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…black-azure skies : Birds shall sing litanies Still of delight. II Let my lips wander where Tender moss grows, Where through their dusky air Beams a red rose. Where the bee honey sips Let my desirous lips, Kissing, unclose 23
THE BALLOON Written (at the age of fifteen, and still unsurpassed) in bed with measles at Tonbridge in Kent. FLOATING in the summer air, What is that for men to see ? Anywhere and everywhere, Now a bullet, now a tree— Till we all begin to swear : What the devil can it be ? See its disproportioned head, Tiny trunk and limbs lopped bare, Hydrocephalus the dread With a surgeon chopping there ; Chopping legs and arms all red With the sticky lumps of hair. Like a man in this complaint Floats this creature in the sky, Till the gaping rustics faint An…
…NNHÄUSER Written in the Akasa. THE story of a fool. From love and death Emancipate, he stands above. The goal Is in the shrines of misty air : there roll The voices and the songs of One who saith : “ There is no peace for him who lingereth.” Love is a cinder now that was a coal : Either were vain. The great magician’s soul Is far too weak to risk Elizabeth. All this is past and under me. Above, Around, the magian tree of knowledge waves Its rosy flowers and golden fruit. I know Indeed that he is caught therein who craves ; But I, desiring not, …
…ur-square stone ! I, who have twice been One—! Woe, woe is me ! Lost, lost, upon the lifeless, deathless plane, The desert desolate, the air inane ; Fallen, O fallen to eternity ! I, who have looked upon the Lord of Light ; I, I am Nothing, and dissolved in Night ! (THE SPIRIT OF GOD, DESCENDING, ASSUMETH HER INTO THE GLORY OF GOD.)
ODE TO VENUS CALLIPYGE WHERE was light when the body came Out of the womb of a perished prayer ? Where was life when the sultry air, Hot with the lust of night and shame, Brooded on dust, when thy shoulders bare Shone on the sea with a sudden flame Into all Time to abundant fame ? Daughter of Lust by the foam of the sea ! Mother of flame ! Sister of shame ! Tiger that Sin nor her son cannot tame ! Worship to thee ! Glory to thee ! Venus Callipyge, mother of me. Fruitless foam of a sterile sea, Wanton waves of a vain desire, Maddening billows fl…
… and change and fade, strange avatars In all the skies. III One way sets free. That way is not to tread Through fire or earth or spirit, air or sea. That secret is not gathered of the dead. On way sets free. Not to desire shall lead to not to be. There is no hope within, none overhead, None by the chance of fate’s august decree. It is a path where tears are ever shed. There is no joy—is that a path for me ? Yea ! though I track the ways of utmost dread, One way sets free.
…th, I say, to me, Initiate my quickened soul ; draw near, And let the glory of thy Godhead shine Through all the luminous aethers of the air Even to earth, thy footstool ; unto me Who by these sacred invocations draw The holy influence within myself, To strengthen and to purify my will And holy aspiration to thy Life. Purge me and consecrate until my heart Burn through the very limit of the veil, And rend it at the hour of sacrifice * Versified from the Manuscript called “ ”.2Z ni ש fo ש 6I
…se ! Let thy chaste lips Sweep through the empty aethers guarding thee (As in a fortress girded by the sea The raging winds and wings of air Lift the wild waves and bear Innavigable foam to seaward), bend thee down, 74
54 TRANSLATIONS FROM BAUDELAIRE CARRION Recall, my soul, the sight we twain have looked upon This summer morning soft and sweet, Beside the path, an infamous foul carrion, Stones for its couch a fitting sheet. Its legs stretched in the air, like wanton whores Burning with lust, and reeking venom sweated, Laid open, carelessly and cynically, the doors Of belly rank with exhalations foetid. Upon this rottenness the sun shone deadly straight As if to cook it to a turn, And give back to great Nature hundredfold the debt That, joining it together, s…
…forth shadowing sorceries. So the king dreamed of love : and passing on The shape moved quicker, winnowing with faint fans The soundless air of thought : the noonday sun Seemed to the mightiest of a thousand khans Like to a man’s Brief life—a thousand such dream spans !— And so he dreamed of life : and failing plumes Wrought through ancestral looms In the man’s brain : and so he dreamed of death. And slower still the grey God wrought Dividing consciousness from breath, And life and death from thought. So the king dreamed of Nought. Yet subtly-s…
NIGHT IN THE VALLEY I0I How pitiful, how beautiful, the faces ! The long hair shed on shoulders ivory white ! Each note shoots down the dim arboreal spaces Like amber or like hyaline lit with light. Each spirit glimmers in the shadowy places Like hyacinths or emeralds : or the night Shows them as shadows of some antique gem Where moonlight fills its cup and flashes into them. So, in the moony twilight and the splendour Of music’s light, the desolate nightingale Fills all the interlunar air with tender Kisses like song, or shrills upon the scale…
…dawn Their kiss : for touch of lips is death to love. Even as the gentle plant one finger presses, However soft the tress is Of even the air’s profane caresses, It closes, all its joy of light withdrawn ; The sun feels sadness in his skies above, Because one flower is folded. Thus they floated Most deathlessly devoted Beyond the trees, and where the hills divide To take the nighted tide Into a darker, deeper, greener breast, Maybe to find—what rest ? Now to those girdling mountains moon-exalted Came through the hills deep-vaulted That pearly sh…
…holy, holy Spouse Of my most godlike thought, come forth ! I say, And manifest unto thy worshipper In more candescent fulgours ! Let the air Ring with the passion of my holy cry Unto the Highest. For persistent will
…d, evermore Roars ; the vast wheel of heaven turns above, Its rim of pain, its jewelled heart of love ; Sun-waved, the eagle wing Of the air of feathered spring Royally sweeps and on the musical merge Watches alone the man. O silvern shape and span Of moonlight, reaching over the grey, large Breast of the surf-bound strand, Life of the earth, God’s child, Man’s bride, the light of the sweet land ! Are emeralds ever a spark of this clear green, Or sapphires hints of this diviner blue, Or rubies shadows of this rosy hue, Or light itself elsewhere…
…ss ; And there the solemn echoes caught the stress, The strain of that impassive tide, Shook it and flung it high and wide, Till all the air took fire from that melodious roar ; All the mute mountains heard, Bowed, laughed aloud, concurred, And passed the word along, the signal of wide war. All earth took up the sound, And, being in one tune securely bound, Even as a star became the soul of silence most profound. IV Thus there, the centre of that death that darkened, I sat and listened, if God’s voice should break And pierce the hollow of my ea…
…he cross and gave his ghostly breath, On the prick of death, Voice, for his passion could not bear nor dare The interlunar, the abundant air Darkened, and silence on the shuddering Hill, and the unbeating wing Of the legions of His Father, and so died. But I, should I be still Poised between fear and will ? Should I be silent, I, and be unsatisfied ? For solitude shall bend Self to all selfishness, and have one friend, Self, and behold one God, and be, and look beyond the End. VI O Solitude ! how many have mistaken Thy name for Sorrow’s, or for…
… delicious green, the drunken smell Of the fresh earth, the luxury of the glow Where many colours mingled into snow, Song-marvels in the air desirable. So lazily I lay, and watched my eyes In the deep fountain’s sun-stirred harmonies. I loved myself ! O Thou ! (I cried) divine Woman more lovely than the flowers of earth ! O Self-hood softer than the babe at birth, Sweeter than love, more amorous than wine, Where is thy peer upon the face of life ? I love myself, the daughter of the dawn. Come, silken night, in your deep wings withdrawn Let me b…
…allid grave dawn of Apollo’s Confusion of shadows and lights. Unreal save to sense that can sense her That maiden of sunrise refills The air’s grey censer with perfumes intenser The higher the hills.
…of breath ! Here are the lustres and the flames of death.” Hence I was whirled, as in a wind of light, Out to the fragrance of a loftier air, A keener scent, and rising unaware Out of the Palace of Luxurious Night, I came to where the Gate of Heaven shone, Battled with comet and with meteor. Behold within that crested House of War, One central glory of a sapphire stone, Whereon there breathed a sense, a mist, a sun ! I stood and laughed upon the Ancient One. For He was silent as my body’s kiss, And sleeping as my many-coloured hair, And living …
…e came to him Sense of some being dim Bent over him, one colour and one form With the dark leaves ; but warm And capable of some diviner air. Her limbs were bare, her face supremely fair, Her soul one shapely splendour, Her voice indeed as tender As very silence : so he would not speak, But let his being fade : that all the past Grew shadowy and weak, And lost its life at last, Being mere dream to this that was indeed Life : and some utter need Of this one’s love grew up in him : he knew The spirit of that dew In his own soul ; and this indeed …