dresden +uprising. Chopin wrote for the pianoforte a revolutionary étude. Brave +lads! Poets and musicians fight their battles best in the region of the +ideal. Baudelaire's little attack of the equality-measles soon vanished. +He lectured his brother poets and artists on the folly and injustice of +abusing or despising the bourgeois (being a man of paradox, he dedicated +a volume of his Salons to the bourgeois), but he would not have +contradicted Mr. George Moore for declaring that "in art the democrat +is always reactionary. In 1830 the democrats were against Victor Hugo +and Delacrois." And Les Fleurs du Mal, that book of opals, blood, and +evil swamp-flowers, will never be savoured by the mob.</p> + +<p>In his Souvenirs de Jeunesse, Champfleury speaks of the promenades in +the Louvre he enjoyed the company with Baudelaire. Bronzino was one of +the poet's preferences. He was also attracted by El Greco—not an +unnatural admiration, considering the sombre extravagance of his own +genius. Of Goya he has written in exalted phrases. Velasquez was his +touchstone. Being of a perverse nature, his Derves ruined by abuse of +drink and drugs, the landscapes of his imagination were more beautiful +than Nature herself. The country itself, he declared, was odious. Like +Whistler, whom he often met—see the Hommage à Delacrois by +Fantin-Latour, with its portraits of Whistler, Baudelaire, Manet, +Bracquemond the etcher, Legros, Delacrois, Cordier, Duranty the critic, +and De Balleroy—he could not help showing his aversion to "foolish +sunsets." In a word, Baudelaire, into whose brain had entered too much +moonlight, was the father of a lunar school of poetry, criticism and +fiction. His Samuel Cramer, in La Fanfarlo, is the literary progenitor +of Jean, Duc d'Esseintes, in Huysmans's <i>A Rebours</i>. Huysmans at first +modelled himself upon Baudelaire. His Le Drageoir aux Epices is a +continuation of Petits Poèmes en Prose. And to Baudelaire's account must +be laid much artificial morbid writing. Despite his pursuit of +perfection in form, his influence has been too often baneful to +impressionable artists in embryo. A lover of Gallic Byronism, and +high-priest of the Satanic school, there was no extravagance, absurd or +terrible, that he did not commit, from etching a four-part fugue on ice +to skating hymns in honour of Lucifer. In his criticism alone was he the +sane logical Frenchman. And while he did not live to see the success of +the Impressionist group, he surely would have acclaimed their theory and +practice. Was he not an impressionist himself?</p> + +<p>As Richard Wagner was his god in music, so Delacroix quite overflowed +his æsthetic consciousness. Read Volume II of his collected works, +<i>Curiosités Esthétiques</i>, which contains his Salons; also his essay, <i>De +l'Essence du Rire</i> (worthy to be placed side by side with George +Meredith's essay on Comedy). Caricaturists, French and foreign, are +considered in two chapters at the close of the volume. Baudelaire was as +conscientious as Gautier. He trotted around miles of mediocre canvas, +saying an encouraging word to the less talented, boiling over with holy +indignation or indulging in glacial irony, before the rash usurpers +occupying the seats of the mighty, and pouncing on new genius with +promptitude. Upon Delacroix he lavished the largesse of his admiration. +He smiled at the platitudes of Horace Vernet, and only shook his head +over the Schnetzes and other artisans of the day. He welcomed William +Hausollier, now so little known. He praised Devéria, Chasseriau—who +waited years before he came into his own; his preferred landscapists +were Corot, Rousseau and Troyon. He impolitely spoke of Ary Scheffer and +the "apes of sentiment"; while his discussions of Hogarth, Cruikshank, +Pinelli and Breughel proclaims his versatility of vision. In his essay +Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne he was the first among critics to recognize +the peculiar quality called "modernity," that naked vibration which +informs the novels of Goncourt, Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale, +and the pictures of Manet, Monet, Degas and Raffaelli with their +evocations of a new, nervous Paris. It is in his Volume III, entitled +L'Art Romantique, that so many things dear to the new century were then +subjects of furious quarrels. This book contains much just and brilliant +writing. It was easy for Nietzsche to praise Wagner in Germany in 1876, +but dangerous at Paris in 1861 to declare war on Wagner's adverse +critics. This Baudelaire did.</p> + +<p>The relations of Baudelaire and Edouard Manet were exceedingly cordial. +In a letter to Théophile Thoré, the art critic (Letters, p. 361), we +find Baudelaire defending his friend from the accusation that his +pictures were pastiches of Goya. He wrote: "Manet has never seen Goya, +never El Greco; he was never in the Pourtalés Gallery." Which may have +been true at the time, 1864, nevertheless Manet had visited Madrid and +spent much time studying Velasquez and abusing Spanish cookery. +(Consider, too, Goya's Balcony with Girls and Manet's famous Balcony.) +Raging at the charge of imitation, Baudelaire said in this same epistle: +"They accuse even me of imitating Edgar Poe.... Do you know why I so +patiently translated Poe? Because he resembled me." The poet italicized +these words. With stupefaction, therefore, he admired the mysterious +coincidences of Manet's work with that of Goya and El Greco.</p> + +<p>He took Manet seriously. He wrote to him in a paternal and severe tone. +Recall his reproof when urging the painter to exhibit his work. "You +complain about attacks, but are you the first to endure them? Have you +more genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by +derision. And in order not to make you too proud I must tell you that +they are models, each in his way, and in a very rich world, while you +are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." (Letters, p. 436.)</p> + +<p>Would Baudelaire recall these prophetic words if he were able to revisit +the glimpses of the Champs Elysées at the Autumn Salons? What would he +think of Cézanne? Odilon Redon he would understand, for he is the +transposer of Baudelairianism to terms of design and colour. And perhaps +the poet whose verse is saturated with tropical hues—he, when young, +sailed in southern seas—might appreciate the monstrous debauch of form +and colour in the Tahitian canvases of Paul Gauguin.</p> + +<p>Baudelaire's preoccupation with pictorial themes may be noted in his +verse. He is par excellence the poet of æsthetics. To Daumier he +inscribed a poem; and to the sculptor Ernest Christophe, to Delacroix +(Sur Tasse en Prison), to Manet, to Guys (Rêve Parisien), to an unknown +master (Une Martyre); and Watteau, a Watteau à rebours, is seen in Un +Voyage à Cythère; while in Les Phares this poet of the ideal, spleen +music, and perfume, shows his adoration for Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci, +Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Puget, Goya, Delacroix—"Delacroix, lac de sang +hanté des mauvais anges." And what is more exquisite than his quatrain +to Lola de Valence, a poetic inscription for the picture of Edouard +Manet, with its last line as vaporous, as subtle as Verlaine: "Le charme +inattendu d'un bijou rose et noir!" Heine called himself the last of the +Romantics. The first of the "Moderns" and the last of the Romantics was +the many-sided Charles Baudelaire.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>III</h3> + + +<p>He was born at Paris, April 9, 1821 (Flaubert's birth year), and not +April 21, as Gautier has it. His father was Joseph Francis Baudelaire, +or Baudelaire, who occupied a government position. A cultivated art +lover, his taste was apparent in the home he made for his second wife, +Caroline Archimbaut-Dufays, an orphan and the daughter of a military +officer. There was a considerable difference in the years of this pair; +the mother was twenty-seven, the father sixty-two, at the birth of their +only child. By his first marriage the elder Baudelaire had one son, +Claude, who, like his half-brother Charles, died of paralysis, though a +steady man of business. That great modern neurosis, called Commerce, has +its mental wrecks, too, and no one pays attention; but when a poet falls +by the wayside is the chase begun by neurologists and other soul-hunters +seeking victims. After the death of Baudelaire's father, the widow, +within a year, married the handsome, ambitious Aupick, then chef de +bataillon, lieutenant-colonel, decorated with the Legion of Honour, and +later general and ambassador to Madrid, Constantinople, and London. +Charles was a nervous, frail youth, but unlike most children of genius, +he was a scholar and won brilliant honours at school. His stepfather was +proud of him. From the Royal College of Lyons, Charles went to the Lycée +Louis-le-Grand, Paris, but was expelled in 1839, on various +discreditable charges. Troubles soon began at home. He was irascible, +vain, precocious, and given to dissipation. He quarreled with General +Aupick, and disdained his mother. But she was to blame, she has +confessed; she had quite forgotten the boy in the flush of her second +love. He could not forget, or forgive what he called her infidelity to +the memory of his father. Hamlet-like, he was inconsolable. The good +Bishop of Montpellier, who knew the family, said that Charles was a +little crazy—second marriages usually bring woe in their train. "When a +mother has such a son, she doesn't re-marry," said the young poet +Charles signed himself Baudelaire-Dufays, or sometimes Dufais. He wrote +in his journal: "My ancestors, idiots or maniacs ... all victims of +terrible passions"; which was one of his exaggerations. His grandfather +on the paternal side was a Champenois peasant, his mother's family +presumably Norman, but not much is known of her forbears. Charles +believed himself lost from the time his half-brother was stricken. He +also believed that his instability of temperament—and he studied his +"case" as would a surgeon—was the result of his parents' disparity in +years.</p> + +<p>After his return from the East, where he did not learn English as has +been said—his mother taught him as a boy to converse in and write the +language—he came into his little inheritance, about fifteen thousand +dollars. Two years later he was so heavily in debt that his family asked +for a guardian on the ground of incompetency. He had been swindled, +being young and green. How had he squandered his money? Not exactly on +opera-glasses, like Gérard de Nerval, but on clothes, pictures, +furniture, books. The remnant was set aside to pay his debts. Charles +would be both poet and dandy. He dressed expensively but soberly, in the +English fashion; his linen dazzling, the prevailing hue of his +habiliments black. In height he was medium, his eyes brown, searching, +luminous, the eye of a nyctalops, "eyes like ravens"; nostrils +palpitating, cleft chin, mouth expressive, sensual jaw, strong and +square. His hair was black, curly, glossy, his forehead high, square and +white. In the Deroy portrait he wears a beard; he is there what Catulle +Mendès nicknamed him: "His Excellence, Monseigneur Brummel!" Later he +was the elegiac Satan, the author of L'Imitation de N.S. le Diable; or +the Baudelaire of George Moore: "the clean-shaven face of the mock +priest, the slow cold eyes and the sharp cunning sneer of the cynical +libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness +of temptation." In the heyday of his blood he was perverse and +deliberate. Let us credit him with contradicting the Byronic notion that +ennui could best be cured by dissipation; in sin Baudelaire found the +saddest of all consolations. Mendès laughs at the legend of Baudelaire's +violence, of his being given to explosive phrases. Despite Gautier's +stories about the Hôtel Pimodan and its club of hasheesh-eaters, M. +Mendès denies that Baudelaire was a victim of the hemp. What the +majority of mankind does not know concerning the habits of literary +workers is this prime fact: men who work hard, writing verse—and there +is no mental toil comparable to it—cannot drink, or indulge in opium, +without inevitable collapse. The old-fashioned ideas of "inspiration," +spontaneity, easy improvisation, the sudden bolt from heaven, are +delusions still hugged by the world. To be told that Chopin filed at his +music for years, that Beethoven in his smithy forged his thunderbolts by +the sweat of his brow, that Manet toiled like a labourer on the dock, +that Baudelaire was a mechanic in his devotion to poetic work, that +Gautier was a hard-working journalist, are disillusions for the +sentimental. Minerva springing full-fledged from Jupiter's skull to the +desk of the poet is a pretty fancy; but Balsac and Flaubert did not +encourage this fancy. Work literally killed Poe, as it killed Jules de +Goncourt, Flaubert and Daudet. Maupassant went insane because he would +work and he would play the same day. Baudelaire worked and worried. His +debts haunted him his life long. His constitution was +flawed—Sainte-Beuve told him that he had worn out his nerves—from the +start, he was détraqué; but that his entire life was one huge debauch is +a nightmare of the moral police in some red cotton nightcap country.</p> + +<p>His period of mental production was not brief nor barren. He was a +student. Du Camp's charge that he was an ignorant man is disproved by +the variety and quality of his published work. His range of sympathies +was large. His mistake, in the eyes of his colleagues, was to write so +well about the seven arts. Versatility is seldom given its real +name—which is protracted labour. Baudelaire was one of the elect, an +aristocrat, who dealt with the quintessence of art; his delicate air of +a bishop, his exquisite manners, his modulated voice, aroused unusual +interest and admiration. He was a humanist of distinction; he has left a +hymn to Saint Francis in the Latin of the decadence. Baudelaire, like +Chopin, made more poignant the phrase, raised to a higher intensity the +expressiveness of art.</p> + +<p>Women played a commanding rôle in his life. They always do with any poet +worthy of the name, though few have been so frank in acknowledging this +as Baudelaire. Yet he was in love more with Woman than the individual. +The legend of the beautiful creature he brought from the East resolves +itself into the dismal affair with Jeanne Duval. He met her in Paris, +after he had been in the East. She sang at a café concert in Paris. She +was more brown than black. She was not handsome, not intelligent, not +good; yet he idealized her, for she was the source of half his +inspiration. To her were addressed those marvellous evocations of the +Orient, of perfume, tresses, delicious dawns on strange far-away seas +and "superb Byzant," domes that devils built. Baudelaire is the poet of +perfumes; he is also the patron saint of ennui. No one has so chanted +the praise of odours. His soul swims on perfume as do other souls on +music, he has sung. As he grew older he seemed to hunt for more acrid +odours; he often presents an elaborately chased vase the carving of +which transports us, but from which the head is quickly averted. Jeanne, +whom he never loved, no matter what may be said, was a sorceress. But +she was impossible; she robbed, betrayed him; he left her a dozen times +only to return. He was a capital draughtsman with a strong nervous line +and made many pen-and-ink drawings of her. They are not prepossessing. +In her rapid decline she was not allowed to want. Madame Aupick paid her +expenses in the hospital. A sordid history. She was a veritable flower +of evil for Baudelaire. Yet poetry, like music, would be colourless, +scentless, if it sounded no dissonances. Fancy art reduced to the +beatific and banal chord of C major!</p> + +<p>He fell in love with the celebrated Madame Sabatier, a reigning beauty, +at whose salon artistic Paris assembled. She had been christened by +Gautier Madame la Présidente, and her sumptuous beauty was portrayed by +Ricard in his La Femme au Chien. She returned Baudelaire's love. They +soon parted. Again a riddle which the published letters hardly solve. +One letter, however, does show that Baudelaire had tried to be faithful, +and failed. He could not extort from his exhausted soul the sentiment; +but he put its music on paper. His most seductive lyrics were addressed +to Madame Sabatier: "A la très chère, à la très-belle," a hymn saturated +with love. Music, spleen, perfumes—"colour, sound, perfumes call to +each other as deep to deep; perfumes like the flesh of children, soft as +hautboys, green as the meadows" —criminals, outcasts, the charm of +childhood, the horrors of love, pride, and rebellion, Eastern +landscapes, cats, soothing and false; cats, the true companions of +lonely poets; haunted clocks, shivering dusks, and gloomier +dawns—Paris in a hundred phases—these and many other themes this +strange-souled poet, this "Dante, pacer of the shore," of Paris has +celebrated in finely wrought verse and profound phrases. In a single +line he contrives atmosphere; the very shape of his sentence, the ring +of the syllables, arouse the deepest emotion. A master of harmonic +undertones is Baudelaire. His successors have excelled him in making +their music more fluid, more lyrical, more vapourous—many young French +poets pass through their Baudelarian green-sickness—but he alone knows +the secrets of moulding those metallic, free sonnets, which have the +resistance of bronze; and of the despairing music that flames from the +mouths of lost souls trembling on the wharves of hell. He is the supreme +master of irony and troubled voluptuousness.</p> + +<p>Baudelaire is a masculine poet. He carved rather than sang; the plastic +arts spoke to his soul. A lover and maker of images. Like Poe, his +emotions transformed themselves into ideas. Bourget classified him as +mystic, libertine, and analyst. He was born with a wound in his soul, to +use the phrase of Père Lacordaire. (Curiously enough, he actually +contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat +in the French Academy. Sainte-Beuve dissuaded him from this folly.) +Recall Baudelaire's prayer: "Thou, O Lord, my God, grant me the grace to +produce some fine lines which will prove to myself that I am not the +last of men, that I am not inferior to those I contemn." Individualist, +egoist, anarchist, his only thought was letters. Jules Laforgue thus +described Baudelaire: "Cat, Hindoo, Yankee, Episcopal, Alchemist." Yes, +an alchemist who suffocated in the fumes he created. He was of Gothic +imagination, and could have said with Rolla: "Je suis venu trop tard +dans un monde trop vieux." He had an unassuaged thirst for the absolute. +The human soul was his stage, he its interpreting orchestra.</p> + +<p>In 1857 The Flowers of Evil was published by Poulet-Malassis, who +afterward went into bankruptcy—a warning to publishers with a taste for +fine literature. The titles contemplated were Limbes, or Lesbiennes. +Hippolyte Babou suggested the one we know. These poems were suppressed +on account of six, and poet and publisher summoned. As the municipal +government had made a particular ass of itself in the prosecution of +Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary, the Baudelaire matter was +disposed of in haste. He was condemned to a fine of three hundred +francs, a fine which was never paid, as the objectionable poems were +removed. They were printed in the Belgian edition, and may be read in +the new volume, Å’uvres. Posthumes.</p> + +<p>Baudelaire was infuriated over the judgment, for he knew that his book +was dramatic in expression. He had expected, like Flaubert, to emerge +from the trial with flying colours; therefore to be classed as one who +wrote objectionable literature was a shock. "Flaubert had the Empress +back of him," he complained; which was true; the Empress Eugénie, also +the Princess Mathilde. But he worked as ever and put forth those +polished intaglios called Poems in Prose, for the form of which he had +taken a hint from Aloys Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit. He filled this +form with a new content; not alone pictures, but moods, are to be found +in those miniatures. Pity is their keynote, a tenderness for the abject +and lowly, a revelation of sensibility that surprised those critics who +had discerned in Baudelaire only a sculptor of evil. In one of his poems +he described a landscape of metal, of marble and water; a babel of +staircases and arcades, a palace of infinity, surrounded by the silence +of eternity. This depressing yet magical dream was utilized by Huysmans +in his A Rebours. But in the tiny landscapes of the Prose Poems there is +nothing rigid or artificial. Indeed, the poet's deliberate attitude of +artificiality is dropped. He is human. Not that the deep fundamental +note of humanity is ever absent in his poems; the eternal diapason is +there even when least overheard. Baudelaire is more human than Poe. His +range of sympathy is wider. In this he transcends him as a poet, though +his subject-matter often issues from the very dregs of life. Brother to +pitiable wanderers, there are, nevertheless, no traces of cant, no +"Russian pity" à la Dostoiëvsky, no humanitarian or socialistic +rhapsodies in his work. Baudelaire is an egoist He hated the sentimental +sapping of altruism. His prose-poem, Crowds, with its "bath of +multitude," may have been suggested by Poe; but in Charles Lamb we find +the idea: "Are there no solitudes out of caves and the desert? or +cannot the heart, in the midst of crowds, feel frightfully alone?"</p> + +<p>His best critical work is the Richard Wagner and Tannhauser, as +significant an essay as Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. And +Baudelaire's polemic appeared at a more critical period in Wagner's +career. Wagner sent a brief hearty letter of thanks to the critic, and +later made his acquaintance. To Wagner, Baudelaire introduced a young +Wagnerian, Villiers de l'Isle Adam. This Wagner letter is included in +the volume of Crépet; but there are no letters published from Baudelaire +to Franz Liszt, though they were friends. In Weimar I saw at the Liszt +Museum several from Baudelaire which should have been included in the +Letters. The poet understood Liszt and his reforms as he understood +Wagner. The German composer admired the French poet, and his Kundry, in +the sultry second act of Parsifal, has a Baudelairian hue, especially in +the temptation scene.</p> + +<p>The end was at hand. Baudelaire had been steadily, rather, unsteadily, +going downhill; a desperate figure, a dandy in shabby attire. He went +out only after dark, he haunted the exterior boulevards, associated +with birds of nocturnal plumage. He drank without thirst, ate without +hunger, as he has said. A woeful decadence for this aristocrat of life +and letters. Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged +his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre. He fled to +Brussels, there to rehabilitate his dwindling fortunes. He gave a few +lectures, and met Rops, Lemonnier, drank to forget, and forgot to work. +He abused Brussels, Belgium, its people. A country, he cried, where the +trees are black, the flowers without odour, and where there is no +conversation! He, the brilliant causeur, the chief blaguer of a circle +in which young James McNeill Whistler was reduced to the rôle of a +listener—this most spiritual among artists, found himself a failure in +the Belgian capital. It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that +Baudelaire was the creator of many of the paradoxes attributed, not only +to Whistler, but to an entire school—if one may employ such a phrase. +The frozen imperturbability of the poet, his cutting enunciation, his +power of blasphemy, his hatred of Nature, his love of the artificial, +have been copied by the æsthetic blades of our day. He it was who first +taunted Nature with being an imitator of art, with always being the +same. Oh, the imitative sunsets! Oh, the quotidian eating and drinking! +And as pessimist, too, he led the mode. Baudelaire, like Flaubert, +grasped the murky torch of pessimism once held by Chateaubriand, +Benjamin Constant, and Senancour. Doubtless, all this stemmed from +Byronism. And now it is as stale as Byronism.</p> + +<p>His health failed, and he lacked money enough to pay for doctor's +prescriptions; he even owed for the room in his hotel. At Namur, where +he was visiting the father-in-law of Felician Rops (March, 1866), he +suffered from an attack of paralysis. He was removed to Brussels. His +mother, who lived at Honneur, in mourning for her husband, came to his +aid. Taken to France, he was placed in a sanatorium. Aphasia set in. He +could only ejaculate a mild oath, and when he caught sight of himself in +the mirror he would bow pleasantly as if to a stranger. His friends +rallied, and they were among the most distinguished people in Paris, the +élite of souls. Ladies visited him, one or two playing Wagner on the +piano—which must have added a fresh nuance to death—and they brought +him flowers. He expressed his love for flowers and music to the last. He +could not bear the sight of his mother; she revived in him some painful +memories, but that passed, and he clamoured for her when she was absent. +If anyone mentioned the names of Wagner or Manet, he smiled. And with a +fixed stare, as if peering through some invisible window opening upon +eternity, he died, August 31, 1867, aged forty-six.</p> + +<p>Barbey d'Aurevilly himself a Satanist and dandy (oh, those comical old +attitudes of literature), had prophesied that the author of Fleurs du +Mal would either blow out his brains or prostrate himself at the foot of +the cross. (Later he said the same of Huysmans.) Baudelaire had the +alternative course forced upon him by fate after he had attempted +spiritual suicide for how many years? (He once tried actual suicide, but +the slight cut in his throat looked so ugly to him that he went no +farther.) His soul had been a battle-field for the powers of good and +evil. That at the end he brought the wreck of both soul and body to his +God should not be a subject for comment. He was an extraordinary poet +with a bad conscience, who lived miserably and was buried with honours. +Then it was that his worth was discovered (funeral orations over a +genius are a species of public staircase-wit). His reputation waxes with +the years. He is an exotic gem in the crown of French poetry. Of him +Swinburne has chanted Ave Atque Vale:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_FLOWERS_OF_EVIL" id="THE_FLOWERS_OF_EVIL"></a>THE FLOWERS OF EVIL</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_DANCE_OF_DEATH" id="THE_DANCE_OF_DEATH"></a>THE DANCE OF DEATH.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves,<br /> +Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves<br /> +With all the careless and high-stepping grace,<br /> +And the extravagant courtesan's thin face.<br /> +<br /> +Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed?<br /> +Her floating robe, in royal amplitude,<br /> +Palls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod<br /> +With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod.<br /> +<br /> +The swarms that hum about her collar-bones<br /> +As the lascivious streams caress the stones,<br /> +Conceal from every scornful jest that flies,<br /> +Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes<br /> +<br /> +Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays<br /> +Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways,<br /> +Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebræ.<br /> +O charm of nothing decked in folly! they<br /> +<br /> +Who laugh and name you a Caricature,<br /> +They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure,<br /> +The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone<br /> +That is most dear to me, tall skeleton!<br /> +<br /> +Come you to trouble with your potent sneer<br /> +The feast of Life! or are you driven here,<br /> +To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir<br /> +And goad your moving corpse on with a spur?<br /> +<br /> +Or do you hope, when sing the violins,<br /> +And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins,<br /> +To drive some mocking nightmare far apart,<br /> +And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart?<br /> +<br /> +Fathomless well of fault and foolishness!<br /> +Eternal alembic of antique distress!<br /> +Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides<br /> +The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides.<br /> +<br /> +And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find,<br /> +Among us here, no lover to your mind;<br /> +Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave?<br /> +The charms of horror please none but the brave.<br /> +<br /> +Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir,<br /> +Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller<br /> +Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath,<br /> +The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth.<br /> +<br /> +For he who has not folded in his arms<br /> +A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms,<br /> +Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent,<br /> +When Horror comes the way that Beauty went.<br /> +<br /> +O irresistible, with fleshless face,<br /> +Say to these dancers in their dazzled race:<br /> +"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones,<br /> +Ye shall taste death, musk-scented skeletons!<br /> +<br /> +Withered Antinous, dandies with plump faces,<br /> +Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces,<br /> +Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath,<br /> +Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death.<br /> +<br /> +From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream,<br /> +The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream;<br /> +They do not see, within the opened sky,<br /> +The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high.<br /> +<br /> +In every clime and under every sun,<br /> +Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run;<br /> +And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye<br /> +And mingles with your madness, irony!"<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_BEACONS" id="THE_BEACONS"></a>THE BEACONS.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +RUBENS, oblivious garden of indolence,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love,</span><br /> +Where life flows forth in troubled opulence,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As airs in heaven and seas in ocean move,</span><br /> +<br /> +LEONARD DA VINCI, sombre and fathomless glass,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile,</span><br /> +Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Among the ice and pines that guard some isle.</span><br /> +<br /> +REMBRANDT, sad hospital that a murmuring fills,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls,</span><br /> +Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls.</span><br /> +<br /> +Strong MICHELANGELO, a vague far place<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules;</span><br /> +Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease.</span><br /> +<br /> +The fighter's anger, the faun's impudence,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thou makest of all these a lovely thing;</span><br /> +Proud heart, sick body, mind's magnificence:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">PUGET, the convict's melancholy king.</span><br /> +<br /> +WATTEAU, the carnival of illustrious hearts,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fluttering like moths upon the wings of chance;</span><br /> +Bright lustres light the silk that flames and darts,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And pour down folly on the whirling dance.</span><br /> +<br /> +GOYA, a nightmare full of things unknown;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The fÅ“tus witches broil on Sabbath night;</span><br /> +Old women at the mirror; children lone<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who tempt old demons with their limbs delight.</span><br /> +<br /> +DELACROIX, lake of blood ill angels haunt,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where ever-green, o'ershadowing woods arise;</span><br /> +Under the surly heaven strange fanfares chaunt<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And pass, like one of Weber's strangled sighs.</span><br /> +<br /> +And malediction, blasphemy and groan,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ecstasies, cries, Te Deums, and tears of brine,</span><br /> +Are echoes through a thousand labyrinths flown;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For mortal hearts an opiate divine;</span><br /> +<br /> +A shout cried by a thousand sentinels,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">An order from a thousand bugles tossed,</span><br /> +A beacon o'er a thousand citadels,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A call to huntsmen in deep woodlands lost.</span><br /> +<br /> +It is the mightiest witness that could rise<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To prove our dignity, O Lord, to Thee;</span><br /> +This sob that rolls from age to age, and dies<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon the verge of Thy Eternity!</span><br /> +</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="THE_SADNESS_OF_THE_MOON" id="THE_SADNESS_OF_THE_MOON"></a>THE SADNESS OF THE MOON.</h3> + +<p class="margin-b"> +The Moon more indolently dreams to-night<br /> +Than a fair woman on her couch at rest.<br /> +Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,<br /> +Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.<br /> +<br /> +Upon her silken avalanche of down,<br /> +Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh;<br /> +And watches the white visions past her flown,<br /> +Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.<br /> +<br /> +And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep,<br /> +Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow,<br /> +Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,<br /> +<br /> +Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow<br /> +Whence gleams of iris and of opal start,<br /> +And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="EXOTIC_PERFUME" id="EXOTIC_PERFUME"></a>EXOTIC PERFUME.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +When with closed eyes in autumn's eves of gold<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I breathe the burning odours of your breast,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Before my eyes the hills of happy rest</span><br /> +Bathed in the sun's monotonous fires, unfold.<br /> +<br /> +Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where men are upright, maids have never grown</span><br /> +Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows.<br /> +<br /> +Led by that perfume to these lands of ease,<br /> +I see a port where many ships have flown<br /> +With sails outwearied of the wandering seas;<br /> +<br /> +While the faint odours from green tamarisks blown,<br /> +Float to my soul and in my senses throng,<br /> +And mingle vaguely with the sailor's song.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="BEAUTY" id="BEAUTY"></a>BEAUTY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +I am as lovely as a dream in stone,<br /> +And this my heart where each finds death in turn,<br /> +Inspires the poet with a love as lone<br /> +As clay eternal and as taciturn.<br /> +<br /> +Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,<br /> +My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;<br /> +I hate all movements that disturb my pose,<br /> +I smile not ever, neither do I weep.<br /> +<br /> +Before my monumental attitudes,<br /> +That breathe a soul into the plastic arts,<br /> +My poets pray in austere studious moods,<br /> +<br /> +For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,<br /> +Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,<br /> +The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_BALCONY" id="THE_BALCONY"></a>THE BALCONY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire,</span><br /> +Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The charm of evenings by the gentle fire,</span><br /> +Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses!<br /> +<br /> +The eves illumined by the burning coal,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings—</span><br /> +How soft your breast was then, how sweet your soul!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ah, and we said imperishable things,</span><br /> +Those eves illumined by the burning coal.<br /> +<br /> +Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And space profound, and strong life's pulsing flood,</span><br /> +In bending o'er you, queen of every charm,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood.</span><br /> +The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm.<br /> +<br /> +The film of night flowed round and over us,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet;</span><br /> +I drank your breath, ah! sweet and poisonous,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And in my hands fraternal slept your feet—</span><br /> +Night, like a film, flowed round and over us.<br /> +<br /> +I can recall those happy days forgot,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past.</span><br /> +Your languid beauties now would move me not<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Did not your gentle heart and body cast</span><br /> +The old spell of those happy days forgot.<br /> +<br /> +Can vows and perfumes, kisses infinite,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Be reborn from the gulf we cannot sound;</span><br /> +As rise to heaven suns once again made bright<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">After being plunged in deep seas and profound?</span><br /> +Ah, vows and perfumes, kisses infinite!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SICK_MUSE" id="THE_SICK_MUSE"></a>THE SICK MUSE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day?<br /> +Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn,<br /> +Upon thy brow in alternation play,<br /> +Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn.<br /> +<br /> +Have the green lemure and the goblin red,<br /> +Poured on thee love and terror from their urn?<br /> +Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread<br /> +Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne?<br /> +<br /> +Would that thy breast where so deep thoughts arise,<br /> +Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs;<br /> +Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave<br /> +<br /> +In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave,<br /> +When PhÅ“bus shared his alternating reign<br /> +With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_VENAL_MUSE" id="THE_VENAL_MUSE"></a>THE VENAL MUSE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Muse of my heart, lover of palaces,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When January comes with wind and sleet,</span><br /> +During the snowy eve's long wearinesses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet?</span><br /> +<br /> +Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shoulders<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the moon-beams that through the window fly?</span><br /> +Or when thy purse dries up, thy palace moulders,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reap the far star-gold of the vaulted sky?</span><br /> +<br /> +For thou, to keep thy body to thy soul,<br /> +Must swing a censer, wear a holy stole,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And chaunt Te Deums with unbelief between.</span><br /> +<br /> +Or, like a starving mountebank, expose<br /> +Thy beauty and thy tear-drowned smile to those<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who wait thy jeste to drive away thy spleen.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_EVIL_MONK" id="THE_EVIL_MONK"></a>THE EVIL MONK.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +The ancient cloisters on their lofty walls<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had holy Truth in painted frescoes shown,</span><br /> +And, seeing these, the pious in those halls<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Felt their cold, lone austereness less alone.</span><br /> +<br /> +At that time when Christ's seed flowered all around,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">More than one monk, forgotten in his hour,</span><br /> +Taking for studio the burial-ground,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Glorified Death with simple faith and power.</span><br /> +<br /> +And my soul is a sepulchre where I,<br /> +Ill cenobite, have spent eternity:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the vile cloister walls no pictures rise.</span><br /> +<br /> +O when may I cast off this weariness,<br /> +And make the pageant of my old distress<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For these hands labour, pleasure for these eyes?</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_TEMPTATION" id="THE_TEMPTATION"></a>THE TEMPTATION.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +The Demon, in my chamber high.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This morning came to visit me,</span><br /> +And, thinking he would find some fault,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He whispered: "I would know of thee</span><br /> +<br /> +Among the many lovely things<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That make the magic of her face,</span><br /> +Among the beauties, black and rose,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That make her body's charm and grace,</span><br /> +<br /> +Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To the Abhorred, O soul of mine:</span><br /> +"No single beauty is the best<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When she is all one flower divine.</span><br /> +<br /> +When all things charm me I ignore<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which one alone brings most delight;</span><br /> +She shines before me like the dawn,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And she consoles me like the night.</span><br /> +<br /> +The harmony is far too great,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That governs all her body fair,</span><br /> +For impotence to analyse<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And say which note is sweetest there.</span><br /> +<br /> +O mystic metamorphosis!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My senses into one sense flow—</span><br /> +Her voice makes perfume when she speaks,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her breath is music faint and low!"</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_IRREPARABLE" id="THE_IRREPARABLE"></a>THE IRREPARABLE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Can we suppress the old Remorse<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who bends our heart beneath his stroke,</span><br /> +Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or as the acorn on the oak?</span><br /> +Can we suppress the old Remorse!<br /> +<br /> +Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">May we drown this our ancient foe,</span><br /> +Destructive glutton, gorging well,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Patient as the ants, and slow?</span><br /> +What wine, what philtre, or what spell?<br /> +<br /> +Tell it, enchantress, if you can,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tell me, with anguish overcast,</span><br /> +Wounded, as a dying man,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past.</span><br /> +Tell it, enchantress, if you can,<br /> +<br /> +To him the wolf already tears<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who sees the carrion pinions wave,</span><br /> +This broken warrior who despairs<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To have a cross above his grave—</span><br /> +This wretch the wolf already tears.<br /> +<br /> +Can one illume a leaden sky,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or tear apart the shadowy veil</span><br /> +Thicker than pitch, no star on high,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not one funereal glimmer pale</span><br /> +Can one illume a leaden sky?<br /> +<br /> +Hope lit the windows of the Inn,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But now that shining flame is dead;</span><br /> +And how shall martyred pilgrims win<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Along the moonless road they tread?</span><br /> +Satan has darkened all the Inn!<br /> +<br /> +Witch, do you love accursèd hearts?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Say, do you know the reprobate?</span><br /> +Know you Remorse, whose venomed darts<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Make souls the targets for their hate?</span><br /> +Witch, do you know accursèd hearts?<br /> +<br /> +The Might-have-been with tooth accursed<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gnaws at the piteous souls of men,</span><br /> +The deep foundations suffer first,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And all the structure crumbles then</span><br /> +Beneath the bitter tooth accursed. +</p> + +<h4>II.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +Often, when seated at the play,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And sonorous music lights the stage,</span><br /> +I see the frail hand of a Fay<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With magic dawn illume the rage</span><br /> +Of the dark sky. Oft at the play<br /> +<br /> +A being made of gauze and fire<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Casts to the earth a Demon great.</span><br /> +And my heart, whence all hopes expire,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is like a stage where I await,</span><br /> +In vain, the Fay with wings of fire!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="A_FORMER_LIFE" id="A_FORMER_LIFE"></a>A FORMER LIFE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes,<br /> +By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired,<br /> +Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows,<br /> +Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired.<br /> +<br /> +The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies<br /> +Mingled its music, turbulent and rich,<br /> +Solemn and mystic, with the colours which<br /> +The setting sun reflected in my eyes.<br /> +<br /> +And there I lived amid voluptuous calms,<br /> +In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave,<br /> +Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave,<br /> +<br /> +Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms.<br /> +They were my slaves—the only care they had<br /> +To know what secret grief had made me sad.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="DON_JUAN_IN_HADES" id="DON_JUAN_IN_HADES"></a>DON JUAN IN HADES.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +When Juan sought the subterranean flood.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore.</span><br /> +Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stood<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With one strong, vengeful hand on either oar.</span><br /> +<br /> +With open robes and bodies agonised,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lost women writhed beneath that darkling sky;</span><br /> +There were sounds as of victims sacrificed:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Behind him all the dark was one long cry.</span><br /> +<br /> +And Sganarelle, with laughter, claimed his pledge;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Don Luis, with trembling finger in the air,</span><br /> +Showed to the souls who wandered in the sedge<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The evil son who scorned his hoary hair.</span><br /> +<br /> +Shivering with woe, chaste Elvira the while,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Near him untrue to all but her till now,</span><br /> +Seemed to beseech him for one farewell smile<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lit with the sweetness of the first soft vow.</span><br /> +<br /> +And clad in armour, a tall man of stone<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Held firm the helm, and clove the gloomy flood;</span><br /> +But, staring at the vessel's track alone,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bent on his sword the unmoved hero stood.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_LIVING_FLAME" id="THE_LIVING_FLAME"></a>THE LIVING FLAME.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +They pass before me, these Eyes full of light,<br /> +Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise;<br /> +The holy brothers pass before my sight,<br /> +And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes.<br /> +<br /> +They keep me from all sin and error grave,<br /> +They set me in the path whence Beauty came;<br /> +They are my servants, and I am their slave,<br /> +And all my soul obeys the living flame.<br /> +<br /> +Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light<br /> +As candles lighted at full noon; the sun<br /> +Dims not your flame phantastical and bright.<br /> +<br /> +You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done;<br /> +Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn,<br /> +Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="CORRESPONDENCES" id="CORRESPONDENCES"></a>CORRESPONDENCES.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +In Nature's temple living pillars rise,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And words are murmured none have understood.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And man must wander through a tangled wood</span><br /> +Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes.<br /> +<br /> +As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mingle to one deep sound and fade away;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vast as the night and brilliant as the day,</span><br /> +Colour and sound and perfume speak to him.<br /> +<br /> +Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green;</span><br /> +Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild,<br /> +<br /> +Have all the expansion of things infinite:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin,</span><br /> +Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_FLASK" id="THE_FLASK"></a>THE FLASK.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +There are some powerful odours that can pass<br /> +Out of the stoppered flagon; even glass<br /> +To them is porous. Oft when some old box<br /> +Brought from the East is opened and the locks<br /> +And hinges creak and cry; or in a press<br /> +In some deserted house, where the sharp stress<br /> +Of odours old and dusty fills the brain;<br /> +An ancient flask is brought to light again,<br /> +And forth the ghosts of long-dead odours creep.<br /> +There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep<br /> +A thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides,<br /> +Phantoms of old the folding darkness hides,<br /> +Who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold,<br /> +Rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold. +</p> + +<p class="margin-b"> +A memory that brings languor flutters here:<br /> +The fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear<br /> +Thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit<br /> +Where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet,<br /> +Arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost<br /> +Of an old passion, long since loved and lost.<br /> +So I, when vanished from man's memory<br /> +Deep in some dark and sombre chest I lie.<br /> +An empty flagon they have cast aside,<br /> +Broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride,<br /> +Will be your shroud, beloved pestilence!<br /> +The witness of your might and virulence,<br /> +Sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup<br /> +Of life and death my heart has drunken up!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="REVERSIBILITY" id="REVERSIBILITY"></a>REVERSIBILITY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the vague terrors of the fearful night</span><br /> +That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf?<br /> +Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief?<br /> +<br /> +Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With hands clenched in the shade and tears of gall,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When Vengeance beats her hellish battle-call,</span><br /> +And makes herself the captain of our fate,<br /> +Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate?<br /> +<br /> +Angel of health, did ever you know pain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Which like an exile trails his tired footfalls</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The cold length of the white infirmary walls,</span><br /> +With lips compressed, seeking the sun in vain?<br /> +Angel of health, did ever you know pain?<br /> +<br /> +Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Know you the fear of age, the torment vile</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of reading secret horror in the smile</span><br /> +Of eyes your eyes have loved since long ago?<br /> +Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know?<br /> +<br /> +Angel of happiness, and joy, and light,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Old David would have asked for youth afresh</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the pure touch of your enchanted flesh;</span><br /> +I but implore your prayers to aid my plight,<br /> +Angel of happiness, and joy, and light.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_EYES_OF_BEAUTY" id="THE_EYES_OF_BEAUTY"></a>THE EYES OF BEAUTY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose;<br /> +But all the sea of sadness in my blood<br /> +Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose,<br /> +Salt with the memory of the bitter flood.<br /> +<br /> +In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er,<br /> +That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate<br /> +By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more<br /> +Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate.<br /> +<br /> +It is a ruin where the jackals rest,<br /> +And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay—<br /> +A perfume swims about your naked breast!<br /> +<br /> +Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way!<br /> +With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared<br /> +Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="SONNET_OF_AUTUMN" id="SONNET_OF_AUTUMN"></a>SONNET OF AUTUMN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?"</span><br /> +Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All save that antique brute-like faith of thine;</span><br /> +<br /> +And will not bare the secret of their shame<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long,</span><br /> +Nor their black legend write for thee in flame!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Passion I hate, a spirit does me wrong.</span><br /> +<br /> +Let us love gently. Love, from his retreat,<br /> +Ambushed and shadowy, bends his fatal bow,<br /> +And I too well his ancient arrows know:<br /> +<br /> +Crime, horror, folly. O pale marguerite,<br /> +Thou art as I, a bright sun fallen low,<br /> +O my so white, my so cold Marguerite.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_REMORSE_OF_THE_DEAD" id="THE_REMORSE_OF_THE_DEAD"></a>THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the deep heart of a black marble tomb;</span><br /> +When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom;</span><br /> +<br /> +And when the stone upon thy trembling breast,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace,</span><br /> +Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And holds those feet from their adventurous race;</span><br /> +<br /> +Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie,<br /> +(For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend)<br /> +During long nights when sleep is far from thee,<br /> +<br /> +Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend<br /> +The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"—<br /> +And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_GHOST" id="THE_GHOST"></a>THE GHOST.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove<br /> +I will return to thy alcove.<br /> +And glide upon the night to thee,<br /> +Treading the shadows silently.<br /> +<br /> +And I will give to thee, my own,<br /> +Kisses as icy as the moon,<br /> +And the caresses of a snake<br /> +Cold gliding in the thorny brake.<br /> +<br /> +And when returns the livid morn<br /> +Thou shalt find all my place forlorn<br /> +And chilly, till the falling night.<br /> +<br /> +Others would rule by tenderness<br /> +Over thy life and youthfulness,<br /> +But I would conquer thee by fright!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="TO_A_MADONNA" id="TO_A_MADONNA"></a>TO A MADONNA.</h3> + +<p>(<i>An Ex-Voto in the Spanish taste</i>.)</p> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Madonna, mistress. I would build for thee<br /> +An altar deep in the sad soul of me;<br /> +And in the darkest corner of my heart,<br /> +From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart,<br /> +Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine<br /> +For thee to stand erect in, Image divine!<br /> +And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crowned<br /> +Wrought of the gold of my smooth Verse, set round<br /> +With starry crystal rhymes; and I will make,<br /> +O mortal maid, a Mantle for thy sake,<br /> +And weave it of my jealousy, a gown<br /> +Heavy, barbaric, stiff, and weighted down<br /> +With my distrust, and broider round the hem<br /> +Not pearls, but all my tears in place of them.<br /> +And then thy wavering, trembling robe shall be<br /> +All the desires that rise and fall in me<br /> +From mountain-peaks to valleys of repose,<br /> +Kissing thy lovely body's white and rose.<br /> +For thy humiliated feet divine,<br /> +Of my Respect I'll make thee Slippers fine<br /> +Which, prisoning them within a gentle fold,<br /> +<br /> +Shall keep their imprint like a faithful mould.<br /> +And if my art, unwearying and discreet,<br /> +Can make no Moon of Silver for thy feet<br /> +To have for Footstool, then thy heel shall rest<br /> +Upon the snake that gnaws within my breast,<br /> +Victorious Queen of whom our hope is born!<br /> +And thou shalt trample down and make a scorn<br /> +Of the vile reptile swollen up with hate.<br /> +And thou shalt see my thoughts, all consecrate,<br /> +Like candles set before thy flower-strewn shrine,<br /> +O Queen of Virgins, and the taper-shine<br /> +Shall glimmer star-like in the vault of blue,<br /> +With eyes of flame for ever watching you.<br /> +While all the love and worship in my sense<br /> +Will be sweet smoke of myrrh and frankincense.<br /> +Ceaselessly up to thee, white peak of snow,<br /> +My stormy spirit will in vapours go!<br /> +<br /> +And last, to make thy drama all complete,<br /> +That love and cruelty may mix and meet,<br /> +I, thy remorseful torturer, will take<br /> +All the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them make<br /> +In darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen,<br /> +And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen,<br /> +That spot profound whence love and mercy start,<br /> +I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SKY" id="THE_SKY"></a>THE SKY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Where'er he be, on water or on land,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold;</span><br /> +One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shadowy beggar or CrÅ“sus rich with gold;</span><br /> +<br /> +Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His little brain may be, alive or dead;</span><br /> +Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead.</span><br /> +<br /> +The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall;<br /> +The lighted ceiling of a music-hall<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where every actor treads a bloody soil—</span><br /> +<br /> +The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot;<br /> +The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where the vast human generations boil!</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="SPLEEN" id="SPLEEN"></a>SPLEEN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins<br /> +Flows aged blood; who rules a land of rains;<br /> +Who, young in years, is old in all distress;<br /> +Who flees good counsel to find weariness<br /> +Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred<br /> +Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird;<br /> +Whose weary face emotion moves no more<br /> +E'en when his people die before his door.<br /> +His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile<br /> +Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile;<br /> +The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good,<br /> +Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood<br /> +No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom<br /> +Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb.<br /> +The sage who takes his gold essays in vain<br /> +To purge away the old corrupted strain,<br /> +His baths of blood, that in the days of old<br /> +The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold,<br /> +Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains,<br /> +For green Lethean water fills his veins.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_OWLS" id="THE_OWLS"></a>THE OWLS.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Under the overhanging yews,<br /> +The dark owls sit in solemn state.<br /> +Like stranger gods; by twos and twos<br /> +Their red eyes gleam. They meditate.<br /> +<br /> +Motionless thus they sit and dream<br /> +Until that melancholy hour<br /> +When, with the sun's last fading gleam,<br /> +The nightly shades assume their power.<br /> +<br /> +From their still attitude the wise<br /> +Will learn with terror to despise<br /> +All tumult, movement, and unrest;<br /> +<br /> +For he who follows every shade,<br /> +Carries the memory in his breast,<br /> +Of each unhappy journey made.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="BIEN_LOIN_DICI" id="BIEN_LOIN_DICI"></a>BIEN LOIN D'ICI.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Here is the chamber consecrate,<br /> +Wherein this maiden delicate,<br /> +And enigmatically sedate,<br /> +<br /> +Fans herself while the moments creep,<br /> +Upon her cushions half-asleep,<br /> +And hears the fountains plash and weep.<br /> +<br /> +Dorothy's chamber undefiled.<br /> +The winds and waters sing afar<br /> +Their song of sighing strange and wild<br /> +To lull to sleep the petted child.<br /> +<br /> +From head to foot with subtle care,<br /> +Slaves have perfumed her delicate skin<br /> +With odorous oils and benzoin.<br /> +And flowers faint in a corner there.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="MUSIC" id="MUSIC"></a>MUSIC.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Music doth oft uplift me like a sea<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Towards my planet pale,</span><br /> +Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinity<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I lift my wandering sail.</span><br /> +<br /> +With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And through the cordage wail,</span><br /> +I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Beneath her sombre veil.</span><br /> +<br /> +I feel the tremblings of all passions known<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To ships before the breeze;</span><br /> +Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I pass the abysmal seas</span><br /> +That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of my despair!</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="CONTEMPLATION" id="CONTEMPLATION"></a>CONTEMPLATION.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Thou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still,<br /> +The eve is thine which even now drops down,<br /> +To carry peace or care to human will,<br /> +And in a misty veil enfolds the town.<br /> +<br /> +While the vile mortals of the multitude,<br /> +By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on,<br /> +Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood—<br /> +Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone<br /> +<br /> +Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years,<br /> +In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim;<br /> +And from the water, smiling through her tears,<br /> +<br /> +Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim;<br /> +And in the east, her long shroud trailing light,<br /> +List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="TO_A_BROWN_BEGGAR-MAID" id="TO_A_BROWN_BEGGAR-MAID"></a>TO A BROWN BEGGAR-MAID.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +White maiden with the russet hair,<br /> +Whose garments, through their holes, declare<br /> +That poverty is part of you,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And beauty too.</span><br /> +<br /> +To me, a sorry bard and mean,<br /> +Your youthful beauty, frail and lean,<br /> +With summer freckles here and there,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Is sweet and fair.</span><br /> +<br /> +Your sabots tread the roads of chance,<br /> +And not one queen of old romance<br /> +Carried her velvet shoes and lace<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With half your grace.</span><br /> +<br /> +In place of tatters far too short<br /> +Let the proud garments worn at Court<br /> +Fall down with rustling fold and pleat<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">About your feet;</span><br /> +<br /> +In place of stockings, worn and old,<br /> +Let a keen dagger all of gold<br /> +Gleam in your garter for the eyes<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of roués wise;</span><br /> +<br /> +Let ribbons carelessly untied<br /> +Reveal to us the radiant pride<br /> +Of your white bosom purer far<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Than any star;</span><br /> +<br /> +Let your white arms uncovered shine.<br /> +Polished and smooth and half divine;<br /> +And let your elfish fingers chase<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With riotous grace</span><br /> +<br /> +The purest pearls that softly glow.<br /> +The sweetest sonnets of Belleau,<br /> +Offered by gallants ere they fight<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For your delight;</span><br /> +<br /> +And many fawning rhymers who<br /> +Inscribe their first thin book to you<br /> +Will contemplate upon the stair<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Your slipper fair;</span><br /> +<br /> +And many a page who plays at cards,<br /> +And many lords and many bards,<br /> +Will watch your going forth, and burn<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">For your return;</span><br /> +<br /> +And you will count before your glass<br /> +More kisses than the lily has;<br /> +And more than one Valois will sigh<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">When you pass by.</span><br /> +<br /> +But meanwhile you are on the tramp,<br /> +Begging your living in the damp,<br /> +Wandering mean streets and alleys o'er,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">From door to door;</span><br /> +<br /> +And shilling bangles in a shop<br /> +Cause you with eager eyes to stop,<br /> +And I, alas, have not a son<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To give to you.</span><br /> +<br /> +Then go, with no more ornament,<br /> +Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent,<br /> +Than your own fragile naked grace<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And lovely face.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SWAN" id="THE_SWAN"></a>THE SWAN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Andromache, I think of you! The stream,<br /> +The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days<br /> +Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief,<br /> +The lying Simoïs flooded by your tears,<br /> +Made all my fertile memory blossom forth<br /> +As I passed by the new-built Carrousel.<br /> +Old Paris is no more (a town, alas,<br /> +Changes more quickly than man's heart may change);<br /> +Yet in my mind I still can see the booths;<br /> +The heaps of brick and rough-hewn capitals;<br /> +The grass; the stones all over-green with moss;<br /> +The <i>débris</i>, and the square-set heaps of tiles.<br /> +<br /> +There a menagerie was once outspread;<br /> +And there I saw, one morning at the hour<br /> +When toil awakes beneath the cold, clear sky,<br /> +And the road roars upon the silent air,<br /> +A swan who had escaped his cage, and walked<br /> +On the dry pavement with his webby feet,<br /> +And trailed his spotless plumage on the ground.<br /> +<br /> +And near a waterless stream the piteous swan<br /> +Opened his beak, and bathing in the dust<br /> +His nervous wings, he cried (his heart the while<br /> +Filled with a vision of his own fair lake):<br /> +"O water, when then wilt thou come in rain?<br /> +Lightning, when wilt thou glitter?"<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 18.5em;">Sometimes yet</span><br /> +I see the hapless bird—strange, fatal myth—<br /> +Like him that Ovid writes of, lifting up<br /> +Unto the cruelly blue, ironic heavens,<br /> +With stretched, convulsive neck a thirsty face,<br /> +As though he sent reproaches up to God! +</p> +<h4>II.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +Paris may change; my melancholy is fixed.<br /> +New palaces, and scaffoldings, and blocks,<br /> +And suburbs old, are symbols all to me<br /> +Whose memories are as heavy as a stone.<br /> +And so, before the Louvre, to vex my soul,<br /> +The image came of my majestic swan<br /> +With his mad gestures, foolish and sublime,<br /> +As of an exile whom one great desire<br /> +Gnaws with no truce. And then I thought of you,<br /> +Andromache! torn from your hero's arms;<br /> +Beneath the hand of Pyrrhus in his pride;<br /> +<br /> +Bent o'er an empty tomb in ecstasy;<br /> +Widow of Hector—wife of Helenus!<br /> +And of the negress, wan and phthisical,<br /> +Tramping the mud, and with her haggard eyes<br /> +Seeking beyond the mighty walls of fog<br /> +The absent palm-trees of proud Africa;<br /> +Of all who lose that which they never find;<br /> +Of all who drink of tears; all whom grey grief<br /> +Gives suck to as the kindly wolf gave suck;<br /> +Of meagre orphans who like blossoms fade.<br /> +And one old Memory like a crying horn<br /> +Sounds through the forest where my soul is lost....<br /> +I think of sailors on some isle forgotten;<br /> +Of captives; vanquished ... and of many more.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SEVEN_OLD_MEN" id="THE_SEVEN_OLD_MEN"></a>THE SEVEN OLD MEN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +O swarming city, city full of dreams,<br /> +Where in full day the spectre walks and speaks;<br /> +Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins<br /> +My story flows as flows the rising sap.<br /> +<br /> +One morn, disputing with my tired soul,<br /> +And like a hero stiffening all my nerves,<br /> +I trod a suburb shaken by the jar<br /> +Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified<br /> +The houses either side of that sad street,<br /> +So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood<br /> +Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist,<br /> +Unclean and yellow, inundated space—<br /> +A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul.<br /> +Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags<br /> +Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks<br /> +Should have brought alms in floods upon his head,<br /> +Without the misery gleaming in his eye,<br /> +Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed<br /> +To have been washed with gall; the bitter frost<br /> +Sharpened his glance; and from his chin a beard<br /> +Sword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth.<br /> +He was not bent but broken: his backbone<br /> +Made a so true right angle with his legs,<br /> +That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gave<br /> +The finish to the picture, made him seem<br /> +Like some infirm and stumbling quadruped<br /> +Or a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mud<br /> +He walked with troubled and uncertain gait,<br /> +As though his sabots trod upon the dead,<br /> +Indifferent and hostile to the world.<br /> +<br /> +His double followed him: tatters and stick<br /> +And back and eye and beard, all were the same;<br /> +Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable,<br /> +These centenarian twins, these spectres odd,<br /> +Trod the same pace toward some end unknown.<br /> +To what fell complot was I then exposed!<br /> +Humiliated by what evil chance?<br /> +For as the minutes one by one went by<br /> +Seven times I saw this sinister old man<br /> +Repeat his image there before my eyes!<br /> +<br /> +Let him who smiles at my inquietude,<br /> +Who never trembled at a fear like mine,<br /> +Know that in their decrepitude's despite<br /> +These seven old hideous monsters had the mien<br /> +Of beings immortal.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 11em;">Then, I thought, must I,</span><br /> +Undying, contemplate the awful eighth;<br /> +Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double;<br /> +Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself<br /> +And his own son! In terror then I turned<br /> +My back upon the infernal band, and fled<br /> +To my own place, and closed my door; distraught<br /> +And like a drunkard who sees all things twice,<br /> +With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick,<br /> +Wounded by mystery and absurdity!<br /> +<br /> +In vain my reason tried to cross the bar,<br /> +The whirling storm but drove her back again;<br /> +And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck,<br /> +Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_LITTLE_OLD_WOMEN" id="THE_LITTLE_OLD_WOMEN"></a>THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Deep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns,<br /> +Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns,<br /> +I watch, obedient to my fatal mood,<br /> +For the decrepit, strange and charming beings,<br /> +The dislocated monsters that of old<br /> +Were lovely women—Laïs or Eponine!<br /> +Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be,<br /> +Let us still love them, for they still have souls.<br /> +They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags,<br /> +Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind,<br /> +They tremble when an omnibus rolls by,<br /> +And at their sides, a relic of the past,<br /> +A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs.<br /> +They trot about, most like to marionettes;<br /> +They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast;<br /> +Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bell<br /> +Where hangs and swings a demon without pity.<br /> +Though they be broken they have piercing eyes,<br /> +That shine like pools where water sleeps at night;<br /> +The astonished and divine eyes of a child<br /> +Who laughs at all that glitters in the world.<br /> +</p> + +<p class="margin-b"> +Have you not seen that most old women's shrouds<br /> +Are little like the shroud of a dead child?<br /> +Wise Death, in token of his happy whim,<br /> +Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet.<br /> +And when I see a phantom, frail and wan,<br /> +Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris,<br /> +It ever seems as though the delicate thing<br /> +Trod with soft steps towards a cradle new.<br /> +And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form,<br /> +How many times must workmen change the shape<br /> +Of boxes where at length such limbs are laid?<br /> +These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears;<br /> +Crucibles where the cooling metal pales—<br /> +Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to him<br /> +Whose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster. +</p> + +<h4>II.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +The love-sick vestal of the old "Frasciti";<br /> +Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose name<br /> +Only the prompter knows and he is dead;<br /> +Bygone celebrities that in bygone days<br /> +The Tivoli o'ershadowed in their bloom;<br /> +All charm me; yet among these beings frail<br /> +Three, turning pain to honey-sweetness, said<br /> +To the Devotion that had lent them wings:<br /> +"Lift me, O powerful Hippogriffe, to the skies"—<br /> +One by her country to despair was driven;<br /> +One by her husband overwhelmed with grief;<br /> +One wounded by her child, Madonna-like;<br /> +Each could have made a river with her tears. +</p> + +<h4>III.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +Oft have I followed one of these old women,<br /> +One among others, when the falling sun<br /> +Reddened the heavens with a crimson wound—<br /> +Pensive, apart, she rested on a bench<br /> +To hear the brazen music of the band,<br /> +Played by the soldiers in the public park<br /> +To pour some courage into citizens' hearts,<br /> +On golden eves when all the world revives.<br /> +Proud and erect she drank the music in,<br /> +The lively and the warlike call to arms;<br /> +Her eyes blinked like an ancient eagle's eyes;<br /> +Her forehead seemed to await the laurel crown! +</p> + +<h4>IV.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +Thus you do wander, uncomplaining Stoics,<br /> +Through all the chaos of the living town:<br /> +Mothers with bleeding hearts, saints, courtesans,<br /> +Whose names of yore were on the lips of all;<br /> +Who were all glory and all grace, and now<br /> +None know you; and the brutish drunkard stops,<br /> +Insulting you with his derisive love;<br /> +And cowardly urchins call behind your back.<br /> +Ashamed of living, withered shadows all,<br /> +With fear-bowed backs you creep beside the walls,<br /> +And none salute you, destined to loneliness!<br /> +Refuse of Time ripe for Eternity!<br /> +But I, who watch you tenderly afar,<br /> +With unquiet eyes on your uncertain steps,<br /> +As though I were your father, I—O wonder!—<br /> +Unknown to you taste secret, hidden joy.<br /> +I see your maiden passions bud and bloom,<br /> +Sombre or luminous, and your lost days<br /> +Unroll before me while my heart enjoys<br /> +All your old vices, and my soul expands<br /> +To all the virtues that have once been yours.<br /> +Ruined! and my sisters! O congenerate hearts,<br /> +Octogenarian Eves o'er whom is stretched<br /> +God's awful claw, where will you be to-morrow?<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="A_MADRIGAL_OF_SORROW" id="A_MADRIGAL_OF_SORROW"></a>A MADRIGAL OF SORROW.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +What do I care though you be wise?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Be sad, be beautiful; your tears</span><br /> +But add one more charm to your eyes,<br /> +As streams to valleys where they rise;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And fairer every flower appears</span><br /> +<br /> +After the storm. I love you most<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When joy has fled your brow downcast;</span><br /> +When your heart is in horror lost,<br /> +And o'er your present like a ghost<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Floats the dark shadow of the past.</span><br /> +<br /> +I love you when the teardrop flows,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hotter than blood, from your large eye;</span><br /> +When I would hush you to repose<br /> +Your heavy pain breaks forth and grows<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Into a loud and tortured cry.</span><br /> +<br /> +And then, voluptuousness divine!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Delicious ritual and profound!</span><br /> +I drink in every sob like wine,<br /> +And dream that in your deep heart shine<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The pearls wherein your eyes were drowned.</span><br /> +<br /> +I know your heart, which overflows<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With outworn loves long cast aside,</span><br /> +Still like a furnace flames and glows,<br /> +And you within your breast enclose<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A damnèd soul's unbending pride;</span><br /> +<br /> +But till your dreams without release<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reflect the leaping flames of hell;</span><br /> +Till in a nightmare without cease<br /> +You dream of poison to bring peace,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And love cold steel and powder well;</span><br /> +<br /> +And tremble at each opened door,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And feel for every man distrust,</span><br /> +And shudder at the striking hour—<br /> +Till then you have not felt the power<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of Irresistible Disgust.</span><br /> +<br /> +My queen, my slave, whose love is fear,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When you awaken shuddering,</span><br /> +Until that awful hour be here,<br /> +You cannot say at midnight drear:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"I am your equal, O my King!"</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_IDEAL" id="THE_IDEAL"></a>THE IDEAL.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Not all the beauties in old prints vignetted,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The worthless products of an outworn age,</span><br /> +With slippered feet and fingers castanetted,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The thirst of hearts like this heart can assuage.</span><br /> +<br /> +To Gavarni, the poet of chloroses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I leave his troupes of beauties sick and wan;</span><br /> +I cannot find among these pale, pale roses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The red ideal mine eyes would gaze upon.</span><br /> +<br /> +Lady Macbeth, the lovely star of crime,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Greek poet's dream born in a northern clime—</span><br /> +Ah, she could quench my dark heart's deep desiring;<br /> +<br /> +Or Michelangelo's dark daughter Night,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In a strange posture dreamily admiring</span><br /> +Her beauty fashioned for a giant's delight!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="MIST_AND_RAIN" id="MIST_AND_RAIN"></a>MIST AND RAIN.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Autumns and winters, springs of mire and rain,<br /> +Seasons of sleep, I sing your praises loud,<br /> +For thus I love to wrap my heart and brain<br /> +In some dim tomb beneath a vapoury shroud<br /> +<br /> +In the wide plain where revels the cold wind,<br /> +Through long nights when the weathercock whirls round,<br /> +More free than in warm summer day my mind<br /> +Lifts wide her raven pinions from the ground.<br /> +<br /> +Unto a heart filled with funereal things<br /> +That since old days hoar frosts have gathered on,<br /> +Naught is more sweet, O pallid, queenly springs,<br /> +<br /> +Than the long pageant of your shadows wan,<br /> +Unless it be on moonless eves to weep<br /> +On some chance bed and rock our griefs to sleep.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="SUNSET" id="SUNSET"></a>SUNSET.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Fair is the sun when first he flames above,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flinging his joy down in a happy beam;</span><br /> +And happy he who can salute with love<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sunset far more glorious than a dream.</span><br /> +<br /> +Flower, stream, and furrow!—I have seen them all<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the sun's eye swoon like one trembling heart—</span><br /> +Though it be late let us with speed depart<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To catch at least one last ray ere it fall!</span><br /> +<br /> +But I pursue the fading god in vain,<br /> +For conquering Night makes firm her dark domain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mist and gloom fall, and terrors glide between,</span><br /> +<br /> +And graveyard odours in the shadow swim,<br /> +And my faint footsteps on the marsh's rim,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bruise the cold snail and crawling toad unseen.</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_CORPSE" id="THE_CORPSE"></a>THE CORPSE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Remember, my Beloved, what thing we met<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By the roadside on that sweet summer day;</span><br /> +There on a grassy couch with pebbles set,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A loathsome body lay.</span><br /> +<br /> +The wanton limbs stiff-stretched into the air,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Steaming with exhalations vile and dank,</span><br /> +In ruthless cynic fashion had laid bare<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The swollen side and flank.</span><br /> +<br /> +On this decay the sun shone hot from heaven<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As though with chemic heat to broil and burn,</span><br /> +And unto Nature all that she had given<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">A hundredfold return.</span><br /> +<br /> +The sky smiled down upon the horror there<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As on a flower that opens to the day;</span><br /> +So awful an infection smote the air,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Almost you swooned away.</span><br /> +<br /> +The swarming flies hummed on the putrid side,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whence poured the maggots in a darkling stream,</span><br /> +That ran along these tatters of life's pride<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">With a liquescent gleam.</span><br /> +<br /> +And like a wave the maggots rose and fell,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The murmuring flies swirled round in busy strife:</span><br /> +It seemed as though a vague breath came to swell<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">And multiply with life</span><br /> +<br /> +The hideous corpse. From all this living world<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A music as of wind and water ran,</span><br /> +Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirled<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">By the swift winnower's fan.</span><br /> +<br /> +And then the vague forms like a dream died out,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or like some distant scene that slowly falls</span><br /> +Upon the artist's canvas, that with doubt<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">He only half recalls.</span><br /> +<br /> +A homeless dog behind the boulders lay<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And watched us both with angry eyes forlorn,</span><br /> +Waiting a chance to come and take away<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">The morsel she had torn.</span><br /> +<br /> +And you, even you, will be like this drear thing,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A vile infection man may not endure;</span><br /> +Star that I yearn to! Sun that lights my spring!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">O passionate and pure!</span><br /> +<br /> +Yes, such will you be, Queen of every grace!<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When the last sacramental words are said;</span><br /> +And beneath grass and flowers that lovely face<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Moulders among the dead.</span><br /> +<br /> +Then, O Beloved, whisper to the worm<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That crawls up to devour you with a kiss,</span><br /> +That I still guard in memory the dear form<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Of love that comes to this!</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="AN_ALLEGORY" id="AN_ALLEGORY"></a>AN ALLEGORY.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Here is a woman, richly clad and fair,<br /> +Who in her wine dips her long, heavy hair;<br /> +Love's claws, and that sharp poison which is sin,<br /> +Are dulled against the granite of her skin.<br /> +Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon,<br /> +For their sharp scythe-like talons every one<br /> +Pass by her in their all-destructive play;<br /> +Leaving her beauty till a later day.<br /> +Goddess she walks; sultana in her leisure;<br /> +She has Mohammed's faith that heaven is pleasure,<br /> +And bids all men forget the world's alarms<br /> +Upon her breast, between her open arms.<br /> +She knows, and she believes, this sterile maid,<br /> +Without whom the world's onward dream would fade,<br /> +That bodily beauty is the supreme gift<br /> +Which may from every sin the terror lift.<br /> +Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies;<br /> +And when black Night shall roll before her eyes,<br /> +She will look straight in Death's grim face forlorn,<br /> +Without remorse or hate—as one new born.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_ACCURSED" id="THE_ACCURSED"></a>THE ACCURSED.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Like pensive herds at rest upon the sands,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">These to the sea-horizons turn their eyes;</span><br /> +Out of their folded feet and clinging hands<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bitter sharp tremblings and soft languors rise.</span><br /> +<br /> +Some tread the thicket by the babbling stream,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Their hearts with untold secrets ill at ease;</span><br /> +Calling the lover of their childhood's dream,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They wound the green bark of the shooting trees.</span><br /> +<br /> +Others like sisters wander, grave and slow,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Among the rocks haunted by spectres thin,</span><br /> +Where Antony saw as larvæ surge and flow<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The veined bare breasts that tempted him to sin.</span><br /> +<br /> +Some, when the resinous torch of burning wood<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flares in lost pagan caverns dark and deep,</span><br /> +Call thee to quench the fever in their blood,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bacchus, who singest old remorse to sleep!</span><br /> +<br /> +Then there are those the scapular bedights,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Whose long white vestments hide the whip's red stain,</span><br /> +Who mix, in sombre woods on lonely nights,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain.</span><br /> +<br /> +O virgins, demons, monsters, martyrs! ye<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who scorn whatever actual appears;</span><br /> +Saints, satyrs, seekers of Infinity,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So full of cries, so full of bitter tears;</span><br /> +<br /> +Te whom my soul has followed into hell,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I love and pity, O sad sisters mine,</span><br /> +Tour thirsts unquenched, your pains no tongue can tell,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And your great hearts, those urns of love divine!</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="LA_BEATRICE" id="LA_BEATRICE"></a>LA BEATRICE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew,<br /> +I to the winds my cries of anguish threw;<br /> +And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart,<br /> +Pricked gently with the poignard o'er my heart.<br /> +Then in full noon above my head a cloud<br /> +Descended tempest-swollen, and a crowd<br /> +Of wild, lascivious spirits huddled there,<br /> +The cruel and curious demons of the air,<br /> +Who coldly to consider me began;<br /> +Then, as a crowd jeers some unhappy man,<br /> +Exchanging gestures, winking with their eyes—<br /> +I heard a laughing and a whispering rise:<br /> +<br /> +"Let us at leisure contemplate this clown,<br /> +This shadow of Hamlet aping Hamlet's frown,<br /> +With wandering eyes and hair upon the wind.<br /> +Is't not a pity that this empty mind,<br /> +This tramp, this actor out of work, this droll,<br /> +Because he knows how to assume a rôle<br /> +Should dream that eagles and insects, streams and woods,<br /> +Stand still to hear him chaunt his dolorous moods?<br /> +<br /> +Even unto us, who made these ancient things,<br /> +The fool his public lamentation sings."<br /> +<br /> +With pride as lofty as the towering cloud,<br /> +I would have stilled these clamouring demons loud,<br /> +And turned in scorn my sovereign head away<br /> +Had I not seen—O sight to dim the day!—<br /> +There in the middle of the troupe obscene<br /> +The proud and peerless beauty of my Queen!<br /> +She laughed with them at all my dark distress,<br /> +And gave to each in turn a vile caress.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SOUL_OF_WINE" id="THE_SOUL_OF_WINE"></a>THE SOUL OF WINE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Man, unto thee, dear disinherited,</span><br /> +I sing a song of love and light divine—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red.</span><br /> +<br /> +"I know thou labourest on the hill of fire,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In sweat and pain beneath a flaming sun,</span><br /> +To give the life and soul my vines desire,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And I am grateful for thy labours done.</span><br /> +<br /> +"For I find joys unnumbered when I lave<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The throat of man by travail long outworn,</span><br /> +And his hot bosom is a sweeter grave<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of sounder sleep than my cold caves forlorn.</span><br /> +<br /> +"Hearest thou not the echoing Sabbath sound?<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The hope that whispers in my trembling breast?</span><br /> +Thy elbows on the table! gaze around;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Glorify me with joy and be at rest.</span><br /> +<br /> +"To thy wife's eyes I'll bring their long-lost gleam,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I'll bring back to thy child his strength and light,</span><br /> +To him, life's fragile athlete I will seem<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rare oil that firms his muscles for the fight.</span><br /> +<br /> +"I flow in man's heart as ambrosia flows;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The grain the eternal Sower casts in the sod—</span><br /> +From our first loves the first fair verse arose,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flower-like aspiring to the heavens and God!"</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_WINE_OF_LOVERS" id="THE_WINE_OF_LOVERS"></a>THE WINE OF LOVERS.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Space rolls to-day her splendour round!<br /> +Unbridled, spurless, without bound,<br /> +Mount we upon the wings of wine<br /> +For skies fantastic and divine!<br /> +<br /> +Let us, like angels tortured by<br /> +Some wild delirious phantasy,<br /> +Follow the far-off mirage born<br /> +In the blue crystal of the morn.<br /> +<br /> +And gently balanced on the wing<br /> +Of the wild whirlwind we will ride,<br /> +Rejoicing with the joyous thing.<br /> +<br /> +My sister, floating side by side,<br /> +Fly we unceasing whither gleams<br /> +The distant heaven of my dreams.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_DEATH_OF_LOVERS" id="THE_DEATH_OF_LOVERS"></a>THE DEATH OF LOVERS.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +There shall be couches whence faint odours rise,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound;</span><br /> +Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The death-bed of our love shall breathe around.</span><br /> +<br /> +And guarding their last embers till the end,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our hearts shall be the torches of the shrine,</span><br /> +And their two leaping flames shall fade and blend<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the twin mirrors of your soul and mine.</span><br /> +<br /> +And through the eve of rose and mystic blue<br /> +A beam of love shall pass from me to you,<br /> +Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell;<br /> +<br /> +And later still an angel, flinging wide<br /> +The gates, shall bring to life with joyful spell<br /> +The tarnished mirrors and the flames that died.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_DEATH_OF_THE_POOR" id="THE_DEATH_OF_THE_POOR"></a>THE DEATH OF THE POOR.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Death is consoler and Death brings to life;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The end of all, the solitary hope;</span><br /> +We, drunk with Death's elixir, face the strife,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Take heart, and mount till eve the weary slope.</span><br /> +<br /> +Across the storm, the hoar-frost, and the snow,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Death on our dark horizon pulses clear;</span><br /> +Death is the famous hostel we all know,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where we may rest and sleep and have good cheer.</span><br /> +<br /> +Death is an angel whose magnetic palms<br /> +Bring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calms<br /> +To smooth the beds of naked men and poor.<br /> +<br /> +Death is the mystic granary of God;<br /> +The poor man's purse; his fatherland of yore;<br /> +The Gate that opens into heavens un trod!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_BENEDICTION" id="THE_BENEDICTION"></a>THE BENEDICTION.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +When by the high decree of powers supreme,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Poet came into this world outworn,</span><br /> +She who had borne him, in a ghastly dream,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Clenched blasphemous hands at God, and cried in scorn:</span><br /> +<br /> +"O rather had I borne a writhing knot<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of unclean vipers, than my breast should nurse</span><br /> +This vile derision, of my joy begot<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To be my expiation and my curse!</span><br /> +<br /> +"Since of all women thou hast made of me<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Unto my husband a disgust and shame;</span><br /> +Since I may not cast this monstrosity,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like an old love-epistle, to the flame;</span><br /> +<br /> +"I will pour out thine overwhelming hate<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On this the accursed weapon of thy spite;</span><br /> +This stunted tree I will so desecrate<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That not one tainted bud shall see the light!"</span><br /> +<br /> +So foaming with the foam of hate and shame,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Blind unto God's design inexorable,</span><br /> +With her own hands she fed the purging flame<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To crimes maternal consecrate in hell.</span><br /> +<br /> +Meanwhile beneath an Angel's care unseen<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The child disowned grows drunken with the sun;</span><br /> +His food and drink, though they be poor and mean,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With streams of nectar and ambrosia run.</span><br /> +<br /> +Speaking to clouds and playing with the wind,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With joy he sings the sad Way of the Rood;</span><br /> +His shadowing pilgrim spirit weeps behind<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To see him gay as birds are in the wood.</span><br /> +<br /> +Those he would love looked sideways and with fear,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or, taking courage from his aspect mild,</span><br /> +Sought who should first bring to his eye the tear,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And spent their anger on the dreaming child.</span><br /> +<br /> +With all the bread and wine the Poet must eat<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">They mingled earth and ash and excrement,</span><br /> +All things he touched were spurned beneath their feet;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They mourned if they must tread the road he went.</span><br /> +<br /> +His wife ran crying in the public square:<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Since he has found me worthy to adore,</span><br /> +Shall I not be as antique idols were,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With gold and with bright colours painted o'er?</span><br /> +<br /> +"I will be drunk with nard and frankincense.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With myrrh, and knees bowed down, and flesh and wine.</span><br /> +Can I not, smiling, in his love-sick sense,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Usurp the homage due to beings divine?</span><br /> +<br /> +"I will lay on him my fierce, fragile hand<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When I am weary of the impious play;</span><br /> +For well these harpy talons understand<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To furrow to his heart their crimson way.</span><br /> +<br /> +"I'll tear the red thing beating from his breast,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To cast it with disdain upon the ground,</span><br /> +Like a young bird torn trembling from the nest—<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His heart shall go to gorge my favourite hound."</span><br /> +<br /> +To the far heaven, where gleams a splendid throne,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The Poet uplifts his arms in calm delight,</span><br /> +And the vast beams from his pure spirit flown,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wrap all the furious peoples from his sight:</span><br /> +<br /> +"Thou, O my God, be blest who givest pain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The balm divine for each imperfect heart,</span><br /> +The strong pure essence cleansing every stain<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of sin that keeps us from thy joys apart.</span><br /> +<br /> +"Among the numbers of thy legions blest,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I know a place awaits the poet there;</span><br /> +Him thou hast bid attend the eternal feast<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That Thrones and Virtues and Dominions share.</span><br /> +<br /> +"I know the one thing noble is a grief<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Withstanding earth's and hell's destructive tooth,</span><br /> +And I, through all my dolorous life and brief,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To gain the mystic crown, must cry the truth.</span><br /> +<br /> +"The jewels lost in Palmyra of old,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Metals unknown, pearls of the outer sea,</span><br /> +Are far too dim to set within the gold<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of the bright crown that Time prepares for me.</span><br /> +<br /> +"For it is wrought of pure unmingled light,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dipped in the white flame whence all flame is born—</span><br /> +The flame that makes all eyes, though diamond-bright,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Seem obscure mirrors, darkened and forlorn."</span><br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="GYPSIES_TRAVELLING" id="GYPSIES_TRAVELLING"></a>GYPSIES TRAVELLING.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +The tribe prophetic with the eyes of fire<br /> +Went forth last night; their little ones at rest<br /> +Each on his mother's back, with his desire<br /> +Set on the ready treasure of her breast.<br /> +<br /> +Laden with shining arms the men-folk tread<br /> +By the long wagons where their goods lie hidden;<br /> +They watch the heaven with eyes grown wearied<br /> +Of hopeless dreams that come to them unbidden.<br /> +<br /> +The grasshopper, from out his sandy screen,<br /> +Watching them pass redoubles his shrill song;<br /> +Dian, who loves them, makes the grass more green,<br /> +<br /> +And makes the rock run water for this throng<br /> +Of ever-wandering ones whose calm eyes see<br /> +Familiar realms of darkness yet to be.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="FRANCISCAE_MEAE_LAUDES" id="FRANCISCAE_MEAE_LAUDES"></a>FRANCISCÆ MEÆ LAUDES.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Novis te cantabo chordis,<br /> +O novelletum quod ludia<br /> +In solitudine cordis.<br /> +<br /> +Esto sertis implicata,<br /> +O fÅ“mina delicata<br /> +Per quam solvuntur peccata<br /> +<br /> +Sicut beneficum Lethe,<br /> +Hauriam oscula de te,<br /> +Quæ imbuta es magnete.<br /> +<br /> +Quum vitiorum tempestas<br /> +Turbabat omnes semitas,<br /> +Apparuisti, Deitas,<br /> +<br /> +Velut stella salutaris<br /> +In naufragiis amaris....<br /> +Suspendam cor tuis aris!<br /> +<br /> +Piscina plena virtutis,<br /> +Fons æternæ juventutis,<br /> +Labris vocem redde mutis!<br /> +<br /> +Quod erat spurcum, cremasti;<br /> +Quod rudius, exæquasti;<br /> +Quod debile, confirmasti!<br /> +<br /> +In fame mea taberna,<br /> +In nocte mea lucerna,<br /> +Recte me semper guberna.<br /> +<br /> +Adde nunc vires viribus,<br /> +Dulce balneum suavibus,<br /> +Unguentatum odoribus!<br /> +<br /> +Meos circa I umbos mica,<br /> +O castitatis lorica,<br /> +Aqua tincta seraphica;<br /> +<br /> +Patera gemmis corusca,<br /> +Panis salsus, mollis esca,<br /> +Divinum vinum, Francisca!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="ROBED_IN_A_SILKEN_ROBE" id="ROBED_IN_A_SILKEN_ROBE"></a>ROBED IN A SILKEN ROBE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +Robed in a silken robe that shines and shakes,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She seems to dance whene'er she treads the sod,</span><br /> +Like the long serpent that a fakir makes<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dance to the waving cadence of a rod.</span><br /> +<br /> +As the sad sand upon the desert's verge,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Insensible to mortal grief and strife;</span><br /> +As the long weeds that float among the surge,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">She folds indifference round her budding life.</span><br /> +<br /> +Her eyes are carved of minerals pure and cold,<br /> +And in her strange symbolic nature where<br /> +An angel mingles with the sphinx of old,<br /> +<br /> +Where all is gold and steel and light and air,<br /> +For ever, like a vain star, unafraid<br /> +Shines the cold hauteur of the sterile maid.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="A_LANDSCAPE" id="A_LANDSCAPE"></a>A LANDSCAPE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +I would, when I compose my solemn verse,<br /> +Sleep near the heaven as do astrologers,<br /> +Near the high bells, and with a dreaming mind<br /> +Hear their calm hymns blown to me on the wind.<br /> +<br /> +Out of my tower, with chin upon my hands,<br /> +I'll watch the singing, babbling human bands;<br /> +And see clock-towers like spars against the sky,<br /> +And heavens that bring thoughts of eternity;<br /> +<br /> +And softly, through the mist, will watch the birth<br /> +Of stars in heaven and lamplight on the earth;<br /> +The threads of smoke that rise above the town;<br /> +The moon that pours her pale enchantment down.<br /> +<br /> +Seasons will pass till Autumn fades the rose;<br /> +And when comes Winter with his weary snows,<br /> +I'll shut the doors and window-casements tight,<br /> +And build my faery palace in the night.<br /> +<br /> +Then I will dream of blue horizons deep;<br /> +Of gardens where the marble fountains weep;<br /> +Of kisses, and of ever-singing birds—<br /> +A sinless Idyll built of innocent words.<br /> +<br /> +And Trouble, knocking at my window-pane<br /> +And at my closet door, shall knock in vain;<br /> +I will not heed him with his stealthy tread,<br /> +Nor from my reverie uplift my head;<br /> +<br /> +For I will plunge deep in the pleasure still<br /> +Of summoning the spring-time with my will,<br /> +Drawing the sun out of my heart, and there<br /> +With burning thoughts making a summer air.<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_VOYAGE" id="THE_VOYAGE"></a>THE VOYAGE.</h3> + + +<p class="margin-b"> +The world is equal to the child's desire<br /> +Who plays with pictures by his nursery fire—<br /> +How vast the world by lamplight seems! How small<br /> +When memory's eyes look back, remembering all!—<br /> +<br /> +One morning we set forth with thoughts aflame,<br /> +Or heart o'erladen with desire or shame;<br /> +And cradle, to the song of surge and breeze,<br /> +Our own infinity on the finite seas.<br /> +<br /> +Some flee the memory of their childhood's home;<br /> +And others flee their fatherland; and some,<br /> +Star-gazers drowned within a woman's eyes,<br /> +Flee from the tyrant Circe's witcheries;<br /> +<br /> +And, lest they still be changed to beasts, take flight<br /> +For the embrasured heavens, and space, and light,<br /> +Till one by one the stains her kisses made<br /> +In biting cold and burning sunlight fade.<br /> +<br /> +But the true voyagers are they who part<br /> +From all they love because a wandering heart<br /> +Drives them to fly the Fate they cannot fly;<br /> +Whose call is ever "On!"—they know not why.<br /> +<br /> +Their thoughts are like the clouds that veil a star;<br /> +They dream of change as warriors dream of war;<br /> +And strange wild wishes never twice the same:<br /> +Desires no mortal man can give a name. +</p> + +<h4>II.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +We are like whirling tops and rolling balls—<br /> +For even when the sleepy night-time falls,<br /> +Old Curiosity still thrusts us on,<br /> +Like the cruel Angel who goads forth the sun.<br /> +<br /> +The end of fate fades ever through the air,<br /> +And, being nowhere, may be anywhere<br /> +Where a man runs, hope waking in his breast,<br /> +For ever like a madman, seeking rest.<br /> +<br /> +Our souls are wandering ships outwearied;<br /> +And one upon the bridge asks: "What's ahead?"<br /> +The topman's voice with an exultant sound<br /> +Cries: "Love and Glory!"—then we run aground.<br /> +<br /> +Each isle the pilot signals when 'tis late,<br /> +Is El Dorado, promised us by fate—<br /> +Imagination, spite of her belief,<br /> +Finds, in the light of dawn, a barren reef.<br /> +<br /> +Oh the poor seeker after lands that flee!<br /> +Shall we not bind and cast into the sea<br /> +This drunken sailor whose ecstatic mood<br /> +Makes bitterer still the water's weary flood?<br /> +<br /> +Such is an old tramp wandering in the mire,<br /> +Dreaming the paradise of his own desire,<br /> +Discovering cities of enchanted sleep<br /> +Where'er the light shines on a rubbish heap. +</p> + +<h4>III.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +Strange voyagers, what tales of noble deeds<br /> +Deep in your dim sea-weary eyes one reads!<br /> +Open the casket where your memories are,<br /> +And show each jewel, fashioned from a star;<br /> +<br /> +For I would travel without sail or wind,<br /> +And so, to lift the sorrow from my mind,<br /> +Let your long memories of sea-days far fled<br /> +Pass o'er my spirit like a sail outspread.<br /> +<br /> +What have you seen? +</p> + +<h4>IV.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +<span style="margin-left: 9.5em;">"We have seen waves and stars,</span><br /> +And lost sea-beaches, and known many wars,<br /> +And notwithstanding war and hope and fear,<br /> +We were as weary there as we are here.<br /> +<br /> +"The lights that on the violet sea poured down,<br /> +The suns that set behind some far-off town,<br /> +Lit in our hearts the unquiet wish to fly<br /> +Deep in the glimmering distance of the sky;<br /> +<br /> +"The loveliest countries that rich cities bless,<br /> +Never contained the strange wild loveliness<br /> +By fate and chance shaped from the floating cloud—<br /> +And we were always sorrowful and proud!<br /> +<br /> +"Desire from joy gains strength in weightier measure.<br /> +Desire, old tree who draw'st thy sap from pleasure,<br /> +Though thy bark thickens as the years pass by,<br /> +Thine arduous branches rise towards the sky;<br /> +<br /> +"And wilt thou still grow taller, tree more fair<br /> +Than the tall cypress?<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 13.5em;">—Thus have we, with care,</span><br /> +Gathered some flowers to please your eager mood,<br /> +Brothers who dream that distant things are good!<br /> +<br /> +"We have seen many a jewel-glimmering throne;<br /> +And bowed to Idols when wild horns were blown<br /> +In palaces whose faery pomp and gleam<br /> +To your rich men would be a ruinous dream;<br /> +<br /> +"And robes that were a madness to the eyes;<br /> +Women whose teeth and nails were stained with dyes;<br /> +Wise jugglers round whose neck the serpent winds—" +</p> + +<h4>V.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +And then, and then what more? +</p> + +<h4>VI.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +<span style="margin-left: 16.5em;">"O childish minds!</span><br /> +<br /> +"Forget not that which we found everywhere,<br /> +From top to bottom of the fatal stair,<br /> +Above, beneath, around us and within,<br /> +The weary pageant of immortal sin.<br /> +<br /> +"We have seen woman, stupid slave and proud,<br /> +Before her own frail, foolish beauty bowed;<br /> +And man, a greedy, cruel, lascivious fool,<br /> +Slave of the slave, a ripple in a pool;<br /> +<br /> +"The martyrs groan, the headsman's merry mood;<br /> +And banquets seasoned and perfumed with blood;<br /> +Poison, that gives the tyrant's power the slip;<br /> +And nations amorous of the brutal whip;<br /> +<br /> +"Many religions not unlike our own,<br /> +All in full flight for heaven's resplendent throne;<br /> +And Sanctity, seeking delight in pain,<br /> +Like a sick man of his own sickness vain;<br /> +<br /> +"And mad mortality, drunk with its own power,<br /> +As foolish now as in a bygone hour,<br /> +Shouting, in presence of the tortured Christ:<br /> +'I curse thee, mine own Image sacrificed.'<br /> +<br /> +"And silly monks in love with Lunacy,<br /> +Fleeing the troops herded by destiny,<br /> +Who seek for peace in opiate slumber furled—<br /> +Such is the pageant of the rolling world!" +</p> + +<h4>VII.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +O bitter knowledge that the wanderers gain!<br /> +The world says our own age is little and vain;<br /> +For ever, yesterday, to-day, to-morrow,<br /> +'Tis horror's oasis in the sands of sorrow.<br /> +<br /> +Must we depart? If you can rest, remain;<br /> +Part, if you must. Some fly, some cower in vain,<br /> +Hoping that Time, the grim and eager foe,<br /> +Will pass them by; and some run to and fro<br /> +<br /> +Like the Apostles or the Wandering Jew;<br /> +Go where they will, the Slayer goes there too!<br /> +And there are some, and these are of the wise,<br /> +Who die as soon as birth has lit their eyes.<br /> +<br /> +But when at length the Slayer treads us low,<br /> +We will have hope and cry, "'Tis time to go!"<br /> +As when of old we parted for Cathay<br /> +With wind-blown hair and eyes upon the bay.<br /> +<br /> +We will embark upon the Shadowy Sea,<br /> +Like youthful wanderers for the first time free—<br /> +Hear you the lovely and funereal voice<br /> +That sings: <i>O come all ye whose wandering joys</i><br /> +<i>Are set upon the scented Lotus flower</i>,<br /> +<i>For here we sell the fruit's miraculous boon</i>;<br /> +<i>Come ye and drink the sweet and sleepy power</i><br /> +<i>Of the enchanted, endless afternoon</i>.</p> + +<h4>VIII.</h4> +<p class="margin-b"> +O Death, old Captain, it is time, put forth!<br /> +We have grown weary of the gloomy north;<br /> +Though sea and sky are black as ink, lift sail!<br /> +Our hearts are full of light and will not fail.<br /> +<br /> +O pour thy sleepy poison in the cup!<br /> +The fire within the heart so burns us up<br /> +That we would wander Hell and Heaven through,<br /> +Deep in the Unknown seeking something <i>new</i>!<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> +<h2><a name="LITTLE_POEMS_IN_PROSE" id="LITTLE_POEMS_IN_PROSE"></a>LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE</h2> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3><a name="THE_STRANGER" id="THE_STRANGER"></a>THE STRANGER.</h3> + + +<p>Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, +your sister, or your brother?</p> + +<p>"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother."</p> + +<p>Your friends, then?</p> + +<p>"You use a word that until now has had no meaning for me."</p> + +<p>Your country?</p> + +<p>"I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated."</p> + +<p>Then Beauty?</p> + +<p>"Her I would love willingly, goddess and immortal."</p> + +<p>Gold?</p> + +<p>"I hate it as you hate your God."</p> + +<p>What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love?</p> + +<p>"I love the clouds—the clouds that pass—yonder—the marvellous +clouds."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="EVERY_MAN_HIS_CHIMAERA" id="EVERY_MAN_HIS_CHIMAERA"></a>EVERY MAN HIS CHIMÆRA.</h3> + + +<p>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.</p> + +<p>Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimæra as heavy as a sack of +flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier.</p> + +<p>But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and +oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with +her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head +reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by +which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy.</p> + +<p>I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied +that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they +went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to +walk.</p> + +<p>Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the +ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had +said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary +faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the +heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as +the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned +to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere +of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the +curiosity of the human eye.</p> + +<p>During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this +mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor +was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing +Chimæras.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="VENUS_AND_THE_FOOL" id="VENUS_AND_THE_FOOL"></a>VENUS AND THE FOOL.</h3> + + +<p>How admirable the day! The vast park swoons beneath the burning eye of +the sun, as youth beneath the lordship of love.</p> + +<p>There is no rumour of the universal ecstasy of all things. The waters +themselves are as though drifting into sleep. Very different from the +festivals of humanity, here is a silent revel.</p> + +<p>It seems as though an ever-waning light makes all objects glimmer more +and more, as though the excited flowers burn with a desire to rival the +blue of the sky by the vividness of their colours; as though the heat, +making perfumes visible, drives them in vapour towards their star.</p> + +<p>Yet, in the midst of this universal joy, I have perceived one afflicted +thing.</p> + +<p>At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those motley fools, those +willing clowns whose business it is to bring laughter upon kings when +weariness or remorse possesses them, lies wrapped in his gaudy and +ridiculous garments, coined with his cap and bells, huddled against the +pedestal, and raises towards the goddess his eyes filled with tears.</p> + +<p>And his eyes say: "I am the last and most alone of all mortals, inferior +to the meanest of animals in that I am denied either love or friendship. +Yet I am made, even I, for the understanding and enjoyment of immortal +Beauty. O Goddess, have pity upon my sadness and my frenzy."</p> + +<p>The implacable Venus gazed into I know not what distances with her +marble eyes.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="INTOXICATION" id="INTOXICATION"></a>INTOXICATION.</h3> + + +<p>One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. +If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your +shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. +But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But +be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green +grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should +waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, +of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that +flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that +speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and +timepiece will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be +the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without +cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_GIFTS_OF_THE_MOON" id="THE_GIFTS_OF_THE_MOON"></a>THE GIFTS OF THE MOON.</h3> + + +<p>The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in +your cradle, and said to herself: "I am well pleased with this child."</p> + +<p>And she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the +window-pane without noise. She bent over you with the supple tenderness +of a mother and laid her colours upon your face. Therefrom your eyes +have remained green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. From +contemplation of your visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she +so tenderly wounded you upon the breast that you have ever kept a +certain readiness to tears.</p> + +<p>In the amplitude of her joy, the Moon filled all your chamber as with a +phosphorescent air, a luminous poison; and all this living radiance +thought and said: "You shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. +You shall love all that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, +and night; the vast green sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; +the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous +flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves +swooning upon the piano and lament with the sweet, hoarse voices of +women.</p> + +<p>"And you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. You +shall be the Queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also I have +wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green +ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where +they are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem +to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the +will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images of their own folly."</p> + +<p>And that is why I am couched at your feet, O spoiled child, beloved and +accursed, seeking in all your being the reflection of that august +divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all +<i>lunatics</i>.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_INVITATION_TO_THE_VOYAGE" id="THE_INVITATION_TO_THE_VOYAGE"></a>THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE.</h3> + + +<p>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 patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate +vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy.</p> + +<p>A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and +honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is +opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the +unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where +even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all +things, my beloved, are like you.</p> + +<p>Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold +miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguish of curiosity? +It is a land which resembles you, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil +and honest, where phantasy has built and decorated an occidental China, +where life is sweet to breathe, and happiness married to silence. It is +there that one would live; there that one would die.</p> + +<p>Yes, it is there that one must go to breathe, to dream, and to lengthen +one's hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written the +"Invitation to the Waltz"; where is he who will write the "Invitation to +the Voyage," that one may offer it to his beloved, to the sister of his +election?</p> + +<p>Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live,—yonder, +where slower hours contain more thoughts, where the clocks strike the +hours of happiness with a more profound and significant solemnity.</p> + +<p>Upon the shining panels, or upon skins gilded with a sombre opulence, +beatified paintings have a discreet life, as calm and profound as the +souls of the artists who created them.</p> + +<p>The setting suns that colour the rooms and salons with so rich a light, +shine through veils of rich tapestry, or through high leaden-worked +windows of many compartments. The furniture is massive, curious, and +bizarre, armed with locks and secrets, like profound and refined souls. +The mirrors, the metals, the ail ver work and the china, play a mute and +mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from the corners, +from the chinks in the drawers, from the folds of drapery, a singular +perfume escapes, a Sumatran <i>revenez-y</i>, which is like the soul of the +apartment.</p> + +<p>A true country of Cockaigne, I have said; where all is rich, correct and +shining, like a beautiful conscience, or a splendid set of silver, or a +medley of jewels. The treasures of the world flow there, as in the house +of a laborious man who has well merited the entire world. A singular +land, as superior to others as Art is superior to Nature; where Nature +is made over again by dream; where she is corrected, embellished, +refashioned.</p> + +<p>Let them seek and seek again, let them extend the limits of their +happiness for ever, these alchemists who work with flowers! Let them +offer a prize of sixty or a hundred thousand florins to whosoever can +solve their ambitious problems! As for me, I have found my <i>black tulip</i> +and my <i>blue dahlia</i>!</p> + +<p>Incomparable flower, tulip found at last, symboli-cal dahlia, it is +there, is it not, in this so calm and dreamy land that you live and +blossom? Will you not there be framed in your proper analogy, and will +you not be mirrored, to speak like the mystics, in your own +<i>correspondence</i>?</p> + +<p>Dreams!—always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul, +the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him +his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from +birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with +positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in +and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that +resembles you?</p> + +<p>These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous +flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The +enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with +the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon +your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity, +reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your +lovely soul;—and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the +products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they +are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from +Infinity.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="WHAT_IS_TRUTH" id="WHAT_IS_TRUTH"></a>WHAT IS TRUTH?</h3> + + +<p>I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the +ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of +glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality.</p> + +<p>But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died +soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon +a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I +myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as +uncorruptible as the coffers of India.</p> + +<p>And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I +became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the +dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and +hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true +Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly +and blindness you shall love me as I truly am."</p> + +<p>But I, furious, replied: "No!" The better to emphasise my refusal I +struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to +the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught +perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="ALREADY" id="ALREADY"></a>ALREADY!</h3> + + +<p>A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from +the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred +times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of +twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the +firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And +each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the +approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they +said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by +a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an +unmoving table?"</p> + +<p>There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their +sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the +image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass +with as much enthusiasm as the beasts.</p> + +<p>At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent +and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed +therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of +growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and +fruits.</p> + +<p>Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were +forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted +out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke.</p> + +<p>I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest from whom one has torn +his divinity, I could not, without heartbreaking bitterness, leave this +so monstrously seductive ocean, this sea so infinitely various in its +terrifying simplicity, which seemed to contain in itself and represent +by its joys, and attractions, and angers, and smiles, the moods and +agonies and ecstasies of all souls that have lived, that live, and that +shall yet live.</p> + +<p>In saying good-bye to this incomparable beauty I felt as though I had +been smitten to death; and that is why when each of my companions said: +"At last!" I could only cry "<i>Already!</i>"</p> + +<p>Here meanwhile was the land, the land with its noises, its passions, its +commodities, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of +promises, that sent to us a mysterious perfume of rose and musk, and +from whence the music of life flowed in an amorous murmuring.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_DOUBLE_CHAMBER" id="THE_DOUBLE_CHAMBER"></a>THE DOUBLE CHAMBER.</h3> + + +<p>A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly <i>spiritual</i>, where the +stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue.</p> + +<p>There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and +desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue +and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the +furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed +with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals.</p> + +<p>The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the +skies, the dropping suns.</p> + +<p>There are no artistic abominations upon the walls. Compared with the +pure dream, with an impression unanalysed, definite art, positive art, +is a blasphemy. Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious +obscurity of music.</p> + +<p>An infinitesimal odour of the most exquisite choice, mingled with a +floating humidity, swims in this atmosphere where the drowsing spirit is +lulled by the sensations one feels in a hothouse.</p> + +<p>The abundant muslin flows before the windows and the couch, and spreads +out in snowy cascades. Upon the couch lies the Idol, ruler of my dreams. +But why is she here?—who has brought her?—what magical power has +installed her upon this throne of delight and reverie? What matter—she +is there; and I recognise her.</p> + +<p>These indeed are the eyes whose flame pierces the twilight; the subtle +and terrible mirrors that I recognise by their horrifying malice. They +attract, they dominate, they devour the sight of whomsoever is imprudent +enough to look at them. I have often studied them; these Black Stars +that compel curiosity and admiration.</p> + +<p>To what benevolent demon, then, do I owe being thus surrounded with +mystery, with silence, with peace, and sweet odours? O beatitude! the +thing we name life, even in its most fortunate amplitude, has nothing in +common with this supreme life with which I am now acquainted, which I +taste minute by minute, second by second.</p> + +<p>Not so! Minutes are no more; seconds are no more. Time has vanished, and +Eternity reigns—an Eternity of delight.</p> + +<p>A heavy and terrible knocking reverberates upon the door, and, as in a +hellish dream, it seems to me as though I had received a blow from a +mattock.</p> + +<p>Then a Spectre enters: it is an usher who comes to torture me in the +name of the Law; an infamous concubine who comes to cry misery and to +add the trivialities of her life to the sorrow of mine; or it may be the +errand-boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder of a +manuscript.</p> + +<p>The chamber of paradise, the Idol, the ruler of dreams, the Sylphide, as +the great René said; all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking +of the Spectre.</p> + +<p>Horror; I remember, I remember! Yes, this kennel, this habitation of +eternal weariness, is indeed my own. Here is my senseless furniture, +dusty and tattered; the dirty fireplace without a flame or an ember; the +sad windows where the raindrops have traced runnels in the dust; the +manuscripts, erased or unfinished; the almanac with the sinister days +marked off with a pencil!</p> + +<p>And this perfume of another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a +so perfected sensitiveness; alas, its place is taken by an odour of +stale tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness. +Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation.</p> + +<p>In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar +object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like +all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries.</p> + +<p>Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the +hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories, +Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves.</p> + +<p>I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now; +and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable, +implacable Life!"</p> + +<p>There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good +news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye.</p> + +<p>Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me, +as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Woa, thou fool! Sweat, +then, thou slave! Live on, thou damnèd!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="AT_ONE_OCLOCK_IN_THE_MORNING" id="AT_ONE_OCLOCK_IN_THE_MORNING"></a>AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING.</h3> + + +<p>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. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared—I +shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh +myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the +lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude +and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world.</p> + +<p>A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the +day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he +could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was +an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a +review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable +people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a +knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me; +and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the +precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time, +during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a +costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said: +"You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest, +foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you +will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have +boasted (why?) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and +indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy, +certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused +an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a +perfect fool. Heavens! it's well ended.</p> + +<p>Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I +should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the +silence and solitude.</p> + +<p>Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain +me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and +Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some +beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I +am not inferior to those I despise.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_CONFITEOR_OF_THE_ARTIST" id="THE_CONFITEOR_OF_THE_ARTIST"></a>THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST.</h3> + + +<p>How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough +to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose +vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen +than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns +his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the +incomparable chastity of the azure—a little sail trembling upon the +horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable +existence—the melodious monotone of the surge—all these things +thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the +reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and +picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions.</p> + +<p>These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external +objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within +pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too +tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations.</p> + +<p>And now the profundity of the sky dismays me! its limpidity exasperates +me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, +revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from +Beauty?</p> + +<p>Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my +desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel +where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_THYRSUS" id="THE_THYRSUS"></a>THE THYRSUS.</h3> + +<h4>TO FRANZ LISZT.</h4> + + +<p>What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a +sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating +the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But +physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a +vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious +meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and +fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing +complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant +lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the +spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a +mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollæ, all +these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical +dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to +decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the +baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty +of the vine branches and the flowers?</p> + +<p>The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and +venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty. +Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over +the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles +in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm, +unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the +feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance. +Straight line and arabesque—intention and expression—the rigidity of +the will and the suppleness of the word—a variety of means united for a +single purpose—the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is +genius—what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to +separate you?</p> + +<p>Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the +pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your +wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City +or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles; +improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper +your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain, +philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of +immortality!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_MARKSMAN" id="THE_MARKSMAN"></a>THE MARKSMAN.</h3> + + +<p>As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the +neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a +few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most +ordinary and legitimate occupation of man?—So he gallantly offered his +hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to +whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great +part of his genius.</p> + +<p>Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far +into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously, +mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and +said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air, +and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, <i>I will +imagine to myself that it is you!</i>"</p> + +<p>He closed both eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly +decapitated.</p> + +<p>Then, bending towards his dear, adorable, and execrable wife, his +inevitable and pitiless muse, he kissed her respectfully upon the hand, +and added, "Ah, dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_SHOOTING-RANGE_AND_THE_CEMETERY" id="THE_SHOOTING-RANGE_AND_THE_CEMETERY"></a>THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY.</h3> + + +<p>"Cemetery View Inn"—"A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but +it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper of this inn appreciates Horace +and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound +philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, +or some emblem of life's brevity."</p> + +<p>He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly +smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the +cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the +sunshine.</p> + +<p>The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said +the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon +the corruption beneath.</p> + +<p>The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life—the life of things +infinitely small—and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from +a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of +champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony.</p> + +<p>And then, beneath a sun which scorched the brain, and in that atmosphere +charged with the ardent perfume of death, he heard a voice whispering +out of the tomb where he sat. And this voice said: "Accursed be your +rifles and targets, you turbulent living ones, who care so little for +the dead in their divine repose! Accursed be your ambitions and +calculations, importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter near +the sanctuary of Death himself! Did you but know how easy the prize to +win, how facile the end to reach, and how all save Death is naught, not +so greatly would you fatigue yourselves, O ye laborious alive; nor would +you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago reached the End—the +only true end of life detestable!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_DESIRE_TO_PAINT" id="THE_DESIRE_TO_PAINT"></a>THE DESIRE TO PAINT.</h3> + + +<p>Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this +desire.</p> + +<p>I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so +swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller +must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her.</p> + +<p>She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The +colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal +and profound. Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and +gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion +in the darkness.</p> + +<p>I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star +overthrowing light and happiness. But it is the moon that she makes one +dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with +her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a +cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the +depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet +peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from +the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly +constrain to dance upon the terrified grass.</p> + +<p>Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of +prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the +unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, the +smile of a large mouth; white, red, and delicious; a mouth that makes +one dream of the miracle of some superb flower unclosing in a volcanic +land.</p> + +<p>There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo them and win +them; but she makes one wish to die slowly beneath her steady gaze.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_GLASS-VENDOR" id="THE_GLASS-VENDOR"></a>THE GLASS-VENDOR.</h3> + + +<p>These 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 one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation +awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before +the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter +fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of +six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year +past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards +action, like an arrow from a bow.</p> + +<p>The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet +cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent +and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest +and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time +possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the +most absurd and even the most dangerous acts.</p> + +<p>One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one +time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether +the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His +experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only +too well.</p> + +<p>Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, <i>in order to see, to +know, to tempt Destiny</i>, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, +for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of +energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it +manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most +indolent and dreamy beings.</p> + +<p>Another so timid that he must cast down his eyes before the gaze of any +man, and summon all his poor will before he dare enter a café or pass +the pay-box of a theatre, where the ticket-seller seems, in his eyes, +invested with all the majesty of Minos, Æcus, and Rhadamanthus, will at +times throw himself upon the neck of some old man whom he sees in the +street, and embrace him with enthusiasm in sight of an astonished crowd. +Why? Because—because this countenance is irresistibly attractive to +him? Perhaps; but it is more legitimate to suppose that he himself does +not know why.</p> + +<p>I have been more than once a victim to these crises and outbreaks which +give us cause to believe that evil-meaning demons slip into us, to make +us the ignorant accomplices of their most absurd desires. One morning I +arose in a sullen mood, very sad, and tired of idleness, and thrust as +it seemed to me to the doing of some great thing, some brilliant +act—and then, alas, I opened the window.</p> + +<p>(I beg you to observe that in some people the spirit of mystification is +not the result of labour or combination, but rather of a fortuitous +inspiration which would partake, were it not for the strength of the +feeling, of the mood called hysterical by the physician and satanic by +those who think a little more profoundly than the physician; the mood +which thrusts us unresisting to a multitude of dangerous and +inconvenient acts.)</p> + +<p>The first person I noticed in the street was a glass-vendor whose shrill +and discordant cry mounted up to me through the heavy, dull atmosphere +of Paris. It would have been else impossible to account for the sudden +and despotic hatred of this poor man that came upon me.</p> + +<p>"Hello, there!" I cried, and bade him ascend. Meanwhile I reflected, not +without gaiety, that as my room was on the sixth landing, and the +stairway very narrow, the man would have some difficulty in ascending, +and in many a place would break off the corners of his fragile +merchandise.</p> + +<p>At length he appeared. I examined all his glasses with curiosity, and +then said to him: "What, have you no coloured glasses? Glasses of rose +and crimson and blue, magical glasses, glasses of Paradise? You are +insolent. You dare to walk in mean streets when you have no glasses that +would make one see beauty in life?" And I hurried him briskly to the +staircase, which he staggered down, grumbling.</p> + +<p>I went on to the balcony and caught up a little flower-pot, and when the +man appeared in the door-way beneath I let fall my engine of war +perpendicularly upon the edge of his pack, so that it was upset by the +shock and all his poor walking fortune broken to bits. It made a noise +like a palace of crystal shattered by lightning. Mad with my folly, I +cried furiously after him: "The life beautiful! the life beautiful!"</p> + +<p>Such nervous pleasantries are not without peril; often enough one pays +dearly for them. But what matters an eternity of damnation to him who +has found in one second an eternity of enjoyment?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_WIDOWS" id="THE_WIDOWS"></a>THE WIDOWS.</h3> + + +<p>Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted +principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted +glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted +souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus +betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the +well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's +cripples.</p> + +<p>To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their +avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there +is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the +place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions +for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn +towards all that is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft.</p> + +<p>An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected +lineaments; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last +fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound +wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience +deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded +effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported.</p> + +<p>Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor +widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. +Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; +a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is +forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who +exhibit a full complement of sorrow.</p> + +<p>Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the +hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I +do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours +an aged and afflicted woman of this kind: rigid and erect, wrapped in a +little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism.</p> + +<p>She was evidently condemned by her absolute loneliness to the habits of +an ancient celibacy; and the masculine characters of her habits added to +their austerity a piquant mysteriousness. In what miserable café she +dines I know not, nor in what manner. I followed her to a reading-room, +and for a long time watched her reading the papers, her active eyes, +that once burned with tears, seeking for news of a powerful and personal +interest.</p> + +<p>At length, in the afternoon, under a charming autumnal sky, one of those +skies that let fall hosts of memories and regrets, she seated herself +remotely in a garden, to listen, far from the crowd, to one of the +regimental bands whose music gratifies the people of Paris. This was +without doubt the small debauch of the innocent old woman (or the +purified old woman), the well-earned consolation for another of the +burdensome days without a friend, without conversation, without joy, +without a confidant, that God had allowed to fall upon her perhaps for +many years past—three hundred and sixty-five times a year!</p> + +<p>Yet one more:</p> + +<p>I can never prevent myself from throwing a glance, if not sympathetic at +least full of curiosity, over the crowd of outcasts who press around the +enclosure of a public concert. From the orchestra, across the night, +float songs of fête, of triumph, or of pleasure. The dresses of the +women sweep and shimmer; glances pass; the well-to-do, tired with doing +nothing, saunter about and make indolent pretence of listening to the +music. Here are only the rich, the happy; here is nothing that does not +inspire or exhale the pleasure of being alive, except the aspect of the +mob that presses against the outer barrier yonder, catching gratis, at +the will of the wind, a tatter of music, and watching the glittering +furnace within.</p> + +<p>There is a reflection of the joy of the rich deep in the eyes of the +poor that is always interesting. But to-day, beyond this people dressed +in blouses and calico, I saw one whose nobility was in striking contrast +with all the surrounding triviality. She was a tall, majestic woman, and +so imperious in all her air that I cannot remember having seen the like +in the collections of the aristocratic beauties of the past. A perfume +of exalted virtue emanated from all her being. Her face, sad and worn, +was in perfect keeping with the deep mourning in which she was dressed. +She also, like the plebeians she mingled with and did not see, looked +upon the luminous world with a profound eye, and listened with a toss of +her head.</p> + +<p>It was a strange vision. "Most certainly," I said to myself, "this +poverty, if poverty it be, ought not to admit of any sordid economy; so +noble a face answers for that. Why then does she remain in surroundings +with which she is so strikingly in contrast?"</p> + +<p>But in curiously passing near her I was able to divine the reason. The +tall widow held by the hand a child dressed like herself in black. +Modest as was the price of entry, this price perhaps sufficed to pay +for some of the needs of the little being, or even more, for a +superfluity, a toy.</p> + +<p>She will return on foot, dreaming and meditating—and alone, always +alone, for the child is turbulent and selfish, without gentleness or +patience, and cannot become, any more than another animal, a dog or a +cat, the confidant of solitary griefs.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3><a name="THE_TEMPTATIONS_OR_EROS_PLUTUS_AND_GLORY" id="THE_TEMPTATIONS_OR_EROS_PLUTUS_AND_GLORY"></a>THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY.</h3> + + +<p>Last night two superb Satans and a She-devil not less extraordinary +ascended the mysterious stairway by which Hell gains access to the +frailty of sleeping man, and communes with him in secret. These three +postured gloriously before me, as though they had been upon a stage—and +a sulphurous splendour emanated from these beings who so disengaged +themselves from the opaque heart of the night. They bore with them so +proud a presence, and so full of mastery, that at first I took them for +three of the true Gods.</p> + +<p>The first Satan, by his face, was a creature of doubtful sex. The +softness of an ancient Bacchus shone in the lines of his body. His +beautiful langourous eyes, of a tenebrous and indefinite colour, were +like violets still laden with the heavy tears of the storm; his +slightly-parted lips were like heated censers, from whence exhaled the +sweet savour of many perfumes; and each time he breathed, exotic +insects drew, as they fluttered, strength from the ardours of his +breath.</p> + +<p>Twined about his tunic of purple stuff, in the manner of a cincture, was +an iridescent Serpent with lifted head and eyes like embers turned +sleepily towards him. Phials full of sinister fluids, alternating with +shining knives and instruments of surgery, hung from this living girdle. +He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red fluid, and +inscribed with a legend in these singular words:</p> + +<p>"DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE";</p> + +<p>and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing his +pleasures and pains, and to spread abroad the contagion of his folly +upon the nights of the Sabbath.</p> + +<p>From rings upon his delicate ankles trailed a broken chain of gold, and +when the burden of this caused him to bend his eyes towards the earth, +he would contemplate with vanity the nails of his feet, as brilliant and +polished as well-wrought jewels.</p> + +<p>He looked at me with eyes inconsolably heartbroken and giving forth an +insidious intoxication, and cried in a chanting voice: "If thou wilt, if +thou wilt, I will make thee an overlord of souls; thou shalt be master +of living matter more perfectly than the sculptor is master of his clay; +thou shalt taste the pleasure, reborn without end, of obliterating +thyself in the self of another, and of luring other souls to lose +themselves in thine."</p> + +<p>But I replied to him: "I thank thee. I only gain from this venture, +then, beings of no more worth than my poor self? Though remembrance +brings me shame indeed, I would forget nothing; and even before I +recognised thee, thou ancient monster, thy mysterious cutlery, thy +equivocal phials, and the chain that imprisons thy feet, were symbols +showing clearly enough the inconvenience of thy friendship. Keep thy +gifts."</p> + +<p>The second Satan had neither the air at once tragical and smiling, the +lovely insinuating ways, nor the delicate and scented beauty of the +first. A gigantic man, with a coarse, eyeless face, his heavy paunch +overhung his hips and was gilded and pictured, like a tattooing, with a +crowd of little moving figures which represented the unnumbered forms of +universal misery. There were little sinew-shrunken men who hung +themselves willingly from nails; there were meagre gnomes, deformed and +under-sized, whose beseeching eyes begged an alms even more eloquently +than their trembling hands; there were old mothers who nursed clinging +abortions at their pendent breasts. And many others, even more +surprising.</p> + +<p>This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from whence +came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away in a +sighing made by many human voices. And he smiled unrestrainedly, showing +his broken teeth—the imbecile smile of a man who has dined too freely. +Then the creature said to me:</p> + +<p>"I can give thee that which gets all, which is worth all, which takes +the place of all." And he tapped his monstrous paunch, whence came a +sonorous echo as the commentary to his obscene speech. I turned away +with disgust and replied: "I need no man's misery to bring me happiness; +nor will I have the sad wealth of all the misfortunes pictured upon thy +skin as upon a tapestry."</p> + +<p>As for the She-devil, I should lie if I denied that at first I found in +her a certain strange charm, which to define I can but compare to the +charm of certain beautiful women past their first youth, who yet seem to +age no more, whose beauty keeps something of the penetrating magic of +ruins. She had an air at once imperious and sordid, and her eyes, though +heavy, held a certain power of fascination. I was struck most by her +voice, wherein I found the remembrance of the most delicious contralti, +as well as a little of the hoarseness of a throat continually laved with +brandy.</p> + +<p>"Wouldst thou know my power?" said the charming and paradoxical voice of +the false goddess. "Then listen." And she put to her mouth a gigantic +trumpet, enribboned, like a mirliton, with the titles of all the +newspapers in the world; and through this trumpet she cried my name so +that it rolled through space with the sound of a hundred thousand +thunders, and came re-echoing back to me from the farthest planet.</p> + +<p>"Devil!" cried I, half tempted, "that at least is worth something." But +it vaguely struck me, upon examining the seductive virago more +attentively, that I had seen her clinking glasses with certain drolls of +my acquaintance, and her blare of brass carried to my ears I know not +what memory of a fanfare prostituted.</p> + +<p>So I replied, with all disdain: "Get thee hence! I know better than wed +the light o' love of them that I will not name."</p> + +<p>Truly, I had the right to be proud of a so courageous renunciation. But +unfortunately I awoke, and all my courage left me. "In truth," I said, +"I must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have had such scruples. +Ah, if they would but return while I am awake, I would not be so +delicate."</p> + +<p>So I invoked the three in a loud voice, offering to dishonour myself as +often as necessary to obtain their favours; but I had without doubt too +deeply offended them, for they have never returned.</p> + + +<h4>THE END</h4> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles +Baudelaire, by Charles Baudelaire + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, PROSE POEMS, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE *** + +***** This file should be named 36287-h.htm or 36287-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/2/8/36287/ + +Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at +http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously made +available by the Internet Archive. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire + with an Introductory Preface by James Huneker + +Author: Charles Baudelaire + +Editor: James Huneker + +Release Date: May 31, 2011 [EBook #36287] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, PROSE POEMS, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE *** + + + + +Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at +http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously made +available by the Internet Archive. + + + + + +THE POEMS AND PROSE POEMS + +OF + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE + + +WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE BY + +JAMES HUNEKER + + + +NEW YORK +BRENTANO'S +PUBLISHERS + +1919 + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE by James Huneker + + +THE FLOWERS OF EVIL + +The Dance of Death +The Beacons +The Sadness of the Moon +Exotic Perfume +Beauty +The Balcony +The Sick Muse +The Venal Muse +The Evil Monk +The Temptation +The Irreparable +A Former Life +Don Juan in Hades +The Living Flame +Correspondences +The Flask +Reversibility +The Eyes of Beauty +Sonnet of Autumn +The Remorse of the Dead +The Ghost +To a Madonna +The Sky +Spleen +The Owls +Bien Loin d'Ici +Music +Contemplation +To a Brown Beggar-maid +The Swan +The Seven Old Men +The Little Old Women +A Madrigal of Sorrow +The Ideal +Mist and Rain +Sunset +The Corpse +An Allegory +The Accursed +La Beatrice +The Soul of Wine +The Wine of Lovers +The Death of Lovers +The Death of the Poor +The Benediction +Gypsies Travelling +Francisco Meae Laudes +Robed in a Silken Robe +A Landscape +The Voyage + + +LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE + +The Stranger +Every Man his Chimaera +Venus and the Fool +Intoxication +The Gifts of the Moon +The Invitation to the Voyage +What is Truth? +Already! +The Double Chamber +At One o'Clock in the Morning +The Confiteor of the Artist +The Thyrsus +The Marksman +The Shooting-range and the Cemetery +The Desire to Paint +The Glass-vendor +The Widows +The Temptations; or, Eros, Plutus, and Glory + + + + +CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. + +BY JAMES HUNEKER. + + + + +I + + +For the sentimental no greater foe exists than the iconoclast who +dissipates literary legends. And he is abroad nowadays. Those golden +times when they gossiped of De Quincey's enormous opium consumption, of +the gin absorbed by gentle Charles Lamb, of Coleridge's dark ways, +Byron's escapades, and Shelley's atheism--alas! into what faded limbo +have they vanished. Poe, too, whom we saw in fancy reeling from Richmond +to Baltimore, Baltimore to Philadelphia, Philadelphia to New York. Those +familiar fascinating anecdotes have gone the way of all such jerry-built +spooks. We now know Poe to have been a man suffering at the time of his +death from cerebral lesion, a man who drank at intervals and little. Dr. +Guerrier of Paris has exploded a darling superstition about De Quincey's +opium-eating. He has demonstrated that no man could have lived so +long--De Quincey was nearly seventy-five at his death--and worked so +hard, if he had consumed twelve thousand drops of laudanum as often as +he said he did. Furthermore, the English essayist's description of the +drug's effects is inexact. He was seldom sleepy--a sure sign, asserts +Dr. Guerrier, that he was not altogether enslaved by the drug habit. +Sprightly in old age, his powers of labour were prolonged until past +three-score and ten. His imagination needed little opium to produce the +famous Confessions. Even Gautier's revolutionary red waistcoat worn at +the premiere of Hernani was, according to Gautier, a pink doublet. And +Rousseau has been whitewashed. So they are disappearing, those literary +legends, until, disheartened, we cry out: Spare us our dear, +old-fashioned, disreputable men of genius! + +But the legend of Charles Baudelaire is seemingly indestructible. This +French poet has suffered more from the friendly malignant biographer and +chroniclers than did Poe. Who shall keep the curs out of the cemetery? +asked Baudelaire after he had read Griswold on Poe. A few years later +his own cemetery was invaded and the world was put into possession of +the Baudelaire legend; that legend of the atrabilious, irritable poet, +dandy, maniac, his hair dyed green, spouting blasphemies; that grim, +despairing image of a diabolic, a libertine, saint, and drunkard. Maxime +du Camp was much to blame for the promulgation of these tales--witness +his Souvenirs litteraires. However, it may be confessed that part of the +Baudelaire legend was created by Charles Baudelaire. In the history of +literature it is difficult to parallel such a deliberate piece of +self-stultification. Not Villon, who preceded him, not Verlaine, who +imitated him, drew for the astonishment or disedification of the world a +like unflattering portrait. Mystifier as he was, he must have suffered +at times from acute cortical irritation. And, notwithstanding his +desperate effort to realize Poe's idea, he only proved Poe correct, who +had said that no man can bare his heart quite naked; there always will +be something held back, something false ostentatiously thrust forward. +The grimace, the attitude, the pomp of rhetoric are so many buffers +between the soul of man and the sharp reality of published confessions. +Baudelaire was no more exception to this rule than St. Augustine, +Bunyan, Rousseau, or Huysmans; though he was as frank as any of them, as +we may see in the printed diary, Mon coeur mis a nu (Posthumous Works, +Societe du Mercure de France); and in the Journal, Fusees, Letters, and +other fragments exhumed by devoted Baudelarians. + +To smash legends, Eugene Crepet's biographical study, first printed in +1887, has been republished with new notes by his son, Jacques Crepet. +This is an exceedingly valuable contribution to Baudelaire lore; a +dispassionate life, however, has yet to be written, a noble task for +some young poet who will disentangle the conflicting lies originated by +Baudelaire--that tragic comedian--from the truth and thus save him from +himself. The Crepet volume is really but a series of notes; there are +some letters addressed to the poet by the distinguished men of his day, +supplementing the rather disappointing volume of Letters, 1841-1866, +published in 1908. There are also documents in the legal prosecution of +Baudelaire, with memories of him by Charles Asselineau, Leon Cladel, +Camille Lemonnier, and others. + +In November, 1850, Maxime du Camp and Gustave Flaubert found themselves +at the French Ambassador's, Constantinople. The two friends had taken a +trip in the Orient which later bore fruit in Salammbo. General Aupick, +the representative of the French Government, cordially the young men +received; they were presented to his wife, Madame Aupick. She was the +mother of Charles Baudelaire, and inquired rather anxiously of Du Camp: +"My son has talent, has he not?" Unhappy because her second marriage, a +brilliant one, had set her son against her, the poor woman welcomed from +such a source confirmation of her eccentric boy's gifts. Du Camp tells +the much-discussed story of a quarrel between the youthful Charles and +his stepfather, a quarrel that began at table. There were guests +present. After some words Charles bounded at the General's throat and +sought to strangle him. He was promptly boxed on the ears and succumbed +to a nervous spasm. A delightful anecdote, one that fills with joy +psychiatrists in search of a theory of genius and degeneration. Charles +was given some money and put on board a ship sailing to East India. He +became a cattle-dealer in the British army, and returned to France +years afterward with a Venus noire, to whom he addressed extravagant +poems! All this according to Du Camp. Here is another tale, a comical +one. Baudelaire visited Du Camp in Paris, and his hair was violently +green. Du Camp said nothing. Angered by this indifference, Baudelaire +asked: "You find nothing abnormal about me?" "No," was the answer. "But +my hair--it is green!" "That is not singular, mon cher Baudelaire; every +one has hair more or less green in Paris." Disappointed in not creating +a sensation, Baudelaire went to a cafe, gulped down two large bottles of +Burgundy, and asked the waiter to remove the water, as water was a +disagreeable sight; then he went away in a rage. It is a pity to doubt +this green hair legend; presently a man of genius will not be able to +enjoy an epileptic fit in peace--as does a banker or a beggar. We are +told that St. Paul, Mahomet, Handel, Napoleon, Flaubert, Dostoievsky +were epileptoids; yet we do not encounter men of this rare kind among +the inmates of asylums. Even Baudelaire had his sane moments. + +The joke of the green hair has been disposed of by Crepet. Baudelaire's +hair thinning after an illness, he had his head shaved and painted with +salve of a green hue, hoping thereby to escape baldness. At the time +when he had embarked for Calcutta (May, 1841), he was not seventeen, but +twenty years of age. Du Camp said he was seventeen when he attacked +General Aupick. The dinner could not have taken place at Lyons because +the Aupick family had left that city six years before the date given by +Du Camp. Charles was provided with five thousand francs for his +expenses, instead of twenty--Du Camp's version--and he never was a +beef-drover in the British army, for a good reason--he never reached +India. Instead, he disembarked at the Isle of Bourbon, and after a short +stay suffered from homesickness and returned to France, after being +absent about ten months. But, like Flaubert, on his return home +Baudelaire was seized with the nostalgia of the East; over there he had +yearned for Paris. Jules Claretie recalls Baudelaire saying to him with +a grimace: "I love Wagner; but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung +up by his tail outside of a window, and trying to stick to the panes of +glass with its claws. There is an odd grating on the glass which I find +at the same time strange, irritating, and singularly harmonious." Is it +necessary to add that Baudelaire, notorious in Paris for his love of +cats, dedicating poems to cats, would never have perpetrated such +revolting cruelty? + +Another misconception, a critical one, is the case of Poe and +Baudelaire. The young Frenchman first became infatuated with Poe's +writings in 1846 or 1847--he gave these two dates, though several +stories of Poe had been translated into French as early as 1841 or 1842; +L'Orang-Outang was the first, which we know as The Murders in the Rue +Morgue; Madame Meunier also adapted several Poe stories for the reviews. +Baudelaire's labours as a translator lasted over ten years. That he +assimilated Poe, that he idolized Poe, is a commonplace of literary +gossip. But that Poe had overwhelming influence in the formation of his +poetic genius is not the truth. Yet we find such an acute critic as the +late Edmund Clarence Stedman writing, "Poe's chief influence upon +Baudelaire's own production relates to poetry." It is precisely the +reverse. Poe's influence affected Baudelaire's prose, notably in the +disjointed confessions, Mon coeur mis a nu, which vaguely recall the +American writer's Marginalia. The bulk in the poetry in Les Fleurs du +Mal was written before Baudelaire had read Poe, though not published in +book form until 1857. But in 1855 some of the poems saw the light in the +Revue des deux Mondes, while many of them had been put forth a decade or +fifteen years before as fugitive verse in various magazines. Stedman was +not the first to make this mistake. In Bayard Taylor's The Echo Club we +find on page 24 this criticism: "There was a congenital twist about Poe +... Baudelaire and Swinburne after him have been trying to surpass him +by increasing the dose; but his muse is the natural Pythia inheriting +her convulsions, while they eat all sorts of insane roots to produce +theirs." This must have been written about 1872, and after reading it +one would fancy that Poe and Baudelaire were rhapsodic wrigglers on the +poetic tripod, whereas their poetry is often reserved, even glacial. +Baudelaire, like Poe, sometimes "built his nests with the birds of +Night," and that was enough to condemn the work of both men by critics +of the didactic school. + +Once, when Baudelaire heard that an American man of letters(?) was in +Paris, he secured an introduction and called on him. Eagerly inquiring +after Poe, he learned that he was not considered a genteel person in +America, Baudelaire withdrew, muttering maledictions. Enthusiastic poet! +Charming literary person! Yet the American, whoever he was, represented +public opinion at the time. To-day criticisms of Poe are vitiated by the +desire to make him an angel. It is to be doubted whether without his +barren environment and hard fortunes we should have had Poe at all. He +had to dig down deep into the pit of his personality to reach the +central core of his music. But every ardent young soul entering +"literature" begins by a vindication of Poe's character. Poe was a man, +and he is now a classic. He was a half-charlatan as was Baudelaire. In +both the sublime and the sickly were never far asunder. The pair loved +to mystify, to play pranks on their contemporaries. Both were implacable +pessimists. Both were educated in affluence, and both had to face +unprepared the hardships of life. The hastiest comparison of their +poetic work will show that their only common ideal was the worship of an +exotic beauty. Their artistic methods of expression were totally +dissimilar. Baudelaire, like Poe, had a harp-like temperament which +vibrated in the presence of strange subjects. Above all, he was obsessed +by sex. Women, as angel of destruction, is the keynote of his poems. Poe +was almost sexless. His aerial creatures never footed the dusty highways +of the world. His lovely lines, "Helen, thy beauty is to me," could +never have been written by Baudelaire; while Poe would never have +pardoned the "fulgurant" grandeur, the Beethoven-like harmonies, the +Dantesque horrors of that "deep wide music of lost souls" in "Femmes +Damnees": + + "Descendes, descendes, lamentable victimes." + +Or this, which might serve as a text for one of John Martin's vast +sinister mezzotints: + + J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un theatre banal + Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore, + Une fee allumer dans un ciel infernal + Une miraculeuse aurore; + + J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un theatre banal + Un etre, qui n'etait que lumiere, or et gaze, + Terrasser renorme Satan; + Mais mon coeur que jamais ne visite l'extase, + Est un theatre ou l'on attend + Toujours, toujours en vain l'Etre aux ailes de gaze. + +George Saintsbury thus sums up the differences between Poe and +Baudelaire: "Both authors--Poe and De Quincey--fell short of Baudelaire +himself as regards depth and fulness of passion, but both have a +superficial likeness to him in eccentricity of temperameut and affection +for a certain peculiar mixture of grotesque and horror." Poe is without +passion, except a passion for the macabre; what Huysmans calls "The +October of the sensations"; whereas, there is a gulf of despair and +terror and humanity in Baudelaire, which shakes your nerves, yet +stimulates the imagination. However, profounder as a poet, he was no +match for Poe in what might be termed intellectual prestidigitation. The +mathematical Poe, the Poe of the ingenious detective tales, tales +extraordinary, the Poe of the swift flights into the cosmic blue, the +Poe the prophet and mystic--in these the American was more versatile +than his French translator. That Baudelaire said, "Evil be thou my +good," is doubtless true. He proved all things and found them vanity. He +is the poet of original sin, a worshipper of Satan for the sake of +paradox; his Litanies to Satan ring childish to us--in his heart he was +a believer. His was "an infinite reverse aspiration," and mixed up with +his pose was a disgust for vice, for life itself. He was the last of the +Romanticists; Sainte-Beuve called him the Kamchatka of Romanticism; its +remotest hyperborean peak. Romanticism is dead to-day, as dead as +Naturalism; but Baudelaire is alive, and read. His glistening +phosphorescent trail is over French poetry and he is the begetter of a +school:--Verlaine, Villiers de l'Isle Adam, Carducci, Arthur Rimbaud, +Jules Laforgue, Gabriel D'Annunzio, Aubrey Beardsley, Verhaeren, and +many of the youthful crew. He affected Swinburne, and in Huysmans, who +was not a poet, his splenetic spirit lives. Baudelaire's motto might be +the obverse of Browning's lines: "The Devil is in heaven. All's wrong +with the world." + +When Goethe said of Hugo and the Romanticists that they came +from Chateaubriand, he should have substituted the name of +Rousseau--"Romanticism, it is Rousseau," exclaims Pierre Lasserre. But +there is more of Byron and Petrus Borel--a forgotten half-mad poet--in +Baudelaire; though, for a brief period, in 1848, he became a Rousseau +reactionary, sported the workingman's blouse, cut his hair, shouldered a +musket, went to the barricades, wrote inflammatory editorials calling +the proletarian "Brother!" (oh, Baudelaire!) and, as the Goncourts +recorded in their diary, had the head of a maniac. How seriously we may +take this swing of the pendulum is to be noted in a speech of the poet's +at the time of the Revolution: "Come," he said, "let us go shoot General +Aupick!" It was his stepfather that he thought of, not the eternal +principles of Liberty. This may be a false anecdote; many such were +foisted upon Baudelaire. For example, his exclamations at cafes or in +public places, such as: "Have you ever eaten a baby? I find it pleasing +to the palate!" or, "The night I killed my father!" Naturally, people +stared and Baudelaire was happy--he had startled a bourgeois. The +cannibalistic idea he may have borrowed from Swift's amusing pamphlet, +for this French poet knew English literature. + +Gautier compares the poems to a certain tale of Hawthorne's in which +there is a garden of poisoned flowers. But Hawthorne worked in his +laboratory of evil wearing mask and gloves; he never descended into the +mud and sin of the street. Baudelaire ruined his health, smudged his +soul, yet remained withal, as Anatole France says, "a divine poet." How +childish, yet how touching is his resolution--he wrote in his diary of +prayer's dynamic force--when he was penniless, in debt, threatened with +imprisonment, sick, nauseated with sin: "To make every morning my prayer +to God, the reservoir of all force, and all justice; to my father, to +Mariette, and to Poe as intercessors." (Evidently, Maurice Barres +encountered here his theory of Intercessors.) Baudelaire loved the +memory of his father as much as Stendhal hated his own. He became +reconciled with his mother after the death of General Aupick, in 1857. +He felt in 1862 that his own intellectual eclipse was approaching, for +he wrote: "I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror. To-day +imbecility's wing fanned me as it passed." The sense of the vertiginous +gulf was abiding with him; read his poem, "Pascal avait son gouffre." + +In preferring the Baudelaire translations of Poe to the original--and +they give the impression of being original works--Stedman agreed with +Asselineau that the French is more concise than the English. The prose +of Poe and Baudelaire is clear, sober, rhythmic; Baudelaire's is more +lapidary, finer in contour, richer coloured, more supple, though without +the "honey and tiger's blood" of Barbey d'Aurevilly. Baudelaire's soul +was patiently built up as a fabulous bird might build its nest--bits of +straw, the sobbing of women, clay, cascades of black stars, rags, +leaves, rotten wood, corroding dreams, a spray of roses, a sparkle of +pebble, a gleam of blue sky, arabesques of incense and verdigris, +despairing hearts and music and the abomination of desolation, for its +ground-tones. But this soul-nest is also a cemetery of the seven +sorrows. He loves the clouds ... les nuages ... la bas.... It was la bas +with him even in the tortures of his wretched love-life. Corruption and +death were ever floating in his consciousness. He was like Flaubert, who +saw everywhere the hidden skeleton. Felicien Hops has best interpreted +Baudelaire; the etcher and poet were closely knit spirits. Rodin, too, +is a Baudelarian. If there could be such an anomaly as a native +wood-note wildly evil, it would be the lyric and astringent voice of +this poet. His sensibility was both catholic and morbid, though he could +be frigid in the face of the most disconcerting misfortunes. He was a +man for whom the invisible word existed; if Gautier was pagan, +Baudelaire was a strayed spirit from mediaeval days. The spirit rules, +and, as Paul Bourget said, "he saw God." A Manichean in his worship of +evil, he nevertheless abased his soul: "Oh! Lord God! Give me the force +and courage to contemplate my heart and my body without disgust," he +prays: but as some one remarked to Rochefoucauld, "Where you end, +Christianity begins." + +Baudelaire built his ivory tower on the borders of a poetic Maremma, +which every miasma of the spirit pervaded, every marsh-light and +glow-worm inhabited. Like Wagner, Baudelaire painted in his sultry music +the profundities of abysms, the vastness of space. He painted, too, the +great nocturnal silences of the soul. + +Pacem summum tenent! He never reached peace on the heights. Let us +admit that souls of his kind are encased in sick frames; their steel is +too shrewd for the scabbard; yet the enigma for us is none the less +unfathomable. Existence for such natures is a sort of muffled delirium. +To affiliate him with Poe, De Quincey, Hoffman, James Thomson, +Coleridge, and the rest of the sombre choir does not explain him; he is, +perhaps, nearer Donne and Villon than any of the others--strains of the +metaphysical and sinister and supersubtle are to be discovered in him. +The disharmony of brain and body, the spiritual bilocation, are only too +easy to diagnose; but the remedy? Hypocrite lecteur--mon semblable--mon +frere! When the subtlety, force, grandeur, of his poetic production be +considered, together with its disquieting, nervous, vibrating qualities, +it is not surprising that Victor Hugo wrote to the poet: "You invest the +heaven of art with we know not what deadly rays; you create a new +shudder." Hugo might have said that he turned Art into an Inferno. +Baudelaire is the evil archangel of poetry. In his heaven of fire, glass +and ebony he is the blazing Lucifer. "A glorious devil, large in heart +and brain, that did love beauty only..." once sang Tennyson, though not +of the Frenchman. + + + + +II + + +As long ago as 1869, and in our "barbarous gas-lit country," as +Baudelaire named the land of Poe, an unsigned review appeared in which +this poet was described as "unique and as interesting as Hamlet. He is +that rare and unknown being, a genuine poet--a poet in the midst of +things that have disordered his spirit--a poet excessively developed in +his taste for and by beauty ... very responsive to the ideal, very +greedy of sensation." A better description of Baudelaire does not exist +The Hamlet-motive, particularly, is one that sounded throughout the +disordered symphony of the poet's life. + +He was, later, revealed--also reviled--to American readers by Henry +James, who completely missed his significance. This was in 1878, when +appeared the first edition of French Poets and Novelists. Previous to +that there had been some desultory discussion, a few essays in the +magazines, and in 1875 a sympathetic paper by Professor James Albert +Harrison of the University of Virginia. He denounced the Frenchman for +his reprehensible taste, though he did not mention his beautiful verse +nor his originality in the matter of criticism. Baudelaire, in his eyes, +was not only immoral, but he had, with the approbation of Sainte-Beuve, +introduced Poe as a great man to the French nation. (See Baudelaire's +letter to Sainte-Beuve in the newly published Letters, 1841-1866.) +Perhaps "Mr. Dick Minim" and his projected Academy of Criticism might +make clear these devious problems. + +The Etudes Critiques of Edmond Scherer were collected in 1863. In them +we find this unhappy, uncritical judgment: "Baudelaire, lui, n'a rien, +ni le coeur, ni l'esprit, ni l'idee, ni le mot, ni la raison, ni la +fantaisie, ni la verve, ni meme la facture ... son unique titre c'est +d'avoir contribue a creer l'esthetique de la debauche." It is not our +intention to dilate upon the injustice of this criticism. It is +Baudelaire the critic of aesthetics in whom we are interested. Yet I +cannot forbear saying that if all the negations of Scherer had been +transformed into affirmations, only justice would have been accorded +Baudelaire, who was not alone a poet, the most original of his century, +but also a critic of the first rank, one who welcomed Richard Wagner +when Paris hooted him and his fellow composer, Hector Berlioz, played +the role of the envious; one who fought for Edouard Manet, Leconte de +Lisle, Gustave Flaubert, Eugene Delacroix; fought with pen for the +modern etchers, illustrators, Meryon, Daumier, Felicien Rops, Gavarni, +and Constantin Guys. He literally identified himself with De Quincey and +Poe, translating them so wonderfully well that some unpatriotic persons +like the French better than the originals. So much was Baudelaire +absorbed in Poe that a writer of his times asserted that the translator +would meet the same fate as the American poet. A singular, vigorous +spirit is Baudelaire's, whose poetry with its "icy ecstasy" is profound +and harmonious, whose criticism is penetrated by a catholic quality, who +anticipated modern critics in his abhorrence of schools and +environments, preferring to isolate the man and uniquely study him. He +would have subscribed to Swinburne's generous pronouncement: "I have +never been able to see what should attract man to the profession of +criticism but the noble pleasure of praising." The Frenchman has said +that it would be impossible for a critic to become a poet; and it is +impossible for a poet not to contain a critic. + +Theophile Gautier's study prefixed to the definitive edition of Les +Fleurs du Mal is not only the most sympathetic exposition of Baudelaire +as man and genius, but it is also the high-water mark of Gautier's gifts +as a critical essayist. We learn therein how the young Charles, an +incorrigible dandy, came to visit Hotel Pimodan about 1844. In this +Hotel Pimodan a dilettante, Ferdinand Boissard, held high revel. His +fantastically decorated apartments were frequented by the painters, +poets, sculptors, romancers, of the day--that is, carefully selected +ones such as Liszt, George Sand, Merimee, and others whose verve or +genius gave them the privilege of saying Open Sesame! to this cave of +forty Supermen. Balzac has in his Peau de Chagrin pictured the same sort +of scenes which were supposed to occur weekly at the Pimodan. Gautier +eloquently describes the meeting of these kindred artistic souls, where +the beautiful Jewess, Maryx, who had posed for Ary Scheffer's Mignon +and for Paul Delaroche's La Gloire, met the superb Madame Sabatier, the +only woman that Baudelaire loved, and the original of that extraordinary +group of Clesinger's--the sculptor and son-in-law of George Sand--la +Femme au Serpent, a Salammbo a la mode in marble. Hasheesh was eaten, so +Gautier writes, by Boissard and Baudelaire. As for the creator of +Mademoiselle Maupin, he was too robust for such nonsense. He had to work +for his living at journalism, and he died in harness, an irreproachable +father, while the unhappy Baudelaire, the inheritor of an intense, +unstable temperament, soon devoured his patrimony of 75,000 francs, and +for the remaining years of his life was between the devil of his dusky +Jenny Duval and the deep sea of hopeless debt. + +It was at these Pimodan gatherings, which were no doubt much less wicked +than the participants would have us believe, that Baudelaire encountered +Emile Deroy, a painter of skill, who made his portrait, and encouraged +the fashionable young fellow to continue his art studies. We have seen +an album containing sketches by the poet. They betray talent of about +the same order as Thackeray's, with a superadded note of the +"horrific"--that favourite epithet of the early Poe critics. Baudelaire +admired Thackeray, and when the Englishman praised the illustrations of +Guys, he was delighted. Deroy taught his pupil the commonplaces of a +painter's technique; also how to compose a palette--a rather meaningless +phrase nowadays. At least, he did not write of the arts without some +technical experience. Delacroix took up his enthusiastic disciple, and +when the Salons of Baudelaire appeared in 1845, 1846, 1855, and 1859, +the praise and blame they evoked were testimonies to the training and +knowledge of their author. A new spirit had been born. + +The names of Diderot and Baudelaire were coupled. Neither academic nor +spouting the jargon of the usual critic, the Salons of Baudelaire are +the production of a humanist. Some would put them above Diderot's. Mr. +Saintsbury, after Swinburne the warmest advocate of Baudelaire among the +English, thinks that the French poet in his picture criticism observed +too little and imagined too much. "In other words," he adds, "to read a +criticism of Baudelaire's without the title affixed is by no means a +sure method of recognizing the picture afterward." Now, word-painting +was the very thing that Baudelaire avoided. It was his friend Gautier, +with the plastic style, who attempted the well-nigh impossible feat of +competing in his verbal descriptions with the certitudes of canvas and +marble. And, if he with his verbal imagination did not entirely succeed, +how could a less adept manipulator of the vocabulary? We do not agree +with Mr. Saintsbury. No one can imagine too much when the imagination is +that of a poet. Baudelaire divined the work of the artist and set it +down scrupulously in a prose of exceeding rectitude. He did not paint +pictures in prose. He did not divagate. He did not overburden his pages +with technical terms. But the spirit of his subject he did disengage in +a few swift phrases. The polemics of historical schools were a cross for +him to bear, and he wore his prejudices lightly. Like a true critic, he +judged more by form than theme. There are no types; there is only life, +he asserted, and long before Jules Laforgue. He was ever art-for-art, +yet, having breadth of comprehension and a Heine-like capacity for +seeing both sides of his own nature with its idiosyncrasies, he could +write: "The puerile utopia of the school of art-for-art, in excluding +morality, and often even passion, was necessarily sterile. All +literature which refuses to advance fraternally between science and +philosophy is a homicidal and a suicidal literature." + +Baudelaire, then, was no less sound a critic of the plastic arts than of +music and literature. Like his friend Flaubert, he had a horror of +democracy, of the democratisation of the arts, of all the sentimental +fuss and fuddle of a pseudo-humanitarianism. During the 1848 agitation +the former dandy of 1840 put on a blouse and spoke of barricades. Those +things were in the air. Wagner rang the alarm-bells during the Dresden +uprising. Chopin wrote for the pianoforte a revolutionary etude. Brave +lads! Poets and musicians fight their battles best in the region of the +ideal. Baudelaire's little attack of the equality-measles soon vanished. +He lectured his brother poets and artists on the folly and injustice of +abusing or despising the bourgeois (being a man of paradox, he dedicated +a volume of his Salons to the bourgeois), but he would not have +contradicted Mr. George Moore for declaring that "in art the democrat +is always reactionary. In 1830 the democrats were against Victor Hugo +and Delacrois." And Les Fleurs du Mal, that book of opals, blood, and +evil swamp-flowers, will never be savoured by the mob. + +In his Souvenirs de Jeunesse, Champfleury speaks of the promenades in +the Louvre he enjoyed the company with Baudelaire. Bronzino was one of +the poet's preferences. He was also attracted by El Greco--not an +unnatural admiration, considering the sombre extravagance of his own +genius. Of Goya he has written in exalted phrases. Velasquez was his +touchstone. Being of a perverse nature, his Derves ruined by abuse of +drink and drugs, the landscapes of his imagination were more beautiful +than Nature herself. The country itself, he declared, was odious. Like +Whistler, whom he often met--see the Hommage a Delacrois by +Fantin-Latour, with its portraits of Whistler, Baudelaire, Manet, +Bracquemond the etcher, Legros, Delacrois, Cordier, Duranty the critic, +and De Balleroy--he could not help showing his aversion to "foolish +sunsets." In a word, Baudelaire, into whose brain had entered too much +moonlight, was the father of a lunar school of poetry, criticism and +fiction. His Samuel Cramer, in La Fanfarlo, is the literary progenitor +of Jean, Duc d'Esseintes, in Huysmans's _A Rebours_. Huysmans at first +modelled himself upon Baudelaire. His Le Drageoir aux Epices is a +continuation of Petits Poemes en Prose. And to Baudelaire's account must +be laid much artificial morbid writing. Despite his pursuit of +perfection in form, his influence has been too often baneful to +impressionable artists in embryo. A lover of Gallic Byronism, and +high-priest of the Satanic school, there was no extravagance, absurd or +terrible, that he did not commit, from etching a four-part fugue on ice +to skating hymns in honour of Lucifer. In his criticism alone was he the +sane logical Frenchman. And while he did not live to see the success of +the Impressionist group, he surely would have acclaimed their theory and +practice. Was he not an impressionist himself? + +As Richard Wagner was his god in music, so Delacroix quite overflowed +his aesthetic consciousness. Read Volume II of his collected works, +_Curiosites Esthetiques_, which contains his Salons; also his essay, _De +l'Essence du Rire_ (worthy to be placed side by side with George +Meredith's essay on Comedy). Caricaturists, French and foreign, are +considered in two chapters at the close of the volume. Baudelaire was as +conscientious as Gautier. He trotted around miles of mediocre canvas, +saying an encouraging word to the less talented, boiling over with holy +indignation or indulging in glacial irony, before the rash usurpers +occupying the seats of the mighty, and pouncing on new genius with +promptitude. Upon Delacroix he lavished the largesse of his admiration. +He smiled at the platitudes of Horace Vernet, and only shook his head +over the Schnetzes and other artisans of the day. He welcomed William +Hausollier, now so little known. He praised Deveria, Chasseriau--who +waited years before he came into his own; his preferred landscapists +were Corot, Rousseau and Troyon. He impolitely spoke of Ary Scheffer and +the "apes of sentiment"; while his discussions of Hogarth, Cruikshank, +Pinelli and Breughel proclaims his versatility of vision. In his essay +Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne he was the first among critics to recognize +the peculiar quality called "modernity," that naked vibration which +informs the novels of Goncourt, Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale, +and the pictures of Manet, Monet, Degas and Raffaelli with their +evocations of a new, nervous Paris. It is in his Volume III, entitled +L'Art Romantique, that so many things dear to the new century were then +subjects of furious quarrels. This book contains much just and brilliant +writing. It was easy for Nietzsche to praise Wagner in Germany in 1876, +but dangerous at Paris in 1861 to declare war on Wagner's adverse +critics. This Baudelaire did. + +The relations of Baudelaire and Edouard Manet were exceedingly cordial. +In a letter to Theophile Thore, the art critic (Letters, p. 361), we +find Baudelaire defending his friend from the accusation that his +pictures were pastiches of Goya. He wrote: "Manet has never seen Goya, +never El Greco; he was never in the Pourtales Gallery." Which may have +been true at the time, 1864, nevertheless Manet had visited Madrid and +spent much time studying Velasquez and abusing Spanish cookery. +(Consider, too, Goya's Balcony with Girls and Manet's famous Balcony.) +Raging at the charge of imitation, Baudelaire said in this same epistle: +"They accuse even me of imitating Edgar Poe.... Do you know why I so +patiently translated Poe? Because he resembled me." The poet italicized +these words. With stupefaction, therefore, he admired the mysterious +coincidences of Manet's work with that of Goya and El Greco. + +He took Manet seriously. He wrote to him in a paternal and severe tone. +Recall his reproof when urging the painter to exhibit his work. "You +complain about attacks, but are you the first to endure them? Have you +more genius than Chateaubriand and Wagner? They were not killed by +derision. And in order not to make you too proud I must tell you that +they are models, each in his way, and in a very rich world, while you +are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." (Letters, p. 436.) + +Would Baudelaire recall these prophetic words if he were able to revisit +the glimpses of the Champs Elysees at the Autumn Salons? What would he +think of Cezanne? Odilon Redon he would understand, for he is the +transposer of Baudelairianism to terms of design and colour. And perhaps +the poet whose verse is saturated with tropical hues--he, when young, +sailed in southern seas--might appreciate the monstrous debauch of form +and colour in the Tahitian canvases of Paul Gauguin. + +Baudelaire's preoccupation with pictorial themes may be noted in his +verse. He is par excellence the poet of aesthetics. To Daumier he +inscribed a poem; and to the sculptor Ernest Christophe, to Delacroix +(Sur Tasse en Prison), to Manet, to Guys (Reve Parisien), to an unknown +master (Une Martyre); and Watteau, a Watteau a rebours, is seen in Un +Voyage a Cythere; while in Les Phares this poet of the ideal, spleen +music, and perfume, shows his adoration for Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci, +Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Puget, Goya, Delacroix--"Delacroix, lac de sang +hante des mauvais anges." And what is more exquisite than his quatrain +to Lola de Valence, a poetic inscription for the picture of Edouard +Manet, with its last line as vaporous, as subtle as Verlaine: "Le charme +inattendu d'un bijou rose et noir!" Heine called himself the last of the +Romantics. The first of the "Moderns" and the last of the Romantics was +the many-sided Charles Baudelaire. + + + + +III + + +He was born at Paris, April 9, 1821 (Flaubert's birth year), and not +April 21, as Gautier has it. His father was Joseph Francis Baudelaire, +or Baudelaire, who occupied a government position. A cultivated art +lover, his taste was apparent in the home he made for his second wife, +Caroline Archimbaut-Dufays, an orphan and the daughter of a military +officer. There was a considerable difference in the years of this pair; +the mother was twenty-seven, the father sixty-two, at the birth of their +only child. By his first marriage the elder Baudelaire had one son, +Claude, who, like his half-brother Charles, died of paralysis, though a +steady man of business. That great modern neurosis, called Commerce, has +its mental wrecks, too, and no one pays attention; but when a poet falls +by the wayside is the chase begun by neurologists and other soul-hunters +seeking victims. After the death of Baudelaire's father, the widow, +within a year, married the handsome, ambitious Aupick, then chef de +bataillon, lieutenant-colonel, decorated with the Legion of Honour, and +later general and ambassador to Madrid, Constantinople, and London. +Charles was a nervous, frail youth, but unlike most children of genius, +he was a scholar and won brilliant honours at school. His stepfather was +proud of him. From the Royal College of Lyons, Charles went to the Lycee +Louis-le-Grand, Paris, but was expelled in 1839, on various +discreditable charges. Troubles soon began at home. He was irascible, +vain, precocious, and given to dissipation. He quarreled with General +Aupick, and disdained his mother. But she was to blame, she has +confessed; she had quite forgotten the boy in the flush of her second +love. He could not forget, or forgive what he called her infidelity to +the memory of his father. Hamlet-like, he was inconsolable. The good +Bishop of Montpellier, who knew the family, said that Charles was a +little crazy--second marriages usually bring woe in their train. "When a +mother has such a son, she doesn't re-marry," said the young poet +Charles signed himself Baudelaire-Dufays, or sometimes Dufais. He wrote +in his journal: "My ancestors, idiots or maniacs ... all victims of +terrible passions"; which was one of his exaggerations. His grandfather +on the paternal side was a Champenois peasant, his mother's family +presumably Norman, but not much is known of her forbears. Charles +believed himself lost from the time his half-brother was stricken. He +also believed that his instability of temperament--and he studied his +"case" as would a surgeon--was the result of his parents' disparity in +years. + +After his return from the East, where he did not learn English as has +been said--his mother taught him as a boy to converse in and write the +language--he came into his little inheritance, about fifteen thousand +dollars. Two years later he was so heavily in debt that his family asked +for a guardian on the ground of incompetency. He had been swindled, +being young and green. How had he squandered his money? Not exactly on +opera-glasses, like Gerard de Nerval, but on clothes, pictures, +furniture, books. The remnant was set aside to pay his debts. Charles +would be both poet and dandy. He dressed expensively but soberly, in the +English fashion; his linen dazzling, the prevailing hue of his +habiliments black. In height he was medium, his eyes brown, searching, +luminous, the eye of a nyctalops, "eyes like ravens"; nostrils +palpitating, cleft chin, mouth expressive, sensual jaw, strong and +square. His hair was black, curly, glossy, his forehead high, square and +white. In the Deroy portrait he wears a beard; he is there what Catulle +Mendes nicknamed him: "His Excellence, Monseigneur Brummel!" Later he +was the elegiac Satan, the author of L'Imitation de N.S. le Diable; or +the Baudelaire of George Moore: "the clean-shaven face of the mock +priest, the slow cold eyes and the sharp cunning sneer of the cynical +libertine who will be tempted that he may better know the worthlessness +of temptation." In the heyday of his blood he was perverse and +deliberate. Let us credit him with contradicting the Byronic notion that +ennui could best be cured by dissipation; in sin Baudelaire found the +saddest of all consolations. Mendes laughs at the legend of Baudelaire's +violence, of his being given to explosive phrases. Despite Gautier's +stories about the Hotel Pimodan and its club of hasheesh-eaters, M. +Mendes denies that Baudelaire was a victim of the hemp. What the +majority of mankind does not know concerning the habits of literary +workers is this prime fact: men who work hard, writing verse--and there +is no mental toil comparable to it--cannot drink, or indulge in opium, +without inevitable collapse. The old-fashioned ideas of "inspiration," +spontaneity, easy improvisation, the sudden bolt from heaven, are +delusions still hugged by the world. To be told that Chopin filed +at his music for years, that Beethoven in his smithy forged his +thunderbolts by the sweat of his brow, that Manet toiled like a +labourer on the dock, that Baudelaire was a mechanic in his devotion +to poetic work, that Gautier was a hard-working journalist, are +disillusions for the sentimental. Minerva springing full-fledged from +Jupiter's skull to the desk of the poet is a pretty fancy; but Balsac +and Flaubert did not encourage this fancy. Work literally killed Poe, as +it killed Jules de Goncourt, Flaubert and Daudet. Maupassant went insane +because he would work and he would play the same day. Baudelaire worked +and worried. His debts haunted him his life long. His constitution was +flawed--Sainte-Beuve told him that he had worn out his nerves--from the +start, he was detraque; but that his entire life was one huge debauch is +a nightmare of the moral police in some red cotton nightcap country. + +His period of mental production was not brief nor barren. He was a +student. Du Camp's charge that he was an ignorant man is disproved by +the variety and quality of his published work. His range of sympathies +was large. His mistake, in the eyes of his colleagues, was to write so +well about the seven arts. Versatility is seldom given its real +name--which is protracted labour. Baudelaire was one of the elect, an +aristocrat, who dealt with the quintessence of art; his delicate air of +a bishop, his exquisite manners, his modulated voice, aroused unusual +interest and admiration. He was a humanist of distinction; he has left a +hymn to Saint Francis in the Latin of the decadence. Baudelaire, like +Chopin, made more poignant the phrase, raised to a higher intensity the +expressiveness of art. + +Women played a commanding role in his life. They always do with any poet +worthy of the name, though few have been so frank in acknowledging this +as Baudelaire. Yet he was in love more with Woman than the individual. +The legend of the beautiful creature he brought from the East resolves +itself into the dismal affair with Jeanne Duval. He met her in Paris, +after he had been in the East. She sang at a cafe concert in Paris. She +was more brown than black. She was not handsome, not intelligent, not +good; yet he idealized her, for she was the source of half his +inspiration. To her were addressed those marvellous evocations of the +Orient, of perfume, tresses, delicious dawns on strange far-away seas +and "superb Byzant," domes that devils built. Baudelaire is the poet of +perfumes; he is also the patron saint of ennui. No one has so chanted +the praise of odours. His soul swims on perfume as do other souls on +music, he has sung. As he grew older he seemed to hunt for more acrid +odours; he often presents an elaborately chased vase the carving of +which transports us, but from which the head is quickly averted. Jeanne, +whom he never loved, no matter what may be said, was a sorceress. But +she was impossible; she robbed, betrayed him; he left her a dozen times +only to return. He was a capital draughtsman with a strong nervous line +and made many pen-and-ink drawings of her. They are not prepossessing. +In her rapid decline she was not allowed to want. Madame Aupick paid her +expenses in the hospital. A sordid history. She was a veritable flower +of evil for Baudelaire. Yet poetry, like music, would be colourless, +scentless, if it sounded no dissonances. Fancy art reduced to the +beatific and banal chord of C major! + +He fell in love with the celebrated Madame Sabatier, a reigning beauty, +at whose salon artistic Paris assembled. She had been christened by +Gautier Madame la Presidente, and her sumptuous beauty was portrayed by +Ricard in his La Femme au Chien. She returned Baudelaire's love. They +soon parted. Again a riddle which the published letters hardly solve. +One letter, however, does show that Baudelaire had tried to be faithful, +and failed. He could not extort from his exhausted soul the sentiment; +but he put its music on paper. His most seductive lyrics were addressed +to Madame Sabatier: "A la tres chere, a la tres-belle," a hymn saturated +with love. Music, spleen, perfumes--"colour, sound, perfumes call to +each other as deep to deep; perfumes like the flesh of children, soft as +hautboys, green as the meadows"--criminals, outcasts, the charm of +childhood, the horrors of love, pride, and rebellion, Eastern +landscapes, cats, soothing and false; cats, the true companions of +lonely poets; haunted clocks, shivering dusks, and gloomier +dawns--Paris in a hundred phases--these and many other themes this +strange-souled poet, this "Dante, pacer of the shore," of Paris has +celebrated in finely wrought verse and profound phrases. In a single +line he contrives atmosphere; the very shape of his sentence, the ring +of the syllables, arouse the deepest emotion. A master of harmonic +undertones is Baudelaire. His successors have excelled him in making +their music more fluid, more lyrical, more vapourous--many young French +poets pass through their Baudelarian green-sickness--but he alone knows +the secrets of moulding those metallic, free sonnets, which have the +resistance of bronze; and of the despairing music that flames from the +mouths of lost souls trembling on the wharves of hell. He is the supreme +master of irony and troubled voluptuousness. + +Baudelaire is a masculine poet. He carved rather than sang; the plastic +arts spoke to his soul. A lover and maker of images. Like Poe, his +emotions transformed themselves into ideas. Bourget classified him as +mystic, libertine, and analyst. He was born with a wound in his soul, to +use the phrase of Pere Lacordaire. (Curiously enough, he actually +contemplated, in 1861, becoming a candidate for Lacordaire's vacant seat +in the French Academy. Sainte-Beuve dissuaded him from this folly.) +Recall Baudelaire's prayer: "Thou, O Lord, my God, grant me the grace to +produce some fine lines which will prove to myself that I am not the +last of men, that I am not inferior to those I contemn." Individualist, +egoist, anarchist, his only thought was letters. Jules Laforgue thus +described Baudelaire: "Cat, Hindoo, Yankee, Episcopal, Alchemist." Yes, +an alchemist who suffocated in the fumes he created. He was of Gothic +imagination, and could have said with Rolla: "Je suis venu trop tard +dans un monde trop vieux." He had an unassuaged thirst for the absolute. +The human soul was his stage, he its interpreting orchestra. + +In 1857 The Flowers of Evil was published by Poulet-Malassis, who +afterward went into bankruptcy--a warning to publishers with a taste for +fine literature. The titles contemplated were Limbes, or Lesbiennes. +Hippolyte Babou suggested the one we know. These poems were suppressed +on account of six, and poet and publisher summoned. As the municipal +government had made a particular ass of itself in the prosecution of +Gustave Flaubert and his Madame Bovary, the Baudelaire matter was +disposed of in haste. He was condemned to a fine of three hundred +francs, a fine which was never paid, as the objectionable poems were +removed. They were printed in the Belgian edition, and may be read in +the new volume, OEuvres. Posthumes. + +Baudelaire was infuriated over the judgment, for he knew that his book +was dramatic in expression. He had expected, like Flaubert, to emerge +from the trial with flying colours; therefore to be classed as one who +wrote objectionable literature was a shock. "Flaubert had the Empress +back of him," he complained; which was true; the Empress Eugenie, also +the Princess Mathilde. But he worked as ever and put forth those +polished intaglios called Poems in Prose, for the form of which he had +taken a hint from Aloys Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit. He filled this +form with a new content; not alone pictures, but moods, are to be found +in those miniatures. Pity is their keynote, a tenderness for the abject +and lowly, a revelation of sensibility that surprised those critics who +had discerned in Baudelaire only a sculptor of evil. In one of his poems +he described a landscape of metal, of marble and water; a babel of +staircases and arcades, a palace of infinity, surrounded by the silence +of eternity. This depressing yet magical dream was utilized by Huysmans +in his A Rebours. But in the tiny landscapes of the Prose Poems there is +nothing rigid or artificial. Indeed, the poet's deliberate attitude of +artificiality is dropped. He is human. Not that the deep fundamental +note of humanity is ever absent in his poems; the eternal diapason is +there even when least overheard. Baudelaire is more human than Poe. His +range of sympathy is wider. In this he transcends him as a poet, though +his subject-matter often issues from the very dregs of life. Brother to +pitiable wanderers, there are, nevertheless, no traces of cant, no +"Russian pity" a la Dostoievsky, no humanitarian or socialistic +rhapsodies in his work. Baudelaire is an egoist He hated the sentimental +sapping of altruism. His prose-poem, Crowds, with its "bath of +multitude," may have been suggested by Poe; but in Charles Lamb we find +the idea: "Are there no solitudes out of caves and the desert? or +cannot the heart, in the midst of crowds, feel frightfully alone?" + +His best critical work is the Richard Wagner and Tannhauser, as +significant an essay as Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. And +Baudelaire's polemic appeared at a more critical period in Wagner's +career. Wagner sent a brief hearty letter of thanks to the critic, and +later made his acquaintance. To Wagner, Baudelaire introduced a young +Wagnerian, Villiers de l'Isle Adam. This Wagner letter is included in +the volume of Crepet; but there are no letters published from Baudelaire +to Franz Liszt, though they were friends. In Weimar I saw at the Liszt +Museum several from Baudelaire which should have been included in the +Letters. The poet understood Liszt and his reforms as he understood +Wagner. The German composer admired the French poet, and his Kundry, in +the sultry second act of Parsifal, has a Baudelairian hue, especially in +the temptation scene. + +The end was at hand. Baudelaire had been steadily, rather, unsteadily, +going downhill; a desperate figure, a dandy in shabby attire. He went +out only after dark, he haunted the exterior boulevards, associated +with birds of nocturnal plumage. He drank without thirst, ate without +hunger, as he has said. A woeful decadence for this aristocrat of life +and letters. Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged +his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre. He fled to +Brussels, there to rehabilitate his dwindling fortunes. He gave a few +lectures, and met Rops, Lemonnier, drank to forget, and forgot to work. +He abused Brussels, Belgium, its people. A country, he cried, where the +trees are black, the flowers without odour, and where there is no +conversation! He, the brilliant causeur, the chief blaguer of a circle +in which young James McNeill Whistler was reduced to the role of a +listener--this most spiritual among artists, found himself a failure in +the Belgian capital. It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that +Baudelaire was the creator of many of the paradoxes attributed, not only +to Whistler, but to an entire school--if one may employ such a phrase. +The frozen imperturbability of the poet, his cutting enunciation, his +power of blasphemy, his hatred of Nature, his love of the artificial, +have been copied by the aesthetic blades of our day. He it was who first +taunted Nature with being an imitator of art, with always being the +same. Oh, the imitative sunsets! Oh, the quotidian eating and drinking! +And as pessimist, too, he led the mode. Baudelaire, like Flaubert, +grasped the murky torch of pessimism once held by Chateaubriand, +Benjamin Constant, and Senancour. Doubtless, all this stemmed from +Byronism. And now it is as stale as Byronism. + +His health failed, and he lacked money enough to pay for doctor's +prescriptions; he even owed for the room in his hotel. At Namur, where +he was visiting the father-in-law of Felician Rops (March, 1866), he +suffered from an attack of paralysis. He was removed to Brussels. His +mother, who lived at Honneur, in mourning for her husband, came to his +aid. Taken to France, he was placed in a sanatorium. Aphasia set in. He +could only ejaculate a mild oath, and when he caught sight of himself in +the mirror he would bow pleasantly as if to a stranger. His friends +rallied, and they were among the most distinguished people in Paris, the +elite of souls. Ladies visited him, one or two playing Wagner on the +piano--which must have added a fresh nuance to death--and they brought +him flowers. He expressed his love for flowers and music to the last. He +could not bear the sight of his mother; she revived in him some painful +memories, but that passed, and he clamoured for her when she was absent. +If anyone mentioned the names of Wagner or Manet, he smiled. And with a +fixed stare, as if peering through some invisible window opening upon +eternity, he died, August 31, 1867, aged forty-six. + +Barbey d'Aurevilly himself a Satanist and dandy (oh, those comical old +attitudes of literature), had prophesied that the author of Fleurs du +Mal would either blow out his brains or prostrate himself at the foot of +the cross. (Later he said the same of Huysmans.) Baudelaire had the +alternative course forced upon him by fate after he had attempted +spiritual suicide for how many years? (He once tried actual suicide, but +the slight cut in his throat looked so ugly to him that he went no +farther.) His soul had been a battle-field for the powers of good and +evil. That at the end he brought the wreck of both soul and body to his +God should not be a subject for comment. He was an extraordinary poet +with a bad conscience, who lived miserably and was buried with honours. +Then it was that his worth was discovered (funeral orations over a +genius are a species of public staircase-wit). His reputation waxes with +the years. He is an exotic gem in the crown of French poetry. Of him +Swinburne has chanted Ave Atque Vale: + + Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, + Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? + + * * * * * + + + + +THE FLOWERS OF EVIL + + + + + THE DANCE OF DEATH. + + + Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves, + Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves + With all the careless and high-stepping grace, + And the extravagant courtesan's thin face. + + Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed? + Her floating robe, in royal amplitude, + Palls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod + With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod. + + The swarms that hum about her collar-bones + As the lascivious streams caress the stones, + Conceal from every scornful jest that flies, + Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes + + Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays + Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways, + Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebrae. + O charm of nothing decked in folly! they + + Who laugh and name you a Caricature, + They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure, + The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone + That is most dear to me, tall skeleton! + + Come you to trouble with your potent sneer + The feast of Life! or are you driven here, + To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir + And goad your moving corpse on with a spur? + + Or do you hope, when sing the violins, + And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins, + To drive some mocking nightmare far apart, + And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart? + + Fathomless well of fault and foolishness! + Eternal alembic of antique distress! + Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides + The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides. + + And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find, + Among us here, no lover to your mind; + Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave? + The charms of horror please none but the brave. + + Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir, + Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller + Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath, + The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth. + + For he who has not folded in his arms + A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms, + Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent, + When Horror comes the way that Beauty went. + + O irresistible, with fleshless face, + Say to these dancers in their dazzled race: + "Proud lovers with the paint above your bones, + Ye shall taste death, musk-scented skeletons! + + Withered Antinous, dandies with plump faces, + Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces, + Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath, + Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death. + + From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream, + The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream; + They do not see, within the opened sky, + The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high. + + In every clime and under every sun, + Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run; + And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye + And mingles with your madness, irony!" + + + + + THE BEACONS. + + + RUBENS, 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, + + LEONARD DA VINCI, sombre and fathomless glass, + Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile, + Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass, + Among the ice and pines that guard some isle. + + REMBRANDT, sad hospital that a murmuring fills, + Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls, + Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils, + And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls. + + Strong MICHELANGELO, a vague far place + Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules; + Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace, + And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease. + + The fighter's anger, the faun's impudence, + Thou makest of all these a lovely thing; + Proud heart, sick body, mind's magnificence: + PUGET, the convict's melancholy king. + + WATTEAU, the carnival of illustrious hearts, + Fluttering like moths upon the wings of chance; + Bright lustres light the silk that flames and darts, + And pour down folly on the whirling dance. + + GOYA, a nightmare full of things unknown; + The foetus witches broil on Sabbath night; + Old women at the mirror; children lone + Who tempt old demons with their limbs delight. + + DELACROIX, lake of blood ill angels haunt, + Where ever-green, o'ershadowing woods arise; + Under the surly heaven strange fanfares chaunt + And pass, like one of Weber's strangled sighs. + + And malediction, blasphemy and groan, + Ecstasies, cries, Te Deums, and tears of brine, + Are echoes through a thousand labyrinths flown; + For mortal hearts an opiate divine; + + A shout cried by a thousand sentinels, + An order from a thousand bugles tossed, + A beacon o'er a thousand citadels, + A call to huntsmen in deep woodlands lost. + + It is the mightiest witness that could rise + To prove our dignity, O Lord, to Thee; + This sob that rolls from age to age, and dies + Upon the verge of Thy Eternity! + + + + + THE SADNESS OF THE MOON. + + + The Moon more indolently dreams to-night + Than a fair woman on her couch at rest. + Caressing, with a hand distraught and light, + Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast. + + Upon her silken avalanche of down, + Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh; + And watches the white visions past her flown, + Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky. + + And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep, + Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow, + Some pious poet, enemy of sleep, + + Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow + Whence gleams of iris and of opal start, + And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart. + + + + + EXOTIC PERFUME. + + + 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. + + Islands of Lethe where exotic boughs + Bend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down. + Where men are upright, maids have never grown + Unkind, but bear a light upon their brows. + + Led by that perfume to these lands of ease, + I see a port where many ships have flown + With sails outwearied of the wandering seas; + + While the faint odours from green tamarisks blown, + Float to my soul and in my senses throng, + And mingle vaguely with the sailor's song. + + + + + BEAUTY. + + + I 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, + My throne is in the heaven's azure deep; + I hate all movements that disturb my pose, + I smile not ever, neither do I weep. + + Before my monumental attitudes, + That breathe a soul into the plastic arts, + My poets pray in austere studious moods, + + For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts, + Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies, + The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes. + + + + + THE BALCONY. + + + Mother 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, + Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses! + + The eves illumined by the burning coal, + The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings-- + How soft your breast was then, how sweet your soul! + Ah, and we said imperishable things, + Those eves illumined by the burning coal. + + Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm, + And space profound, and strong life's pulsing flood, + In bending o'er you, queen of every charm, + I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood. + The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm. + + The film of night flowed round and over us, + And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet; + I drank your breath, ah! sweet and poisonous, + And in my hands fraternal slept your feet-- + Night, like a film, flowed round and over us. + + I can recall those happy days forgot, + And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past. + Your languid beauties now would move me not + Did not your gentle heart and body cast + The old spell of those happy days forgot. + + Can vows and perfumes, kisses infinite, + Be reborn from the gulf we cannot sound; + As rise to heaven suns once again made bright + After being plunged in deep seas and profound? + Ah, vows and perfumes, kisses infinite! + + + + + THE SICK MUSE. + + + Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day? + Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn, + Upon thy brow in alternation play, + Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn. + + Have the green lemure and the goblin red, + Poured on thee love and terror from their urn? + Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread + Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne? + + Would that thy breast where so deep thoughts arise, + Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs; + Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave + + In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave, + When Phoebus shared his alternating reign + With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain. + + + + + THE VENAL MUSE. + + + Muse of my heart, lover of palaces, + When January comes with wind and sleet, + During the snowy eve's long wearinesses, + Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet? + + Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shoulders + In the moon-beams that through the window fly? + Or when thy purse dries up, thy palace moulders, + Reap the far star-gold of the vaulted sky? + + For thou, to keep thy body to thy soul, + Must swing a censer, wear a holy stole, + And chaunt Te Deums with unbelief between. + + Or, like a starving mountebank, expose + Thy beauty and thy tear-drowned smile to those + Who wait thy jeste to drive away thy spleen. + + + + + THE EVIL MONK. + + + The ancient cloisters on their lofty walls + Had holy Truth in painted frescoes shown, + And, seeing these, the pious in those halls + Felt their cold, lone austereness less alone. + + At that time when Christ's seed flowered all around, + More than one monk, forgotten in his hour, + Taking for studio the burial-ground, + Glorified Death with simple faith and power. + + And my soul is a sepulchre where I, + Ill cenobite, have spent eternity: + On the vile cloister walls no pictures rise. + + O when may I cast off this weariness, + And make the pageant of my old distress + For these hands labour, pleasure for these eyes? + + + + + THE TEMPTATION. + + + The Demon, in my chamber high. + This morning came to visit me, + And, thinking he would find some fault, + He whispered: "I would know of thee + + Among the many lovely things + That make the magic of her face, + Among the beauties, black and rose, + That make her body's charm and grace, + + Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply + To the Abhorred, O soul of mine: + "No single beauty is the best + When she is all one flower divine. + + When all things charm me I ignore + Which one alone brings most delight; + She shines before me like the dawn, + And she consoles me like the night. + + The harmony is far too great, + That governs all her body fair, + For impotence to analyse + And say which note is sweetest there. + + O mystic metamorphosis! + My senses into one sense flow-- + Her voice makes perfume when she speaks, + Her breath is music faint and low!" + + + + + THE IRREPARABLE. + + + Can we suppress the old Remorse + Who bends our heart beneath his stroke, + Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse, + Or as the acorn on the oak? + Can we suppress the old Remorse! + + Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell, + May we drown this our ancient foe, + Destructive glutton, gorging well, + Patient as the ants, and slow? + What wine, what philtre, or what spell? + + Tell it, enchantress, if you can, + Tell me, with anguish overcast, + Wounded, as a dying man, + Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past. + Tell it, enchantress, if you can, + + To him the wolf already tears + Who sees the carrion pinions wave, + This broken warrior who despairs + To have a cross above his grave-- + This wretch the wolf already tears. + + Can one illume a leaden sky, + Or tear apart the shadowy veil + Thicker than pitch, no star on high, + Not one funereal glimmer pale + Can one illume a leaden sky? + + Hope lit the windows of the Inn, + But now that shining flame is dead; + And how shall martyred pilgrims win + Along the moonless road they tread? + Satan has darkened all the Inn! + + Witch, do you love accursed hearts? + Say, do you know the reprobate? + Know you Remorse, whose venomed darts + Make souls the targets for their hate? + Witch, do you know accursed hearts? + + The Might-have-been with tooth accursed + Gnaws at the piteous souls of men, + The deep foundations suffer first, + And all the structure crumbles then + Beneath the bitter tooth accursed. + + + II. + + Often, when seated at the play, + And sonorous music lights the stage, + I see the frail hand of a Fay + With magic dawn illume the rage + Of the dark sky. Oft at the play + + A being made of gauze and fire + Casts to the earth a Demon great. + And my heart, whence all hopes expire, + Is like a stage where I await, + In vain, the Fay with wings of fire! + + + + + A FORMER LIFE. + + + Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, + By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, + Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows, + Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired. + + The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies + Mingled its music, turbulent and rich, + Solemn and mystic, with the colours which + The setting sun reflected in my eyes. + + And there I lived amid voluptuous calms, + In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave, + Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave, + + Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms. + They were my slaves--the only care they had + To know what secret grief had made me sad. + + + + + DON JUAN IN HADES. + + + When Juan sought the subterranean flood. + And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore. + Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stood + With one strong, vengeful hand on either oar. + + With open robes and bodies agonised, + Lost women writhed beneath that darkling sky; + There were sounds as of victims sacrificed: + Behind him all the dark was one long cry. + + And Sganarelle, with laughter, claimed his pledge; + Don Luis, with trembling finger in the air, + Showed to the souls who wandered in the sedge + The evil son who scorned his hoary hair. + + Shivering with woe, chaste Elvira the while, + Near him untrue to all but her till now, + Seemed to beseech him for one farewell smile + Lit with the sweetness of the first soft vow. + + And clad in armour, a tall man of stone + Held firm the helm, and clove the gloomy flood; + But, staring at the vessel's track alone, + Bent on his sword the unmoved hero stood. + + + + + THE LIVING FLAME. + + + They pass before me, these Eyes full of light, + Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise; + The holy brothers pass before my sight, + And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes. + + They keep me from all sin and error grave, + They set me in the path whence Beauty came; + They are my servants, and I am their slave, + And all my soul obeys the living flame. + + Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light + As candles lighted at full noon; the sun + Dims not your flame phantastical and bright. + + You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done; + Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn, + Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim! + + + + + CORRESPONDENCES. + + + In Nature's temple living pillars rise, + And words are murmured none have understood. + And man must wander through a tangled wood + Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes. + + As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim + Mingle to one deep sound and fade away; + Vast as the night and brilliant as the day, + Colour and sound and perfume speak to him. + + Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child, + Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green; + Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild, + + Have all the expansion of things infinite: + As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin, + Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight. + + + + + THE FLASK. + + + There are some powerful odours that can pass + Out of the stoppered flagon; even glass + To them is porous. Oft when some old box + Brought from the East is opened and the locks + And hinges creak and cry; or in a press + In some deserted house, where the sharp stress + Of odours old and dusty fills the brain; + An ancient flask is brought to light again, + And forth the ghosts of long-dead odours creep. + There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep + A thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides, + Phantoms of old the folding darkness hides, + Who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold, + Rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold. + + A memory that brings languor flutters here: + The fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear + Thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit + Where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet, + Arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost + Of an old passion, long since loved and lost. + So I, when vanished from man's memory + Deep in some dark and sombre chest I lie. + An empty flagon they have cast aside, + Broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride, + Will be your shroud, beloved pestilence! + The witness of your might and virulence, + Sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup + Of life and death my heart has drunken up! + + + + + REVERSIBILITY. + + + Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? + Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite, + And the vague terrors of the fearful night + That crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf? + Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? + + Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? + With hands clenched in the shade and tears of gall, + When Vengeance beats her hellish battle-call, + And makes herself the captain of our fate, + Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate? + + Angel of health, did ever you know pain, + Which like an exile trails his tired footfalls + The cold length of the white infirmary walls, + With lips compressed, seeking the sun in vain? + Angel of health, did ever you know pain? + + Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? + Know you the fear of age, the torment vile + Of reading secret horror in the smile + Of eyes your eyes have loved since long ago? + Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know? + + Angel of happiness, and joy, and light, + Old David would have asked for youth afresh + From the pure touch of your enchanted flesh; + I but implore your prayers to aid my plight, + Angel of happiness, and joy, and light. + + + + + THE EYES OF BEAUTY. + + + 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. + + In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er, + That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate + By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more + Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate. + + It is a ruin where the jackals rest, + And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay-- + A perfume swims about your naked breast! + + Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way! + With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared + Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared! + + + + + SONNET OF AUTUMN. + + + They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes: + "Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?" + Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despise + All save that antique brute-like faith of thine; + + And will not bare the secret of their shame + To thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long, + Nor their black legend write for thee in flame! + Passion I hate, a spirit does me wrong. + + Let us love gently. Love, from his retreat, + Ambushed and shadowy, bends his fatal bow, + And I too well his ancient arrows know: + + Crime, horror, folly. O pale marguerite, + Thou art as I, a bright sun fallen low, + O my so white, my so cold Marguerite. + + + + + THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD. + + + O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep + In the deep heart of a black marble tomb; + When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep + Only one rainy cave of hollow gloom; + + And when the stone upon thy trembling breast, + And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace, + Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest, + And holds those feet from their adventurous race; + + Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie, + (For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend) + During long nights when sleep is far from thee, + + Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehend + The dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak"-- + And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek. + + + + + THE GHOST. + + + Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove + I will return to thy alcove. + And glide upon the night to thee, + Treading the shadows silently. + + And I will give to thee, my own, + Kisses as icy as the moon, + And the caresses of a snake + Cold gliding in the thorny brake. + + And when returns the livid morn + Thou shalt find all my place forlorn + And chilly, till the falling night. + + Others would rule by tenderness + Over thy life and youthfulness, + But I would conquer thee by fright! + + + + + TO A MADONNA. + + (_An Ex-Voto in the Spanish taste_.) + + + Madonna, mistress. I would build for thee + An altar deep in the sad soul of me; + And in the darkest corner of my heart, + From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart, + Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine + For thee to stand erect in, Image divine! + And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crowned + Wrought of the gold of my smooth Verse, set round + With starry crystal rhymes; and I will make, + O mortal maid, a Mantle for thy sake, + And weave it of my jealousy, a gown + Heavy, barbaric, stiff, and weighted down + With my distrust, and broider round the hem + Not pearls, but all my tears in place of them. + And then thy wavering, trembling robe shall be + All the desires that rise and fall in me + From mountain-peaks to valleys of repose, + Kissing thy lovely body's white and rose. + For thy humiliated feet divine, + Of my Respect I'll make thee Slippers fine + Which, prisoning them within a gentle fold, + + Shall keep their imprint like a faithful mould. + And if my art, unwearying and discreet, + Can make no Moon of Silver for thy feet + To have for Footstool, then thy heel shall rest + Upon the snake that gnaws within my breast, + Victorious Queen of whom our hope is born! + And thou shalt trample down and make a scorn + Of the vile reptile swollen up with hate. + And thou shalt see my thoughts, all consecrate, + Like candles set before thy flower-strewn shrine, + O Queen of Virgins, and the taper-shine + Shall glimmer star-like in the vault of blue, + With eyes of flame for ever watching you. + While all the love and worship in my sense + Will be sweet smoke of myrrh and frankincense. + Ceaselessly up to thee, white peak of snow, + My stormy spirit will in vapours go! + + And last, to make thy drama all complete, + That love and cruelty may mix and meet, + I, thy remorseful torturer, will take + All the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them make + In darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen, + And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen, + That spot profound whence love and mercy start, + I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart! + + + + + THE SKY. + + + Where'er he be, on water or on land, + Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold; + One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band, + Shadowy beggar or Croesus rich with gold; + + Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er + His little brain may be, alive or dead; + Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere, + And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead. + + The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall; + The lighted ceiling of a music-hall + Where every actor treads a bloody soil-- + + The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot; + The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot + Where the vast human generations boil! + + + + + SPLEEN. + + + I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins + Flows aged blood; who rules a land of rains; + Who, young in years, is old in all distress; + Who flees good counsel to find weariness + Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred + Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird; + Whose weary face emotion moves no more + E'en when his people die before his door. + His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile + Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile; + The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good, + Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood + No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom + Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb. + The sage who takes his gold essays in vain + To purge away the old corrupted strain, + His baths of blood, that in the days of old + The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold, + Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains, + For green Lethean water fills his veins. + + + + + THE OWLS. + + + Under the overhanging yews, + The dark owls sit in solemn state. + Like stranger gods; by twos and twos + Their red eyes gleam. They meditate. + + Motionless thus they sit and dream + Until that melancholy hour + When, with the sun's last fading gleam, + The nightly shades assume their power. + + From their still attitude the wise + Will learn with terror to despise + All tumult, movement, and unrest; + + For he who follows every shade, + Carries the memory in his breast, + Of each unhappy journey made. + + + + + BIEN LOIN D'ICI. + + + Here 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. + + Dorothy's chamber undefiled. + The winds and waters sing afar + Their song of sighing strange and wild + To lull to sleep the petted child. + + From head to foot with subtle care, + Slaves have perfumed her delicate skin + With odorous oils and benzoin. + And flowers faint in a corner there. + + + + + MUSIC. + + + Music doth oft 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, + And through the cordage wail, + I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me + Beneath her sombre veil. + + I feel the tremblings of all passions known + To ships before the breeze; + Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blown + + I pass the abysmal seas + That are, when calm, the mirror level and fair + Of my despair! + + + + + CONTEMPLATION. + + + Thou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still, + The eve is thine which even now drops down, + To carry peace or care to human will, + And in a misty veil enfolds the town. + + While the vile mortals of the multitude, + By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on, + Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood-- + Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone + + Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years, + In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim; + And from the water, smiling through her tears, + + Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim; + And in the east, her long shroud trailing light, + List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night. + + + + + TO A BROWN BEGGAR-MAID. + + + White maiden with the russet hair, + Whose garments, through their holes, declare + That poverty is part of you, + And beauty too. + + To me, a sorry bard and mean, + Your youthful beauty, frail and lean, + With summer freckles here and there, + Is sweet and fair. + + Your sabots tread the roads of chance, + And not one queen of old romance + Carried her velvet shoes and lace + With half your grace. + + In place of tatters far too short + Let the proud garments worn at Court + Fall down with rustling fold and pleat + About your feet; + + In place of stockings, worn and old, + Let a keen dagger all of gold + Gleam in your garter for the eyes + Of roues wise; + + Let ribbons carelessly untied + Reveal to us the radiant pride + Of your white bosom purer far + Than any star; + + Let your white arms uncovered shine. + Polished and smooth and half divine; + And let your elfish fingers chase + With riotous grace + + The purest pearls that softly glow. + The sweetest sonnets of Belleau, + Offered by gallants ere they fight + For your delight; + + And many fawning rhymers who + Inscribe their first thin book to you + Will contemplate upon the stair + Your slipper fair; + + And many a page who plays at cards, + And many lords and many bards, + Will watch your going forth, and burn + For your return; + + And you will count before your glass + More kisses than the lily has; + And more than one Valois will sigh + When you pass by. + + But meanwhile you are on the tramp, + Begging your living in the damp, + Wandering mean streets and alleys o'er, + From door to door; + + And shilling bangles in a shop + Cause you with eager eyes to stop, + And I, alas, have not a son + To give to you. + + Then go, with no more ornament, + Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent, + Than your own fragile naked grace + And lovely face. + + + + + THE SWAN. + + + Andromache, I think of you! The stream, + The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days + Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief, + The lying Simois flooded by your tears, + Made all my fertile memory blossom forth + As I passed by the new-built Carrousel. + Old Paris is no more (a town, alas, + Changes more quickly than man's heart may change); + Yet in my mind I still can see the booths; + The heaps of brick and rough-hewn capitals; + The grass; the stones all over-green with moss; + The _debris_, and t&e square-set heaps of tiles. + + There a menagerie was once outspread; + And there I saw, one morning at the hour + When toil awakes beneath the cold, clear sky, + And the road roars upon the silent air, + A swan who had escaped his cage, and walked + On the dry pavement with his webby feet, + And trailed his spotless plumage on the ground. + + And near a waterless stream the piteous swan + Opened his beak, and bathing in the dust + His nervous wings, he cried (his heart the while + Filled with a vision of his own fair lake): + "O water, when then wilt thou come in rain? + Lightning, when wilt thou glitter?" + + Sometimes yet + I see the hapless bird--strange, fatal myth-- + Like him that Ovid writes of, lifting up + Unto the cruelly blue, ironic heavens, + With stretched, convulsive neck a thirsty face, + As though he sent reproaches up to God! + + + II. + + Paris may change; my melancholy is fixed. + New palaces, and scaffoldings, and blocks, + And suburbs old, are symbols all to me + Whose memories are as heavy as a stone. + And so, before the Louvre, to vex my soul, + The image came of my majestic swan + With his mad gestures, foolish and sublime, + As of an exile whom one great desire + Gnaws with no truce. And then I thought of you, + Andromache! torn from your hero's arms; + Beneath the hand of Pyrrhus in his pride; + + Bent o'er an empty tomb in ecstasy; + Widow of Hector--wife of Helenus! + And of the negress, wan and phthisical, + Tramping the mud, and with her haggard eyes + Seeking beyond the mighty walls of fog + The absent palm-trees of proud Africa; + Of all who lose that which they never find; + Of all who drink of tears; all whom grey grief + Gives suck to as the kindly wolf gave suck; + Of meagre orphans who like blossoms fade. + And one old Memory like a crying horn + Sounds through the forest where my soul is lost.... + I think of sailors on some isle forgotten; + Of captives; vanquished ... and of many more. + + + + + THE SEVEN OLD MEN. + + + O swarming city, city full of dreams, + Where in full day the spectre walks and speaks; + Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins + My story flows as flows the rising sap. + + One morn, disputing with my tired soul, + And like a hero stiffening all my nerves, + I trod a suburb shaken by the jar + Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified + The houses either side of that sad street, + So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood + Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist, + Unclean and yellow, inundated space-- + A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul. + Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags + Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks + Should have brought alms in floods upon his head, + Without the misery gleaming in his eye, + Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed + To have been washed with gall; the bitter frost + Sharpened his glance; and from his chin a beard + Sword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth. + He was not bent but broken: his backbone + Made a so true right angle with his legs, + That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gave + The finish to the picture, made him seem + Like some infirm and stumbling quadruped + Or a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mud + He walked with troubled and uncertain gait, + As though his sabots trod upon the dead, + Indifferent and hostile to the world. + + His double followed him: tatters and stick + And back and eye and beard, all were the same; + Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable, + These centenarian twins, these spectres odd, + Trod the same pace toward some end unknown. + To what fell complot was I then exposed! + Humiliated by what evil chance? + For as the minutes one by one went by + Seven times I saw this sinister old man + Repeat his image there before my eyes! + + Let him who smiles at my inquietude, + Who never trembled at a fear like mine, + Know that in their decrepitude's despite + These seven old hideous monsters had the mien + Of beings immortal. + Then, I thought, must I, + Undying, contemplate the awful eighth; + Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double; + Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself + And his own son! In terror then I turned + My back upon the infernal band, and fled + To my own place, and closed my door; distraught + And like a drunkard who sees all things twice, + With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick, + Wounded by mystery and absurdity! + + In vain my reason tried to cross the bar, + The whirling storm but drove her back again; + And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck, + Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea. + + + + + THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN. + + + Deep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns, + Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns, + I watch, obedient to my fatal mood, + For the decrepit, strange and charming beings, + The dislocated monsters that of old + Were lovely women--Lais or Eponine! + Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be, + Let us still love them, for they still have souls. + They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags, + Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind, + They tremble when an omnibus rolls by, + And at their sides, a relic of the past, + A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs. + They trot about, most like to marionettes; + They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast; + Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bell + Where hangs and swings a demon without pity. + Though they be broken they have piercing eyes, + That shine like pools where water sleeps at night; + The astonished and divine eyes of a child + Who laughs at all that glitters in the world. + + Have you not seen that most old women's shrouds + Are little like the shroud of a dead child? + Wise Death, in token of his happy whim, + Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet. + And when I see a phantom, frail and wan, + Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris, + It ever seems as though the delicate thing + Trod with soft steps towards a cradle new. + And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form, + How many times must workmen change the shape + Of boxes where at length such limbs are laid? + These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears; + Crucibles where the cooling metal pales-- + Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to him + Whose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster. + + + II. + + The love-sick vestal of the old "Frasciti"; + Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose name + Only the prompter knows and he is dead; + Bygone celebrities that in bygone days + The Tivoli o'ershadowed in their bloom; + All charm me; yet among these beings frail + Three, turning pain to honey-sweetness, said + To the Devotion that had lent them wings: + "Lift me, O powerful Hippogriffe, to the skies"-- + One by her country to despair was driven; + One by her husband overwhelmed with grief; + One wounded by her child, Madonna-like; + Each could have made a river with her tears. + + + III. + + Oft have I followed one of these old women, + One among others, when the falling sun + Reddened the heavens with a crimson wound-- + Pensive, apart, she rested on a bench + To hear the brazen music of the band, + Played by the soldiers in the public park + To pour some courage into citizens' hearts, + On golden eves when all the world revives. + Proud and erect she drank the music in, + The lively and the warlike call to arms; + Her eyes blinked like an ancient eagle's eyes; + Her forehead seemed to await the laurel crown! + + + IV. + + Thus you do wander, uncomplaining Stoics, + Through all the chaos of the living town: + Mothers with bleeding hearts, saints, courtesans, + Whose names of yore were on the lips of all; + Who were all glory and all grace, and now + None know you; and the brutish drunkard stops, + Insulting you with his derisive love; + And cowardly urchins call behind your back. + Ashamed of living, withered shadows all, + With fear-bowed backs you creep beside the walls, + And none salute you, destined to loneliness! + Refuse of Time ripe for Eternity! + But I, who watch you tenderly afar, + With unquiet eyes on your uncertain steps, + As though I were your father, I--O wonder!-- + Unknown to you taste secret, hidden joy. + I see your maiden passions bud and bloom, + Sombre or luminous, and your lost days + Unroll before me while my heart enjoys + All your old vices, and my soul expands + To all the virtues that have once been yours. + Ruined! and my sisters! O congenerate hearts, + Octogenarian Eves o'er whom is stretched + God's awful claw, where will you be to-morrow? + + + + + A MADRIGAL OF SORROW. + + + What do I care though you be wise? + Be sad, be beautiful; your tears + But add one more charm to your eyes, + As streams to valleys where they rise; + And fairer every flower appears + + After the storm. I love you most + When joy has fled your brow downcast; + When your heart is in horror lost, + And o'er your present like a ghost + Floats the dark shadow of the past. + + I love you when the teardrop flows, + Hotter than blood, from your large eye; + When I would hush you to repose + Your heavy pain breaks forth and grows + Into a loud and tortured cry. + + And then, voluptuousness divine! + Delicious ritual and profound! + I drink in every sob like wine, + And dream that in your deep heart shine + The pearls wherein your eyes were drowned. + + I know your heart, which overflows + With outworn loves long cast aside, + Still like a furnace flames and glows, + And you within your breast enclose + A damned soul's unbending pride; + + But till your dreams without release + Reflect the leaping flames of hell; + Till in a nightmare without cease + You dream of poison to bring peace, + And love cold steel and powder well; + + And tremble at each opened door, + And feel for every man distrust, + And shudder at the striking hour-- + Till then you have not felt the power + Of Irresistible Disgust. + + My queen, my slave, whose love is fear, + When you awaken shuddering, + Until that awful hour be here, + You cannot say at midnight drear: + "I am your equal, O my King!" + + + + + THE IDEAL. + + + Not all the beauties in old prints vignetted, + The worthless products of an outworn age, + With slippered feet and fingers castanetted, + The thirst of hearts like this heart can assuage. + + To Gavarni, the poet of chloroses, + I leave his troupes of beauties sick and wan; + I cannot find among these pale, pale roses, + The red ideal mine eyes would gaze upon. + + Lady Macbeth, the lovely star of crime, + The Greek poet's dream born in a northern clime-- + Ah, she could quench my dark heart's deep desiring; + + Or Michelangelo's dark daughter Night, + In a strange posture dreamily admiring + Her beauty fashioned for a giant's delight! + + + + + MIST AND RAIN. + + + Autumns and winters, springs of mire and rain, + Seasons of sleep, I sing your praises loud, + For thus I love to wrap my heart and brain + In some dim tomb beneath a vapoury shroud + + In the wide plain where revels the cold wind, + Through long nights when the weathercock whirls round, + More free than in warm summer day my mind + Lifts wide her raven pinions from the ground. + + Unto a heart filled with funereal things + That since old days hoar frosts have gathered on, + Naught is more sweet, O pallid, queenly springs, + + Than the long pageant of your shadows wan, + Unless it be on moonless eves to weep + On some chance bed and rock our griefs to sleep. + + + + + SUNSET. + + + Fair is the sun when first he flames above, + Flinging his joy down in a happy beam; + And happy he who can salute with love + The sunset far more glorious than a dream. + + Flower, stream, and furrow!--I have seen them all + In the sun's eye swoon like one trembling heart-- + Though it be late let us with speed depart + To catch at least one last ray ere it fall! + + But I pursue the fading god in vain, + For conquering Night makes firm her dark domain, + Mist and gloom fall, and terrors glide between, + + And graveyard odours in the shadow swim, + And my faint footsteps on the marsh's rim, + Bruise the cold snail and crawling toad unseen. + + + + + THE CORPSE. + + + Remember, my Beloved, what thing we met + By the roadside on that sweet summer day; + There on a grassy couch with pebbles set, + A loathsome body lay. + + The wanton limbs stiff-stretched into the air, + Steaming with exhalations vile and dank, + In ruthless cynic fashion had laid bare + The swollen side and flank. + + On this decay the sun shone hot from heaven + As though with chemic heat to broil and burn, + And unto Nature all that she had given + A hundredfold return. + + The sky smiled down upon the horror there + As on a flower that opens to the day; + So awful an infection smote the air, + Almost you swooned away. + + The swarming flies hummed on the putrid side, + Whence poured the maggots in a darkling stream, + That ran along these tatters of life's pride + With a liquescent gleam. + + And like a wave the maggots rose and fell, + The murmuring flies swirled round in busy strife: + It seemed as though a vague breath came to swell + And multiply with life + + The hideous corpse. From all this living world + A music as of wind and water ran, + Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirled + By the swift winnower's fan. + + And then the vague forms like a dream died out, + Or like some distant scene that slowly falls + Upon the artist's canvas, that with doubt + He only half recalls. + + A homeless dog behind the boulders lay + And watched us both with angry eyes forlorn, + Waiting a chance to come and take away + The morsel she had torn. + + And you, even you, will be like this drear thing, + A vile infection man may not endure; + Star that I yearn to! Sun that lights my spring! + O passionate and pure! + + Yes, such will you be, Queen of every grace! + When the last sacramental words are said; + And beneath grass and flowers that lovely face + Moulders among the dead. + + Then, O Beloved, whisper to the worm + That crawls up to devour you with a kiss, + That I still guard in memory the dear form + Of love that comes to this! + + + + + AN ALLEGORY. + + + Here is a woman, richly clad and fair, + Who in her wine dips her long, heavy hair; + Love's claws, and that sharp poison which is sin, + Are dulled against the granite of her skin. + Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon, + For their sharp scythe-like talons every one + Pass by her in their all-destructive play; + Leaving her beauty till a later day. + Goddess she walks; sultana in her leisure; + She has Mohammed's faith that heaven is pleasure, + And bids all men forget the world's alarms + Upon her breast, between her open arms. + She knows, and she believes, this sterile maid, + Without whom the world's onward dream would fade, + That bodily beauty is the supreme gift + Which may from every sin the terror lift. + Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies; + And when black Night shall roll before her eyes, + She will look straight in Death's grim face forlorn, + Without remorse or hate--as one new born. + + + + + THE ACCURSED. + + + Like pensive herds at rest upon the sands, + These to the sea-horizons turn their eyes; + Out of their folded feet and clinging hands + Bitter sharp tremblings and soft languors rise. + + Some tread the thicket by the babbling stream, + Their hearts with untold secrets ill at ease; + Calling the lover of their childhood's dream, + They wound the green bark of the shooting trees. + + Others like sisters wander, grave and slow, + Among the rocks haunted by spectres thin, + Where Antony saw as larvae surge and flow + The veined bare breasts that tempted him to sin. + + Some, when the resinous torch of burning wood + Flares in lost pagan caverns dark and deep, + Call thee to quench the fever in their blood, + Bacchus, who singest old remorse to sleep! + + Then there are those the scapular bedights, + Whose long white vestments hide the whip's red stain, + Who mix, in sombre woods on lonely nights, + The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain. + + O virgins, demons, monsters, martyrs! ye + Who scorn whatever actual appears; + Saints, satyrs, seekers of Infinity, + So full of cries, so full of bitter tears; + + Te whom my soul has followed into hell, + I love and pity, O sad sisters mine, + Tour thirsts unquenched, your pains no tongue can tell, + And your great hearts, those urns of love divine! + + + + + LA BEATRICE. + + + In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew, + I to the winds my cries of anguish threw; + And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart, + Pricked gently with the poignard o'er my heart. + Then in full noon above my head a cloud + Descended tempest-swollen, and a crowd + Of wild, lascivious spirits huddled there, + The cruel and curious demons of the air, + Who coldly to consider me began; + Then, as a crowd jeers some unhappy man, + Exchanging gestures, winking with their eyes-- + I heard a laughing and a whispering rise: + + "Let us at leisure contemplate this clown, + This shadow of Hamlet aping Hamlet's frown, + With wandering eyes and hair upon the wind. + Is't not a pity that this empty mind, + This tramp, this actor out of work, this droll, + Because he knows how to assume a role + Should dream that eagles and insects, streams and woods, + Stand still to hear him chaunt his dolorous moods? + + Even unto us, who made these ancient things, + The fool his public lamentation sings." + + With pride as lofty as the towering cloud, + I would have stilled these clamouring demons loud, + And turned in scorn my sovereign head away + Had I not seen--O sight to dim the day!-- + There in the middle of the troupe obscene + The proud and peerless beauty of my Queen! + She laughed with them at all my dark distress, + And gave to each in turn a vile caress. + + + + + THE SOUL OF WINE. + + + One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine: + "Man, unto thee, dear disinherited, + I sing a song of love and light divine-- + Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red. + + "I know thou labourest on the hill of fire, + In sweat and pain beneath a flaming sun, + To give the life and soul my vines desire, + And I am grateful for thy labours done. + + "For I find joys unnumbered when I lave + The throat of man by travail long outworn, + And his hot bosom is a sweeter grave + Of sounder sleep than my cold caves forlorn. + + "Hearest thou not the echoing Sabbath sound? + The hope that whispers in my trembling breast? + Thy elbows on the table! gaze around; + Glorify me with joy and be at rest. + + "To thy wife's eyes I'll bring their long-lost gleam, + I'll bring back to thy child his strength and light, + To him, life's fragile athlete I will seem + Rare oil that firms his muscles for the fight. + + "I flow in man's heart as ambrosia flows; + The grain the eternal Sower casts in the sod-- + From our first loves the first fair verse arose, + Flower-like aspiring to the heavens and God!" + + + + + THE WINE OF LOVERS. + + + Space rolls to-day her splendour round! + Unbridled, spurless, without bound, + Mount we upon the wings of wine + For skies fantastic and divine! + + Let us, like angels tortured by + Some wild delirious phantasy, + Follow the far-off mirage born + In the blue crystal of the morn. + + And gently balanced on the wing + Of the wild whirlwind we will ride, + Rejoicing with the joyous thing. + + My sister, floating side by side, + Fly we unceasing whither gleams + The distant heaven of my dreams. + + + + + THE DEATH OF LOVERS. + + + There shall be couches whence faint odours rise, + Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound; + Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies + The death-bed of our love shall breathe around. + + And guarding their last embers till the end, + Our hearts shall be the torches of the shrine, + And their two leaping flames shall fade and blend + In the twin mirrors of your soul and mine. + + And through the eve of rose and mystic blue + A beam of love shall pass from me to you, + Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell; + + And later still an angel, flinging wide + The gates, shall bring to life with joyful spell + The tarnished mirrors and the flames that died. + + + + + THE DEATH OF THE POOR. + + + Death is consoler and Death brings to life; + The end of all, the solitary hope; + We, drunk with Death's elixir, face the strife, + Take heart, and mount till eve the weary slope. + + Across the storm, the hoar-frost, and the snow, + Death on our dark horizon pulses clear; + Death is the famous hostel we all know, + Where we may rest and sleep and have good cheer. + + Death is an angel whose magnetic palms + Bring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calms + To smooth the beds of naked men and poor. + + Death is the mystic granary of God; + The poor man's purse; his fatherland of yore; + The Gate that opens into heavens un trod! + + + + + THE BENEDICTION. + + + When by the high decree of powers supreme, + The Poet came into this world outworn, + She who had borne him, in a ghastly dream, + Clenched blasphemous hands at God, and cried in scorn: + + "O rather had I borne a writhing knot + Of unclean vipers, than my breast should nurse + This vile derision, of my joy begot + To be my expiation and my curse! + + "Since of all women thou hast made of me + Unto my husband a disgust and shame; + Since I may not cast this monstrosity, + Like an old love-epistle, to the flame; + + "I will pour out thine overwhelming hate + On this the accursed weapon of thy spite; + This stunted tree I will so desecrate + That not one tainted bud shall see the light!" + + So foaming with the foam of hate and shame, + Blind unto God's design inexorable, + With her own hands she fed the purging flame + To crimes maternal consecrate in hell. + + Meanwhile beneath an Angel's care unseen + The child disowned grows drunken with the sun; + His food and drink, though they be poor and mean, + With streams of nectar and ambrosia run. + + Speaking to clouds and playing with the wind, + With joy he sings the sad Way of the Rood; + His shadowing pilgrim spirit weeps behind + To see him gay as birds are in the wood. + + Those he would love looked sideways and with fear, + Or, taking courage from his aspect mild, + Sought who should first bring to his eye the tear, + And spent their anger on the dreaming child. + + With all the bread and wine the Poet must eat + They mingled earth and ash and excrement, + All things he touched were spurned beneath their feet; + They mourned if they must tread the road he went. + + His wife ran crying in the public square: + "Since he has found me worthy to adore, + Shall I not be as antique idols were, + With gold and with bright colours painted o'er? + + "I will be drunk with nard and frankincense. + With myrrh, and knees bowed down, and flesh and wine. + Can I not, smiling, in his love-sick sense, + Usurp the homage due to beings divine? + + "I will lay on him my fierce, fragile hand + When I am weary of the impious play; + For well these harpy talons understand + To furrow to his heart their crimson way. + + "I'll tear the red thing beating from his breast, + To cast it with disdain upon the ground, + Like a young bird torn trembling from the nest-- + His heart shall go to gorge my favourite hound." + + To the far heaven, where gleams a splendid throne, + The Poet uplifts his arms in calm delight, + And the vast beams from his pure spirit flown, + Wrap all the furious peoples from his sight: + + "Thou, O my God, be blest who givest pain, + The balm divine for each imperfect heart, + The strong pure essence cleansing every stain + Of sin that keeps us from thy joys apart. + + "Among the numbers of thy legions blest, + I know a place awaits the poet there; + Him thou hast bid attend the eternal feast + That Thrones and Virtues and Dominions share. + + "I know the one thing noble is a grief + Withstanding earth's and hell's destructive tooth, + And I, through all my dolorous life and brief, + To gain the mystic crown, must cry the truth. + + "The jewels lost in Palmyra of old, + Metals unknown, pearls of the outer sea, + Are far too dim to set within the gold + Of the bright crown that Time prepares for me. + + "For it is wrought of pure unmingled light, + Dipped in the white flame whence all flame is born-- + The flame that makes all eyes, though diamond-bright, + Seem obscure mirrors, darkened and forlorn." + + + + + GYPSIES TRAVELLING. + + + The tribe prophetic with the eyes of fire + Went forth last night; their little ones at rest + Each on his mother's back, with his desire + Set on the ready treasure of her breast. + + Laden with shining arms the men-folk tread + By the long wagons where their goods lie hidden; + They watch the heaven with eyes grown wearied + Of hopeless dreams that come to them unbidden. + + The grasshopper, from out his sandy screen, + Watching them pass redoubles his shrill song; + Dian, who loves them, makes the grass more green, + + And makes the rock run water for this throng + Of ever-wandering ones whose calm eyes see + Familiar realms of darkness yet to be. + + + + + FRANCISCAE MEAE LAUDES. + + + Novis te cantabo chordis, + O novelletum quod ludia + In solitudine cordis. + + Esto sertis implicata, + O foemina delicata + Per quam solvuntur peccata + + Sicut beneficum Lethe, + Hauriam oscula de te, + Quae imbuta es magnete. + + Quum vitiorum tempestas + Turbabat omnes semitas, + Apparuisti, Deitas, + + Velut stella salutaris + In naufragiis amaris.... + Suspendam cor tuis aris! + + Piscina plena virtutis, + Fons aeternae juventutis, + Labris vocem redde mutis! + + Quod erat spurcum, cremasti; + Quod rudius, exaequasti; + Quod debile, confirmasti! + + In fame mea taberna, + In nocte mea lucerna, + Recte me semper guberna. + + Adde nunc vires viribus, + Dulce balneum suavibus, + Unguentatum odoribus! + + Meos circa I umbos mica, + O castitatis lorica, + Aqua tincta seraphica; + + Patera gemmis corusca, + Panis salsus, mollis esca, + Divinum vinum, Francisca! + + + + + ROBED IN A SILKEN ROBE. + + + Robed in a silken robe that shines and shakes, + She seems to dance whene'er she treads the sod, + Like the long serpent that a fakir makes + Dance to the waving cadence of a rod. + + As the sad sand upon the desert's verge, + Insensible to mortal grief and strife; + As the long weeds that float among the surge, + She folds indifference round her budding life. + + Her eyes are carved of minerals pure and cold, + And in her strange symbolic nature where + An angel mingles with the sphinx of old, + + Where all is gold and steel and light and air, + For ever, like a vain star, unafraid + Shines the cold hauteur of the sterile maid. + + + + + A LANDSCAPE. + + + I would, when I compose my solemn verse, + Sleep near the heaven as do astrologers, + Near the high bells, and with a dreaming mind + Hear their calm hymns blown to me on the wind. + + Out of my tower, with chin upon my hands, + I'll watch the singing, babbling human bands; + And see clock-towers like spars against the sky, + And heavens that bring thoughts of eternity; + + And softly, through the mist, will watch the birth + Of stars in heaven and lamplight on the earth; + The threads of smoke that rise above the town; + The moon that pours her pale enchantment down. + + Seasons will pass till Autumn fades the rose; + And when comes Winter with his weary snows, + I'll shut the doors and window-casements tight, + And build my faery palace in the night. + + Then I will dream of blue horizons deep; + Of gardens where the marble fountains weep; + Of kisses, and of ever-singing birds-- + A sinless Idyll built of innocent words. + + And Trouble, knocking at my window-pane + And at my closet door, shall knock in vain; + I will not heed him with his stealthy tread, + Nor from my reverie uplift my head; + + For I will plunge deep in the pleasure still + Of summoning the spring-time with my will, + Drawing the sun out of my heart, and there + With burning thoughts making a summer air. + + + + + THE VOYAGE. + + + The world is equal to the child's desire + Who plays with pictures by his nursery fire-- + How vast the world by lamplight seems! How small + When memory's eyes look back, remembering all!-- + + One morning we set forth with thoughts aflame, + Or heart o'erladen with desire or shame; + And cradle, to the song of surge and breeze, + Our own infinity on the finite seas. + + Some flee the memory of their childhood's home; + And others flee their fatherland; and some, + Star-gazers drowned within a woman's eyes, + Flee from the tyrant Circe's witcheries; + + And, lest they still be changed to beasts, take flight + For the embrasured heavens, and space, and light, + Till one by one the stains her kisses made + In biting cold and burning sunlight fade. + + But the true voyagers are they who part + From all they love because a wandering heart + Drives them to fly the Fate they cannot fly; + Whose call is ever "On!"--they know not why. + + Their thoughts are like the clouds that veil a star; + They dream of change as warriors dream of war; + And strange wild wishes never twice the same: + Desires no mortal man can give a name. + + + II. + + We are like whirling tops and rolling balls-- + For even when the sleepy night-time falls, + Old Curiosity still thrusts us on, + Like the cruel Angel who goads forth the sun. + + The end of fate fades ever through the air, + And, being nowhere, may be anywhere + Where a man runs, hope waking in his breast, + For ever like a madman, seeking rest. + + Our souls are wandering ships outwearied; + And one upon the bridge asks: "What's ahead?" + The topman's voice with an exultant sound + Cries: "Love and Glory!"--then we run aground. + + Each isle the pilot signals when 'tis late, + Is El Dorado, promised us by fate-- + Imagination, spite of her belief, + Finds, in the light of dawn, a barren reef. + + Oh the poor seeker after lands that flee! + Shall we not bind and cast into the sea + This drunken sailor whose ecstatic mood + Makes bitterer still the water's weary flood? + + Such is an old tramp wandering in the mire, + Dreaming the paradise of his own desire, + Discovering cities of enchanted sleep + Where'er the light shines on a rubbish heap. + + + III. + + Strange voyagers, what tales of noble deeds + Deep in your dim sea-weary eyes one reads! + Open the casket where your memories are, + And show each jewel, fashioned from a star; + + For I would travel without sail or wind, + And so, to lift the sorrow from my mind, + Let your long memories of sea-days far fled + Pass o'er my spirit like a sail outspread. + + What have you seen? + + + IV. + + "We have seen waves and stars, + And lost sea-beaches, and known many wars, + And notwithstanding war and hope and fear, + We were as weary there as we are here. + + "The lights that on the violet sea poured down, + The suns that set behind some far-off town, + Lit in our hearts the unquiet wish to fly + Deep in the glimmering distance of the sky; + + "The loveliest countries that rich cities bless, + Never contained the strange wild loveliness + By fate and chance shaped from the floating cloud-- + And we were always sorrowful and proud! + + "Desire from joy gains strength in weightier measure. + Desire, old tree who draw'st thy sap from pleasure, + Though thy bark thickens as the years pass by, + Thine arduous branches rise towards the sky; + + "And wilt thou still grow taller, tree more fair + Than the tall cypress? + + --Thus have we, with care, + Gathered some flowers to please your eager mood, + Brothers who dream that distant things are good! + + "We have seen many a jewel-glimmering throne; + And bowed to Idols when wild horns were blown + In palaces whose faery pomp and gleam + To your rich men would be a ruinous dream; + + "And robes that were a madness to the eyes; + Women whose teeth and nails were stained with dyes; + Wise jugglers round whose neck the serpent winds--" + + + V. + + And then, and then what more? + + + VI. + + "O childish minds! + + "Forget not that which we found everywhere, + From top to bottom of the fatal stair, + Above, beneath, around us and within, + The weary pageant of immortal sin. + + "We have seen woman, stupid slave and proud, + Before her own frail, foolish beauty bowed; + And man, a greedy, cruel, lascivious fool, + Slave of the slave, a ripple in a pool; + + "The martyrs groan, the headsman's merry mood; + And banquets seasoned and perfumed with blood; + Poison, that gives the tyrant's power the slip; + And nations amorous of the brutal whip; + + "Many religions not unlike our own, + All in full flight for heaven's resplendent throne; + And Sanctity, seeking delight in pain, + Like a sick man of his own sickness vain; + + "And mad mortality, drunk with its own power, + As foolish now as in a bygone hour, + Shouting, in presence of the tortured Christ: + 'I curse thee, mine own Image sacrificed.' + + "And silly monks in love with Lunacy, + Fleeing the troops herded by destiny, + Who seek for peace in opiate slumber furled-- + Such is the pageant of the rolling world!" + + + VII. + + O bitter knowledge that the wanderers gain! + The world says our own age is little and vain; + For ever, yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, + 'Tis horror's oasis in the sands of sorrow. + + Must we depart? If you can rest, remain; + Part, if you must. Some fly, some cower in vain, + Hoping that Time, the grim and eager foe, + Will pass them by; and some run to and fro + + Like the Apostles or the Wandering Jew; + Go where they will, the Slayer goes there too! + And there are some, and these are of the wise, + Who die as soon as birth has lit their eyes. + + But when at length the Slayer treads us low, + We will have hope and cry, "'Tis time to go!" + As when of old we parted for Cathay + With wind-blown hair and eyes upon the bay. + + We will embark upon the Shadowy Sea, + Like youthful wanderers for the first time free-- + Hear you the lovely and funereal voice + That sings: _O come all ye whose wandering joys_ + _Are set upon the scented Lotus flower_, + _For here we sell the fruit's miraculous boon_; + _Come ye and drink the sweet and sleepy power_ + _Of the enchanted, endless afternoon_. + + + VIII. + + O Death, old Captain, it is time, put forth! + We have grown weary of the gloomy north; + Though sea and sky are black as ink, lift sail! + Our hearts are full of light and will not fail. + + O pour thy sleepy poison in the cup! + The fire within the heart so burns us up + That we would wander Hell and Heaven through, + Deep in the Unknown seeking something _new_! + + * * * * * + + + + +LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE + + + + +THE STRANGER. + + +Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, +your sister, or your brother? + +"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother." + +Your friends, then? + +"You use a word that until now has had no meaning for me." + +Your country? + +"I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated." + +Then Beauty? + +"Her I would love willingly, goddess and immortal." + +Gold? + +"I hate it as you hate your God." + +What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love? + +"I love the clouds--the clouds that pass--yonder--the marvellous +clouds." + + + + +EVERY MAN HIS CHIMAERA. + + +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. + +Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimaera as heavy as a sack of +flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier. + +But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and +oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with +her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head +reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by +which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy. + +I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied +that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they +went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to +walk. + +Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the +ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had +said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary +faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the +heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as +the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned +to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere +of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the +curiosity of the human eye. + +During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this +mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor +was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing +Chimaeras. + + + + +VENUS AND THE FOOL. + + +How admirable the day! The vast park swoons beneath the burning eye of +the sun, as youth beneath the lordship of love. + +There is no rumour of the universal ecstasy of all things. The waters +themselves are as though drifting into sleep. Very different from the +festivals of humanity, here is a silent revel. + +It seems as though an ever-waning light makes all objects glimmer more +and more, as though the excited flowers burn with a desire to rival the +blue of the sky by the vividness of their colours; as though the heat, +making perfumes visible, drives them in vapour towards their star. + +Yet, in the midst of this universal joy, I have perceived one afflicted +thing. + +At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those motley fools, those +willing clowns whose business it is to bring laughter upon kings when +weariness or remorse possesses them, lies wrapped in his gaudy and +ridiculous garments, coined with his cap and bells, huddled against the +pedestal, and raises towards the goddess his eyes filled with tears. + +And his eyes say: "I am the last and most alone of all mortals, inferior +to the meanest of animals in that I am denied either love or friendship. +Yet I am made, even I, for the understanding and enjoyment of immortal +Beauty. O Goddess, have pity upon my sadness and my frenzy." + +The implacable Venus gazed into I know not what distances with her +marble eyes. + + + + +INTOXICATION. + + +One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. +If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your +shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. +But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But +be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green +grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should +waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, +of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that +flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that +speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and +timepiece will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be +the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without +cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will." + + + + +THE GIFTS OF THE MOON. + + +The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in +your cradle, and said to herself: "I am well pleased with this child." + +And she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the +window-pane without noise. She bent over you with the supple tenderness +of a mother and laid her colours upon your face. Therefrom your eyes +have remained green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. From +contemplation of your visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she +so tenderly wounded you upon the breast that you have ever kept a +certain readiness to tears. + +In the amplitude of her joy, the Moon filled all your chamber as with a +phosphorescent air, a luminous poison; and all this living radiance +thought and said: "You shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. +You shall love all that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, +and night; the vast green sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; +the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous +flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves +swooning upon the piano and lament with the sweet, hoarse voices of +women. + +"And you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. You +shall be the Queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also I have +wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green +ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where +they are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem +to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the +will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images of their own folly." + +And that is why I am couched at your feet, O spoiled child, beloved and +accursed, seeking in all your being the reflection of that august +divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all +_lunatics_. + + + + +THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE. + + +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 patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate +vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy. + +A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and +honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is +opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the +unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where +even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all +things, my beloved, are like you. + +Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold +miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguish of curiosity? +It is a land which resembles you, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil +and honest, where phantasy has built and decorated an occidental China, +where life is sweet to breathe, and happiness married to silence. It is +there that one would live; there that one would die. + +Yes, it is there that one must go to breathe, to dream, and to lengthen +one's hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written the +"Invitation to the Waltz"; where is he who will write the "Invitation to +the Voyage," that one may offer it to his beloved, to the sister of his +election? + +Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live,--yonder, +where slower hours contain more thoughts, where the clocks strike the +hours of happiness with a more profound and significant solemnity. + +Upon the shining panels, or upon skins gilded with a sombre opulence, +beatified paintings have a discreet life, as calm and profound as the +souls of the artists who created them. + +The setting suns that colour the rooms and salons with so rich a light, +shine through veils of rich tapestry, or through high leaden-worked +windows of many compartments. The furniture is massive, curious, and +bizarre, armed with locks and secrets, like profound and refined souls. +The mirrors, the metals, the ail ver work and the china, play a mute and +mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from the corners, +from the chinks in the drawers, from the folds of drapery, a singular +perfume escapes, a Sumatran _revenez-y_, which is like the soul of the +apartment. + +A true country of Cockaigne, I have said; where all is rich, correct and +shining, like a beautiful conscience, or a splendid set of silver, or a +medley of jewels. The treasures of the world flow there, as in the house +of a laborious man who has well merited the entire world. A singular +land, as superior to others as Art is superior to Nature; where Nature +is made over again by dream; where she is corrected, embellished, +refashioned. + +Let them seek and seek again, let them extend the limits of their +happiness for ever, these alchemists who work with flowers! Let them +offer a prize of sixty or a hundred thousand florins to whosoever can +solve their ambitious problems! As for me, I have found my _black tulip_ +and my _blue dahlia_! + +Incomparable flower, tulip found at last, symboli-cal dahlia, it is +there, is it not, in this so calm and dreamy land that you live and +blossom? Will you not there be framed in your proper analogy, and will +you not be mirrored, to speak like the mystics, in your own +_correspondence_? + +Dreams!--always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul, +the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him +his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from +birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with +positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in +and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that +resembles you? + +These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous +flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The +enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with +the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon +your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity, +reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your +lovely soul;--and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the +products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they +are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from +Infinity. + + + + +WHAT IS TRUTH? + + +I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the +ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of +glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality. + +But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died +soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon +a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I +myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as +uncorruptible as the coffers of India. + +And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I +became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the +dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and +hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true +Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly +and blindness you shall love me as I truly am." + +But I, furious, replied: "No!" The better to emphasise my refusal I +struck the ground so violently with my foot that my leg was thrust up to +the knee in the recent grave, and I, like a wolf in a trap, was caught +perhaps for ever in the Grave of the Ideal. + + + + +ALREADY! + + +A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from +the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred +times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of +twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the +firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And +each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the +approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they +said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by +a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an +unmoving table?" + +There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their +sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the +image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass +with as much enthusiasm as the beasts. + +At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent +and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed +therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of +growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and +fruits. + +Each one therefore was joyful; his evil humour left him. Quarrels were +forgotten, reciprocal wrongs forgiven, the thought of duels was blotted +out of the memory, and rancour fled away like smoke. + +I alone was sad, inconceivably sad. Like a priest from whom one has torn +his divinity, I could not, without heartbreaking bitterness, leave this +so monstrously seductive ocean, this sea so infinitely various in its +terrifying simplicity, which seemed to contain in itself and represent +by its joys, and attractions, and angers, and smiles, the moods and +agonies and ecstasies of all souls that have lived, that live, and that +shall yet live. + +In saying good-bye to this incomparable beauty I felt as though I had +been smitten to death; and that is why when each of my companions said: +"At last!" I could only cry "_Already!_" + +Here meanwhile was the land, the land with its noises, its passions, its +commodities, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of +promises, that sent to us a mysterious perfume of rose and musk, and +from whence the music of life flowed in an amorous murmuring. + + + + +THE DOUBLE CHAMBER. + + +A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly _spiritual_, where the +stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue. + +There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and +desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue +and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the +furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed +with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals. + +The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the +skies, the dropping suns. + +There are no artistic abominations upon the walls. Compared with the +pure dream, with an impression unanalysed, definite art, positive art, +is a blasphemy. Here all has the sufficing lucidity and the delicious +obscurity of music. + +An infinitesimal odour of the most exquisite choice, mingled with a +floating humidity, swims in this atmosphere where the drowsing spirit is +lulled by the sensations one feels in a hothouse. + +The abundant muslin flows before the windows and the couch, and spreads +out in snowy cascades. Upon the couch lies the Idol, ruler of my dreams. +But why is she here?--who has brought her?--what magical power has +installed her upon this throne of delight and reverie? What matter--she +is there; and I recognise her. + +These indeed are the eyes whose flame pierces the twilight; the subtle +and terrible mirrors that I recognise by their horrifying malice. They +attract, they dominate, they devour the sight of whomsoever is imprudent +enough to look at them. I have often studied them; these Black Stars +that compel curiosity and admiration. + +To what benevolent demon, then, do I owe being thus surrounded with +mystery, with silence, with peace, and sweet odours? O beatitude! the +thing we name life, even in its most fortunate amplitude, has nothing in +common with this supreme life with which I am now acquainted, which I +taste minute by minute, second by second. + +Not so! Minutes are no more; seconds are no more. Time has vanished, and +Eternity reigns--an Eternity of delight. + +A heavy and terrible knocking reverberates upon the door, and, as in a +hellish dream, it seems to me as though I had received a blow from a +mattock. + +Then a Spectre enters: it is an usher who comes to torture me in the +name of the Law; an infamous concubine who comes to cry misery and to +add the trivialities of her life to the sorrow of mine; or it may be the +errand-boy of an editor who comes to implore the remainder of a +manuscript. + +The chamber of paradise, the Idol, the ruler of dreams, the Sylphide, as +the great Rene said; all this magic has vanished at the brutal knocking +of the Spectre. + +Horror; I remember, I remember! Yes, this kennel, this habitation of +eternal weariness, is indeed my own. Here is my senseless furniture, +dusty and tattered; the dirty fireplace without a flame or an ember; the +sad windows where the raindrops have traced runnels in the dust; the +manuscripts, erased or unfinished; the almanac with the sinister days +marked off with a pencil! + +And this perfume of another world, whereof I intoxicated myself with a +so perfected sensitiveness; alas, its place is taken by an odour of +stale tobacco smoke, mingled with I know not what nauseating mustiness. +Now one breathes here the rankness of desolation. + +In this narrow world, narrow and yet full of disgust, a single familiar +object smiles at me: the phial of laudanum: old and terrible love; like +all loves, alas! fruitful in caresses and treacheries. + +Yes, Time has reappeared; Time reigns a monarch now; and with the +hideous Ancient has returned all his demoniacal following of Memories, +Regrets, Tremors, Fears, Dolours, Nightmares, and twittering nerves. + +I assure you that the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated now; +and each, as it drips from the pendulum, says: "I am Life: intolerable, +implacable Life!" + +There is not a second in mortal life whose mission it is to bear good +news: the good news that brings the inexplicable tear to the eye. + +Yes, Time reigns; Time has regained his brutal mastery. And he goads me, +as though I were a steer, with his double goad: "Woa, thou fool! Sweat, +then, thou slave! Live on, thou damned!" + + + + +AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING. + + +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. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared--I +shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh +myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the +lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude +and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world. + +A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the +day. I have seen several literary men; one of them wished to know if he +could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was +an island); I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a +review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable +people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a +knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me; +and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the +precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time, +during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a +costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said: +"You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest, +foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you +will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see," I have +boasted (why?) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and +indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy, +certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused +an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a +perfect fool. Heavens! it's well ended. + +Discontented with myself and with everything and everybody else, I +should be glad enough to redeem myself and regain my self-respect in the +silence and solitude. + +Souls of those whom I have loved, whom I have sung, fortify me; sustain +me; drive away the lies and the corrupting vapours of this world; and +Thou, Lord my God, accord me so much grace as shall produce some +beautiful verse to prove to myself that I am not the last of men, that I +am not inferior to those I despise. + + + + +THE CONFITEOR OF THE ARTIST. + + +How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough +to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose +vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen +than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns +his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the +incomparable chastity of the azure--a little sail trembling upon the +horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable +existence--the melodious monotone of the surge--all these things +thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the +reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and +picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions. + +These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external +objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within +pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too +tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations. + +And now the profundity of the sky dismays me! its limpidity exasperates +me. The insensibility of the sea, the immutability of the spectacle, +revolt me. Ah, must one eternally suffer, for ever be a fugitive from +Beauty? + +Nature, pitiless enchantress, ever-victorious rival, leave me! Tempt my +desires and my pride no more. The contemplation of Beauty is a duel +where the artist screams with terror before being vanquished. + + + + +THE THYRSUS. + +TO FRANZ LISZT. + + +What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a +sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating +the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But +physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a +vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious +meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and +fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing +complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant +lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved line and the +spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine about it in a +mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate corollae, all +these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute a mystical +dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal will dare to +decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been made for the +baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set forth the beauty +of the vine branches and the flowers? + +The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and +venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty. +Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her thyrsus over +the heads of her companions with as much energy as your genius trembles +in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your will: erect, firm, +unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of your fancy around it: the +feminine element encircling the masculine with her illusive dance. +Straight line and arabesque--intention and expression--the rigidity of +the will and the suppleness of the word--a variety of means united for a +single purpose--the all-powerful and indivisible amalgam that is +genius--what analyst will have the detestable courage to divide or to +separate you? + +Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the +pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your +wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal City +or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles; +improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to paper +your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and pain, +philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of +immortality! + + + + +THE MARKSMAN. + + +As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the +neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a +few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most +ordinary and legitimate occupation of man?--So he gallantly offered his +hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to +whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great +part of his genius. + +Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far +into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously, +mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and +said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air, +and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, _I will +imagine to myself that it is you!_" + +He closed both eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly +decapitated. + +Then, bending towards his dear, adorable, and execrable wife, his +inevitable and pitiless muse, he kissed her respectfully upon the hand, +and added, "Ah, dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!" + + + + +THE SHOOTING-RANGE AND THE CEMETERY. + + +"Cemetery View Inn"--"A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but +it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper of this inn appreciates Horace +and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound +philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, +or some emblem of life's brevity." + +He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly +smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the +cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the +sunshine. + +The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said +the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon +the corruption beneath. + +The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life--the life of things +infinitely small--and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from +a neighbouring shooting-range, that exploded with a sound as of +champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony. + +And then, beneath a sun which scorched the brain, and in that atmosphere +charged with the ardent perfume of death, he heard a voice whispering +out of the tomb where he sat. And this voice said: "Accursed be your +rifles and targets, you turbulent living ones, who care so little for +the dead in their divine repose! Accursed be your ambitions and +calculations, importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter near +the sanctuary of Death himself! Did you but know how easy the prize to +win, how facile the end to reach, and how all save Death is naught, not +so greatly would you fatigue yourselves, O ye laborious alive; nor would +you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago reached the End--the +only true end of life detestable!" + + + + +THE DESIRE TO PAINT. + + +Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this +desire. + +I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so +swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller +must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her. + +She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The +colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal +and profound. Her eyes are two caverns where mystery vaguely stirs and +gleams; her glance illuminates like a ray of light; it is an explosion +in the darkness. + +I would compare her to a black sun if one could conceive of a dark star +overthrowing light and happiness. But it is the moon that she makes one +dream of most readily; the moon, who has without doubt touched her with +her own influence; not the white moon of the idylls, who resembles a +cold bride, but the sinister and intoxicating moon suspended in the +depths of a stormy night, among the driven clouds; not the discreet +peaceful moon who visits the dreams of pure men, but the moon torn from +the sky, conquered and revolted, that the witches of Thessaly hardly +constrain to dance upon the terrified grass. + +Her small brow is the habitation of a tenacious will and the love of +prey. And below this inquiet face, whose mobile nostrils breathe in the +unknown and the impossible, glitters, with an unspeakable grace, the +smile of a large mouth; white, red, and delicious; a mouth that makes +one dream of the miracle of some superb flower unclosing in a volcanic +land. + +There are women who inspire one with the desire to woo them and win +them; but she makes one wish to die slowly beneath her steady gaze. + + + + +THE GLASS-VENDOR. + + +These 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 one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation +awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before +the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter +fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of +six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year +past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards +action, like an arrow from a bow. + +The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet +cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent +and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest +and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time +possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the +most absurd and even the most dangerous acts. + +One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one +time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether +the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His +experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only +too well. + +Another lit a cigar by the side of a powder barrel, _in order to see, to +know, to tempt Destiny_, for a jest, to have the pleasure of suspense, +for no reason at all, out of caprice, out of idleness. This is a kind of +energy that springs from weariness and reverie; and those in whom it +manifests so stubbornly are in general, as I have said, the most +indolent and dreamy beings. + +Another so timid that he must cast down his eyes before the gaze of any +man, and summon all his poor will before he dare enter a cafe or pass +the pay-box of a theatre, where the ticket-seller seems, in his eyes, +invested with all the majesty of Minos, AEcus, and Rhadamanthus, will at +times throw himself upon the neck of some old man whom he sees in the +street, and embrace him with enthusiasm in sight of an astonished crowd. +Why? Because--because this countenance is irresistibly attractive to +him? Perhaps; but it is more legitimate to suppose that he himself does +not know why. + +I have been more than once a victim to these crises and outbreaks which +give us cause to believe that evil-meaning demons slip into us, to make +us the ignorant accomplices of their most absurd desires. One morning I +arose in a sullen mood, very sad, and tired of idleness, and thrust as +it seemed to me to the doing of some great thing, some brilliant +act--and then, alas, I opened the window. + +(I beg you to observe that in some people the spirit of mystification is +not the result of labour or combination, but rather of a fortuitous +inspiration which would partake, were it not for the strength of the +feeling, of the mood called hysterical by the physician and satanic by +those who think a little more profoundly than the physician; the mood +which thrusts us unresisting to a multitude of dangerous and +inconvenient acts.) + +The first person I noticed in the street was a glass-vendor whose shrill +and discordant cry mounted up to me through the heavy, dull atmosphere +of Paris. It would have been else impossible to account for the sudden +and despotic hatred of this poor man that came upon me. + +"Hello, there!" I cried, and bade him ascend. Meanwhile I reflected, not +without gaiety, that as my room was on the sixth landing, and the +stairway very narrow, the man would have some difficulty in ascending, +and in many a place would break off the corners of his fragile +merchandise. + +At length he appeared. I examined all his glasses with curiosity, and +then said to him: "What, have you no coloured glasses? Glasses of rose +and crimson and blue, magical glasses, glasses of Paradise? You are +insolent. You dare to walk in mean streets when you have no glasses that +would make one see beauty in life?" And I hurried him briskly to the +staircase, which he staggered down, grumbling. + +I went on to the balcony and caught up a little flower-pot, and when the +man appeared in the door-way beneath I let fall my engine of war +perpendicularly upon the edge of his pack, so that it was upset by the +shock and all his poor walking fortune broken to bits. It made a noise +like a palace of crystal shattered by lightning. Mad with my folly, I +cried furiously after him: "The life beautiful! the life beautiful!" + +Such nervous pleasantries are not without peril; often enough one pays +dearly for them. But what matters an eternity of damnation to him who +has found in one second an eternity of enjoyment? + + + + +THE WIDOWS. + + +Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted +principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted +glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted +souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus +betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the +well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's +cripples. + +To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their +avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there +is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the +place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions +for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn +towards all that is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft. + +An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected +lineaments; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last +fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound +wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience +deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded +effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported. + +Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor +widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. +Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; +a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is +forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who +exhibit a full complement of sorrow. + +Who is the saddest and most saddening of widows: she who leads by the +hand a child who cannot share her reveries, or she who is quite alone? I +do not know.... It happened that I once followed for several long hours +an aged and afflicted woman of this kind: rigid and erect, wrapped in a +little worn shawl, she carried in all her being the pride of stoicism. + +She was evidently condemned by her absolute loneliness to the habits of +an ancient celibacy; and the masculine characters of her habits added to +their austerity a piquant mysteriousness. In what miserable cafe she +dines I know not, nor in what manner. I followed her to a reading-room, +and for a long time watched her reading the papers, her active eyes, +that once burned with tears, seeking for news of a powerful and personal +interest. + +At length, in the afternoon, under a charming autumnal sky, one of those +skies that let fall hosts of memories and regrets, she seated herself +remotely in a garden, to listen, far from the crowd, to one of the +regimental bands whose music gratifies the people of Paris. This was +without doubt the small debauch of the innocent old woman (or the +purified old woman), the well-earned consolation for another of the +burdensome days without a friend, without conversation, without joy, +without a confidant, that God had allowed to fall upon her perhaps for +many years past--three hundred and sixty-five times a year! + +Yet one more: + +I can never prevent myself from throwing a glance, if not sympathetic at +least full of curiosity, over the crowd of outcasts who press around the +enclosure of a public concert. From the orchestra, across the night, +float songs of fete, of triumph, or of pleasure. The dresses of the +women sweep and shimmer; glances pass; the well-to-do, tired with doing +nothing, saunter about and make indolent pretence of listening to the +music. Here are only the rich, the happy; here is nothing that does not +inspire or exhale the pleasure of being alive, except the aspect of the +mob that presses against the outer barrier yonder, catching gratis, at +the will of the wind, a tatter of music, and watching the glittering +furnace within. + +There is a reflection of the joy of the rich deep in the eyes of the +poor that is always interesting. But to-day, beyond this people dressed +in blouses and calico, I saw one whose nobility was in striking contrast +with all the surrounding triviality. She was a tall, majestic woman, and +so imperious in all her air that I cannot remember having seen the like +in the collections of the aristocratic beauties of the past. A perfume +of exalted virtue emanated from all her being. Her face, sad and worn, +was in perfect keeping with the deep mourning in which she was dressed. +She also, like the plebeians she mingled with and did not see, looked +upon the luminous world with a profound eye, and listened with a toss of +her head. + +It was a strange vision. "Most certainly," I said to myself, "this +poverty, if poverty it be, ought not to admit of any sordid economy; so +noble a face answers for that. Why then does she remain in surroundings +with which she is so strikingly in contrast?" + +But in curiously passing near her I was able to divine the reason. The +tall widow held by the hand a child dressed like herself in black. +Modest as was the price of entry, this price perhaps sufficed to pay +for some of the needs of the little being, or even more, for a +superfluity, a toy. + +She will return on foot, dreaming and meditating--and alone, always +alone, for the child is turbulent and selfish, without gentleness or +patience, and cannot become, any more than another animal, a dog or a +cat, the confidant of solitary griefs. + + + + +THE TEMPTATIONS; OR, EROS, PLUTUS, AND GLORY. + + +Last night two superb Satans and a She-devil not less extraordinary +ascended the mysterious stairway by which Hell gains access to the +frailty of sleeping man, and communes with him in secret. These three +postured gloriously before me, as though they had been upon a stage--and +a sulphurous splendour emanated from these beings who so disengaged +themselves from the opaque heart of the night. They bore with them so +proud a presence, and so full of mastery, that at first I took them for +three of the true Gods. + +The first Satan, by his face, was a creature of doubtful sex. The +softness of an ancient Bacchus shone in the lines of his body. His +beautiful langourous eyes, of a tenebrous and indefinite colour, were +like violets still laden with the heavy tears of the storm; his +slightly-parted lips were like heated censers, from whence exhaled the +sweet savour of many perfumes; and each time he breathed, exotic +insects drew, as they fluttered, strength from the ardours of his +breath. + +Twined about his tunic of purple stuff, in the manner of a cincture, was +an iridescent Serpent with lifted head and eyes like embers turned +sleepily towards him. Phials full of sinister fluids, alternating with +shining knives and instruments of surgery, hung from this living girdle. +He held in his right hand a flagon containing a luminous red fluid, and +inscribed with a legend in these singular words: + +"DRINK OF THIS MY BLOOD: A PERFECT RESTORATIVE"; + +and in his left hand held a violin that without doubt served to sing his +pleasures and pains, and to spread abroad the contagion of his folly +upon the nights of the Sabbath. + +From rings upon his delicate ankles trailed a broken chain of gold, and +when the burden of this caused him to bend his eyes towards the earth, +he would contemplate with vanity the nails of his feet, as brilliant and +polished as well-wrought jewels. + +He looked at me with eyes inconsolably heartbroken and giving forth an +insidious intoxication, and cried in a chanting voice: "If thou wilt, if +thou wilt, I will make thee an overlord of souls; thou shalt be master +of living matter more perfectly than the sculptor is master of his clay; +thou shalt taste the pleasure, reborn without end, of obliterating +thyself in the self of another, and of luring other souls to lose +themselves in thine." + +But I replied to him: "I thank thee. I only gain from this venture, +then, beings of no more worth than my poor self? Though remembrance +brings me shame indeed, I would forget nothing; and even before I +recognised thee, thou ancient monster, thy mysterious cutlery, thy +equivocal phials, and the chain that imprisons thy feet, were symbols +showing clearly enough the inconvenience of thy friendship. Keep thy +gifts." + +The second Satan had neither the air at once tragical and smiling, the +lovely insinuating ways, nor the delicate and scented beauty of the +first. A gigantic man, with a coarse, eyeless face, his heavy paunch +overhung his hips and was gilded and pictured, like a tattooing, with a +crowd of little moving figures which represented the unnumbered forms of +universal misery. There were little sinew-shrunken men who hung +themselves willingly from nails; there were meagre gnomes, deformed and +under-sized, whose beseeching eyes begged an alms even more eloquently +than their trembling hands; there were old mothers who nursed clinging +abortions at their pendent breasts. And many others, even more +surprising. + +This heavy Satan beat with his fist upon his immense belly, from whence +came a loud and resounding metallic clangour, which died away in a +sighing made by many human voices. And he smiled unrestrainedly, showing +his broken teeth--the imbecile smile of a man who has dined too freely. +Then the creature said to me: + +"I can give thee that which gets all, which is worth all, which takes +the place of all." And he tapped his monstrous paunch, whence came a +sonorous echo as the commentary to his obscene speech. I turned away +with disgust and replied: "I need no man's misery to bring me happiness; +nor will I have the sad wealth of all the misfortunes pictured upon thy +skin as upon a tapestry." + +As for the She-devil, I should lie if I denied that at first I found in +her a certain strange charm, which to define I can but compare to the +charm of certain beautiful women past their first youth, who yet seem to +age no more, whose beauty keeps something of the penetrating magic of +ruins. She had an air at once imperious and sordid, and her eyes, though +heavy, held a certain power of fascination. I was struck most by her +voice, wherein I found the remembrance of the most delicious contralti, +as well as a little of the hoarseness of a throat continually laved with +brandy. + +"Wouldst thou know my power?" said the charming and paradoxical voice of +the false goddess. "Then listen." And she put to her mouth a gigantic +trumpet, enribboned, like a mirliton, with the titles of all the +newspapers in the world; and through this trumpet she cried my name so +that it rolled through space with the sound of a hundred thousand +thunders, and came re-echoing back to me from the farthest planet. + +"Devil!" cried I, half tempted, "that at least is worth something." But +it vaguely struck me, upon examining the seductive virago more +attentively, that I had seen her clinking glasses with certain drolls of +my acquaintance, and her blare of brass carried to my ears I know not +what memory of a fanfare prostituted. + +So I replied, with all disdain: "Get thee hence! I know better than wed +the light o' love of them that I will not name." + +Truly, I had the right to be proud of a so courageous renunciation. But +unfortunately I awoke, and all my courage left me. "In truth," I said, +"I must have been very deeply asleep indeed to have had such scruples. +Ah, if they would but return while I am awake, I would not be so +delicate." + +So I invoked the three in a loud voice, offering to dishonour myself as +often as necessary to obtain their favours; but I had without doubt too +deeply offended them, for they have never returned. + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles +Baudelaire, by Charles Baudelaire + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS, PROSE POEMS, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE *** + +***** This file should be named 36287.txt or 36287.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/2/8/36287/ + +Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at +http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously made +available by the Internet Archive. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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