Chapter III: Introduction (2)

His listless dream goes wandering without goal;
He is not one who would be passion's slave;
And no remorse, nor memory from its grave
May haunt the leisure of his empty soul.

He does not hear the melancholy chaunt
Of girls who beg before him, hollow, gaunt
With fasting, coughing in the mellow sun,

And unawares, he knows not how it came,
he feels within his hardened heart a flame,
And burns his eyes at the eyes of the youngest one.

DESIRES.

What does she dream, lost in her hair's cascade,
The lonely child with flowering hands as wan
As garlands pale?--Of the plains of days agone
With pools of water lilies, where she strayed

On paths of chance her hands with flowers arrayed,
And where alms welcomed her?--And never shone
As now her eyes her jewels braided on
Her gowns of gold and purple and brocade.

But she sees nothing round her. In the room
Amber and aromatics melt the gloom,
The dusk's hot odour through the window streams;

As heavy as an opal's changing fires,
Sigh in the evening mist and die desires,
While naked at her glass the maiden dreams.

ADVENTURE.

Under the diadem of rustling pearls
And sapphires in their grasp of gold,
In yellow hair that undulatingly unfurls
Over her shoulders slow and cold,
And purple cloak exulting with brocade,

The Princess of the Manor's Games and Joys.

And in the jubilant noise
Rivers of lightning flame unrolled,
And the rich purple torch sheds its delight,
And twists its rustling tresses in the night.

The Princess of the Manor's Joys
Lifts in a dawn of amethysts
Her tender visage that more sadly aches
Than gloamings on the lunar face of lakes,
With lingering smile upon her lip she lists,
And casts a call into the evening mists.

In spite of omens tragical,
All they who wait upon her come
To lawns where sistrum, fife, and drum
To revelry and dancing call.

O King! like mourning is our merry-making!
Out of our arms thou hast thyself exiled,
And by our kisses art no more beguiled!
Our hearts for thee are aching!
Thou hast fled, thou hast fled,
And in the night I raise my head,
And call for thee with sobs, and bosom sore!
But still our festivals shall be forsaken,
The mourning from our hearts shall not be taken,
My fingers nevermore
Shall o'er thy golden velvet tresses glide;
My heavy arms shall nevermore thy neck enlace
In passionate embrace
Rich with the jewels of the bracelets of my pride!

Farandola and roundelay,
And the mad songs of pride,
In sudden waves over the threshold glide,
And through the chambers sway.

Thou never shalt return from unknown lands,
O King! The sceptre is fallen from thy hands,
The lassitude that lulled thee in its lap
Has stolen from thy proud, young years their sap,
Now art thou crossing thresholds far forlorn
Of mysteries and adventures luring thee
Where monsters crouch beneath the twisted tree;
Chimeras and the pitiless unicorn
Shall belch their fire where thou thy way wouldst grope
And thou shalt nevermore have my caress
To soothe thee into happy heedlessness
Of life, and perils of inimical hope.

O come back, ere it be too late!
At evening come unto the Joys that wait,
Come to the dancing and to thy Princess,
Who cradled thee with kisses and with tenderness,
And sweet refrains of songs.
Come to thy crown and sceptre, and the throngs
Of them that love thee, and the memory
Of thine ancestors shall bring back to thee
Forgetfulness of mad adventures in the kiss
Of her who thy Princess and Sister is.

LUXURY.

How vain are songs! Can they be worth the hymn
To your ecstatic eyes of mine that swim?
The noblest song of man no bosom stirs,
Weak are sonorous words, but conquerors
Are ye, glances of amber and of fire,
Lips you, and clinging kisses slow to tire
That in my soul are scorching! You that dare
Leap out of longing, kisses! And you hair
Of virgin gold that glints like noonday suns!
And marble whiteness where, like lava, runs
Your wild blood, snow and brazier!--
Here I lie
Your slave for ever, at your feet I die
In sleepful spasms that the senses cloy,
And the slow languor of the tasted joy;
Mad with your velvety and waxen flesh
That holds my soul and body in its mesh;
I love you, I am poured out at your feet,
Your hands are with lascivious jasmine sweet,
Your beauty blooms for me! In my embrace
I feel your life blowing upon my face,
And entering into me! Your blinding eyes
Thrill me with raptures of that Paradise
Whose rubies bleed, whose yellow topazes
Sleep in the sloth of sensualities,
And where the limitless horizons hide
Our Hell of luxuries grated round with pride.
I love thee, though the kisses of thy teeth,
Cunning to bite in their red vulva sheath,
Have the allure of Lamias that enslave
With luxury swift and cruelty suave.
Through tortures from your native Orient swim
Ineffably pure o'er peaceful lakes the slim
Swans of your voice white in their wildering
And subtle scents of snow, and on their wing
Bear me towards the hope your bright eyes beam.
Now let me lie upon your breasts and dream.
Say nothing! Let us sleep in our blue bower
Under the tufted pleasures of the hour,
By the night's tranquil torpor lulled and kissed ...
Already yon far dawn of amethyst
Dyes the deep heavens, and the moon at rest
Upon her soft cloud cushions hath caressed
With argent light the forest's idle trance,
And starred the stream with eyes that gleam and glance!

And now the dawn is on our pillow--hide
Your eyes--I shiver--they are haggard, wide!

SEA-SCAPE.

Under basaltic porticoes of calm sea-caves,
Heavy with alga and the moss of fucus gold,
In the occult, slow shaking of sea-waves,
Among the alga in proud blooms unfold
The cups of pride of silent, slender gladioles....

The mystery wherein dies the rhythm of the waves
In gleams of kisses long and calm unrolls,
And the red coral whereon writhes the alga cold
Stretches out arms that bleed with calm flowers, and beholds
Its gleams reflected in the rest of waves.

Now here you stand in gardens flowered with alga, cold
In the nocturnal, distant song of waves,
Queen whose calm, pensive looks are glaucous gladioles,
Raising above the waves their light-filled bowls,
Among the alga on the coral where the ocean rolls.

A PROPITIOUS MEETING.

Propitious dawn smiles on him wandering
And fretful in the evil forest deeps;
The heavy night's long, bitter rumour sleeps;
The sun's clear song makes the horizon ring.

The scent of sage and thyme is as a sting
Unto his jaded sense, the wind that sweeps
The blue sea round the promontory steeps
Freshens with hope his fate's proud blossoming.

The glory of Joy into his soul returns,
And his heroic dream leaps up and burns,
Even as this dawn's far-flung vermilion,

And lo! at the horizon, very calm,
Pacing their steeds, and holding out their palm,
The Kings he deemed dead marching in the sun.

THE HOURS.

The tiring hour that weeps,
And the young hour gay with sun,
Hour after hour creeps,
Hours after hours run
Along the river banks.

This is an hour of dawn that vapour cloaks.
Yonder a thread, so it would seem,
Stretches a bridge across the stream.
Shadow follows shadow, the mist chokes
The water sleepy as a moat's,
A tug smokes,
And drags its heavy, grating chain,
And drags its train
Of ghostlike boats,
Walls of black
Along a hidden track
Towards the arches blear
Where now they disappear.

Like sudden palms of gold,
Three sunbeams glide
To where the waters hide,
And all along the river in the cold
Life is again begun,
With all its joys
Of toil and noise
Awakening in the quivering, crimson sun.

The hour is rising radiant with mirth,
Beaming smiles down on the earth,
O festival of light!
Here is life that smiles upon its toil,
And with high forehead makes the night recoil
Towards the sun in heavens bright
With strength and with delight.

Life quickens on faces
Mad and fervent zest.
To live! is when the hot blood races
And swells the breast,
And makes the words leap out in ready throng!
Life is to be alone and strong,
And master of one's fate!
Ye floods of purple pour in state,
Ripen the morn, and roll men's blood along!

The wise
Have never lived and do not know what joys
Are in mad battle, carnage and great noise,
When courage with courage vies.
The wise
Are they who when the cautious eve creeps on to night
Exile themselves from the festival of light
Weeping its tears of proud gold on the river,
O'er the lamp-lit book to shiver.
To live
Is better, and to ring one's heel
On the floor of a palace won by crimsoned steel,
Or underneath a charger's hoofs to tread
The grass of roads down-trodden by the fugitive
Foe who has dyed them red.

But the young hour gay with sun,
The tiring hour that weeps,
Hour after hour creeps
Hours after hours run
Along the river banks.

Now cooler are noon's beams,
O dreams reposed with languor and with ease,
The waters creep,
O calm dreams!
Upon the moss in shade of elms and alder-trees
The peaceful fishers sleep;
A long thread swims upon the dying stream.
In the foliage never a shiver,
The sun darts never a beam,
All is dumb.
The earth around, the meadows and the river,
And the air with sunshine numb,
And the forest with its leafy houses,
Everywhere all action drowses,
And the earth hesitates with indecision,
A smoker's vague vision.

The only wisdom is to live
The hours of the river, sleeping on its slopes.
Why should we madly follow fugitive
Inclement pride and crumbling hopes
Along the precipices of the heavy night,
That swallows up all ruined light?
No! to live
Is to follow all the river's turnings,
Sailing one's life with dreams and yearnings,
With prow set to the Orient of oblivion,
To conquer all the sea and all the isles that smile,
That no discoverer will ever set foot on
Save he who kept desire a virgin, all the while,
O dream!

The young hour gay with sun,
The tiring hour that weeps,
Hour after hour creeps,
Hours after hours run,
Along the river banks.

AWAKE

Awake!
It is a joy among hibernal hours
To plunge into the pane the hoar-frost flowers;
Behold: the petals glittering on the pane
Open their wings that dream would follow fain.

Awake, and revel in the dawn's pure joys,
And smile upon the time the sun becalms:
In the bright garden, save in dream, no noise
But a long imagined shivering, O palms!

Come, and behold my love, as ever of old,
Make the vast silence flower lit by thy glance,
Glad with its peaceful pinions to enfold
Our passion soothed with rich remembrance.

LIFE IS CALM.

Life is calm,
Even as this evening of sweet summer, now
The bird is silent on the bough,
That bends above the river,
Whose reeds no longer quiver;
And the pacific night and wise
Sleeps without a shudder under cloudless skies.

Life is calm!
It is your face, O sister dear,
At happiness scarce smiling here,
Life is your face, dear sister,
So calm;
As life is and your happiness,
Your face is cloudless, calm, and passionless.

Even the river hushes
Between its banks, among its rushes;
One by one fall flowers;
Silent, gentle eventide,
Life is calm where waters glide;
By waters where the happiness that lies
Smiling, sister, in the tender flashing of your eyes,
Is wondering at the waters, and the evenings, and the hours.

FRONTISPIECE.

The gems that ivories clip,
And chrysoberyls puerile,
Mingling their gleams, beguile
The dole of the black tulip;

The fountain weeps in the old
Garden o'er flowers sad,
Which by the dawn are clad
In amethyst and in gold:

In the boxwood shadow lingers,
In sentimental _fetes,_
The _chevalier_, and awaits
The princess whose pale fingers
Are flowers that bring relief
Unto her languorous grief.

INVITATION.

The ruby my vow desires
For your beauty smiling kind
Is surely incarnadined
By a limpid mirror's fires.

Ice with the flame interchanges,
And your eyes hard with dignity
Bruise the sobbed longing to be
A bauble your hand arranges.

But remember the waters yonder
Cradle the vessels that wander
To the isle in the bright future hidden,

And come while the winter is dark,
To sail our adventurous bark
Madly o'er oceans forbidden.

TO THE POLE.

Through fogs impassible that freeze the soul,
And under torpor-laden skies of gray,
If none can ever open out a way
To the icy horror of the reachless Pole,

Yet those who died or shall die striving thither,
In faith of victory and glory of dream,
Have known the rapturous pride of conquest gleam,
Brief flower of hope that never grief shall wither.

But thou, long cheated by the immutable thirst
Of being loved, hast too, too well rehearsed
The vanity of combats sterile all,

And dost with bitter, pitiless irony see
Those who go following ghosts that ever flee
Sink in the chasm where thyself didst fall.

PAUL GERARDY.

1870--.

SHE.

She whom my heart in dream already loves
Will under childlike curls have great blue eyes;
Her voice will be as sweet as that of doves,
Her skin a faint rose like a dream that dies.

So slender she will be among earth's daughters,
That you would think of lilies under glass,
Of a fountain weeping to the sky its waters,
Or the moon's beam quivering on dewy grass.

And, from her deep heart to her lips arising,
Guessing what seeds of songs are in me sown,
She will be ever humming them, disguising
My soul with the golden gamut of her own.

And never a bitter word will come from her;
Her eyes will always call to my caress,
Chaste as the eyes of my own mother were,
Melting with my own mother's tenderness.

EVIL LOVE.

I have yearned for the wicked child
With her sensual mouth's red glow,
And her restless eyes that show
How sateless her soul is and wild.

The lustful virgin, the child
With her sick flesh fainting above
The sweat of novels of love,
By which her soul is defiled.

She sins in her sleep; and in
Her evil smile there gleams,
Implacable as her dreams,
The lust of perversion and sin.

I have dreamt of the virgin impure;
The fire of her hair has profaned
My chastity with its lure--
And my eyes with tears are stained.

THE OWL.

There is a haggard flitting through the night,
And stupid wings are writhing through the wind,
And then, afar, a screeching of dark fright,
Like cries of a frail conscience that has sinned.

It is the shy owl of long moonless nights,
It is the inconsolable owl who peers
With blear eyes through drear darkness, and who blights
The peace of sleep with stark foreboding fears.

The inconsolable night-bird weeping through
The gloam, the spectral bird who fears the day,
Whose panic flitting chills the dark, and who
Fills space with cries that quiver with dismay.

But thou, poor owl, an ivied steeple seest,
Where thou canst hide from dawning's garish hour--
My heart, who from the kiss of woman fleest,
Where shalt thou find the peace of some old tower?

OF SAD JOY.

I am angry with you, little girl,
Because of your gracious smiles,
And your restful lips, and teeth of pearl,
And the black glitter of your great eyes.

I am angry with you, but on my knees,
For when I went away, in happy wise,
Far from you, far as goes the breeze,
I could think of nothing but of your eyes.

I was timid, I never dared look back,
And I went singing as madmen do,
To forget your eyes, alack!
But my song was all about you.

SOME SONG OR OTHER.

The song of moonlight all
That trembles as aspens shake,
The thrush sang it at the evenfall
To the listening swan on the blue lake.

It is all of love and distress,
And of joy and of love, and then
There are sobs of gold and weariness,
And ever comes joy back again.

Far, far away flew the thrush,
And the swan went pondering
All the new words, by lily and rush,
With his head underneath his wing.

OF AUTUMN.

While the moon through the heavens glides,
With music enchanting our way,
Come in the gladness to stray
Of the gorgeous autumn-tides.

Now comes the wind, and lifts
The gold of glad forests along;
And many a mystical song
Along the breeze with it drifts.

This life is most gracious and dear,
Enchanting our way as we go
With the laughter and golden glow
Of autumns singing clear.

ON THE SEA.

Blow, blow, thou boisterous tempest,
Blow, bitter winds and stark;
The fisher, he cannot hear you,
A-sailing in his dream-bark.

He sails to what pale daughters,
To what horizons dim?
Rage, rage ye winds and climb ye waters,
But we are waiting for him.

We are the lovelorn maidens,
Alone in the wearisome dark;
You winds and you waters that love us,
Overturn him in his dream-bark.

IWAN GILKIN.

1858--.

PSYCHOLOGY.

A surgeon, I the souls of men dissect,
Bending my feverish brow above their shameless
Perversions, sins, and vices, all their nameless
Primitive lusts and appetites unchecked.

Upon my marble men and women spread
Their open bellies, where I find the hidden
Ulcers of passions filthy and forbidden,
And probe the secret wounds of dramas dread.

Then, while my arms with scrofulous blood are dyed,
I note in poems clear with scrupulous art
What my keen eyes in these dark deeps descried.

And if I need a subject, I am able
To stretch myself on the dissecting table,
And drive the scalpel into my own heart.

THE CAPITAL.

A dolorous fruit is the vast capital.
Its bursten skin and pulp too ripened dye
Opulently their rich rottenness
With green gold, violet, and red phosphorus.

Oozing a sickly sweet, thick, cancerous juice,
Its spongy flesh melts in the mouth, and in
Its pensive poisons germinate the rank,
Perverted sins of fever-tortured brains.

So strange its spice, so exquisite its taste,--
A macerated ginger in a rare elixir,--
I plunged my teeth in it with greedy haste.

But dizziness I ate, and madness drank.
And that is why I trail a debile frame,
With my youth dying in the husk of my strength.

THE PENITENT.

The penitent of cities damned am I.
In shameful taverns where rank liquors flow,
And in new Sodoms viciously aglow,
Where outrage hides its lusts with murder nigh,

I watch in flaring nights with mournful eye,
And shuddering hear what monsters still we grow.
And all the crimes of men oppress me so
I call for vengeance to the angered sky.

Wrathful as prophets went in Holy Writ,
I walk with haggard cheek in public places,
Confessing sins that I do not commit.

And the Pharisees cry out with upturned faces:
"I thank thee, God, that I am not as this
Infamous poet by thy judgment is!"

"ET ERITIS SICUT DII."

Sick Artist, from the world around thee shrinking
To nurse the high ideal of thine Art,
Give thou no place to Nature in thy thinking,
That foolish, fertile slut obscene and stinking--
To the Artificial consecrate thy heart.

In spite of reed-pipes and loud songs of marriage,
Be thou remote, Reality desert,
The blood and flesh of women proud of carriage,
The flabby flesh of women thou disparage,
Deny their beauty which is only dirt.

Are thy tired spirit and thy parched mouth aching
For the cooling, carnal draught of their caress?
This is a thirst that thou canst best be slaking,
Swooning among thy lamp-lit bottles, breaking
The odorous seals of drunken dizziness.

Dream drunk with rum, whose tropic-heated spices
Ferment into a scented wine that joins
Thy subtle spirit in voluptuous vices
With negro women whose smooth flesh entices
Thy lubric hand to their anointed loins.

Drink kirsch, as turbulent as cascades shaded
By forests where the maidens bathe their feet;
Musked maraschino, sucked by mouths pomaded
In the sick air of brothels golden-braided
By those who queen it on the yielding seat;

And, hypocrite with ice one cannot sunder
Out of his flame, drink kuemmel, whose bright feast
Of boreal snow-masked fire evokes the wonder
Of roses under snow, O roses ... under
Archangel heavens women of the East.

And, for its green of bindweed-tangled fancies,
Drink absinthe, which shall open out to thee
Those forests where the fairy Vivien dances,
And the sage Merlin with her feet entrances
In the hoarse brushwood by the bitter sea.

Then to thy reeling brain shall dreams come sailing,
Upon the calm bed where thy body sank,
And thou shalt see dissolved in shadows paling,
All earthly things around thee, failing, failing,
While brighter surge the visions rank on rank.

Behold! Among the wan blue vapours, steaming
Before the scented, sounding sunrise, glows
A belt of glaciers whose thin peaks of dreaming
Mirrored upon an azure lake are gleaming
In the tropic valley guarded by their snows.

The leaves of mangoes, palms, and fig-trees sighing
Are wafting coolness o'er the billowing grass,
Where, garlanded like flowers, are women lying,
Bathing their lily limbs, beneath the flying
Jewels of furtive humming-birds that pass.

And a cascade of dazzling nakednesses
Falls from the peaks of glaciers in shoals,
And every following body holds and presses
The one that went before, holds and caresses;
A living stream of beauty rolls and rolls.

Arms, loins, and thighs are linked and intertwining,
Lightnings are playing on a vaporous mesh
Of luminous hair and supple limbs combining,
And from the lofty peaks of glaciers shining
For ever falling are new waves of flesh.

Drink every drop of this pure wine, and waste
In thine embraces all these limbs unreal.
Lie in thy bed of snow, and, undebased,
Enjoy all flesh in thine own flesh, and taste
The monstrous joy of soiling the Ideal.

VENGEANCE.

Woman with heart stabbed by a hidden wrong,
Whose vengeful fingers, proud, and tapering long,
Have strapped thy naked lover in his sleep
Down to the bed, where now his wild eyes weep
Their scalding tears like vitriol, and stare
On broken furniture and carpets where
Weapons, clothes, flowers are in mad medley cast,
In sheets still with his kisses warm, thou hast
To soldiers prostituted thee, and spent
Their vigour with thy body's vehement
Surging of spasms quivering under them;
But what thought, like a hideous diadem
Of thorns, hath rent thy forehead, when the third,
His white flesh scarcely sated, having heard
Thy lustful moaning till his heart grew sick,
Looked, as a bitch looks beaten with a stick,
To the black, frantic face of thy betrayer,
And asked with plaintive murmur: "Shall I slay her?"

THE SONG OF THE FORGES.

O frenzied forges with your noise and blaring,
Red, reeking fires that comb dishevelled skies,
Your hollow rumbling is like stifled swearing,
And the grassed earth about you burns and dies.

When blind, mad man, intent on gain and plunder,
Thinks he is matter's master, in your maw
Lugubriously rolls a hollow thunder,
That says: We forge and forge, without a flaw,

The chains from which thou hast not wit to save thee,
O foolish man! we rivet link by link
The shackles which for ever shall enslave thee.
Sweat, pant, and fill the furnace to the brink,

Throw in the coal, and pour the crackling casting
Through the cut sand, beat, crush the pig to shape,
Temper the sword, sheet, deck, and rig with masting
The tyrant ships that sweep the sea with grape,

Crowd with machines the hamlet and the haven,
To prison thee more deep than dungeons held
In durance making thee a pauper craven...
Stupid humanity! we weld and weld

With the vile toil disease beyond reclaiming,
And imbecility, and discontent,
Murder, and hate that sets the mansion flaming,
Bloody revolt and heavy punishment.

We forge the fate of every generation;
We crush the father and the child as well,
Spitting at heavens that shake with consternation
The soot and coal of our relentless hell!

See! to the stainless blue of skies upcurling
Our towering chimneys' belched, polluted breath,
Above the waste and ravaged lands unfurling
Their sable flags of slavery and death!

HERMAPHRODITE.

Rosy and naked, pure as a flower divine,
The mystic being of old stories sleeps,
Stretched in the grass like a bough of eglantine,
In the flowery clearing in the forest deeps.

Upon his folded arm he rests his head;
The sleeping kisses of the sun repose
Upon his delicate body softly spread,
And shimmer from his shoulders to his toes.

And near him, with a murmur as of bees,
Runs the clear brook through grass and lily flowers,
Under the fig-trees' laden boughs, and flees,
Winding along the tangled secret bowers.

Sweet sorcery of the flesh! A sphinx above thee
Asks the thrilled senses to resolve desires!
With shame and terror tremble all who love thee,
And they who see thee burn with thousand fires.

Seeing thy more than human loveliness
Women and youths their envious glances dart;
They sigh with lowered eyes, and weep, and press
Sometimes their hand upon their maddened heart.

"Where is the heavenly goddess," so they cry,
"Whose loveliness can match thy perfect frame?
And what young god, all sun and spring, can vie
With all this freshness blent with tender flame?"

O to drink madly on one mouth the kisses
Of Aphrodite and Adonis both,
And, trembling, to discover all blent blisses
In the same frame to no perversions loth!

Faust had left Margaret for thee, and lewd
Anacreon had never lost a day on
Bathyllus, Sappho would not have pursued
In her escape Erinna, no nor Phaon.

Under thy foot earth lapped with pallid flames
Trembles, and all the flowers die where it hovers
Man clips no more the woman, and hot dames
Enlace their arms no more around young lover

O last ideal of decaying races,
Mortal revealer of best beauties, thy
Poisons poured lavishly in thine embraces
Have made the ancient cities rot and die.

And now to us thou comest, while uncloses
Under thy feet a dawn that pales the day's;
And poets, mad with incense and with roses,
Laud thee with chants of glory, love, and praise.

Sweet being, grant to us thy sweetest blisses!
We drag ourselves under thy conquering feet,
While, in a downy drunkenness, thy kisses
Gather our last and loveliest heart's beat.

THE DAYS OF YORE.

I have inhaled love like a garland sprent
With morning dew, and fragrant with a scent
That set my kisses fluttering over it,
As butterflies of silk and velvet flit.

And savoured it like some fruit from the South,
Whose luscious pulp melts slowly in the mouth.

And, cups of sapphire effervescing bright,
Blue eyes have made me drunk with spring's delight!
And, ruby cups brimmed with a blood that seethed,
Lips have a dizziness upon me breathed!...

--Fall o'er the past, ye mists of memory!
And now, thou deep, swart night envelop me!
In thy wan winding-sheet my heart enfold,
To sleep alone, and motionless, and cold.

VALERE GILLE.

1867--.

ART.

What use is action? We have thought until
The world is but the shadow of our dreams.
What if the sap in all the gardens teems,
Sunk back upon itself is our limp will.

The mind has ravaged space, and we are ill
With what we know; yet knowledge only seems,
Upon life's verge a net of cheating gleams;
And my possessions leave me tired and chill.

But thou alone, O torch of sacred Art,
With first, primeval beauty warm the heart,
And flash thy multiple glimpses of the Ideal;

And thou, O Poet, make lost Eden shine
Within us, and behind the seeming real
Show us the essences of things divine.

THERMOPYLAE.

The sombre gorge is only lighted by
The bucklers on the beeches. Near their chief
The warriors, with no fear and with no grief,
Await their fate. And now the dawn is nigh.

To-morrow Greece shall mourn them: they must die.
The priests have read the auguries like a leaf.
Hydarnes, with the footstep of a thief,
Slinks with his traitor where the shadows lie.

So be it. Under arrows showering thick
By shadows shielded they will fight, beneath
The overhanging rocks, with pike and teeth.

And when the sword breaks they will grip the stick.
They share a few figs for their breakfast, right
Calmly. They with Pluto sup to-night.

A NAVAL BATTLE.

The fleets rush headlong o'er the sea, and lock
In a loud, long impact deafening the ear;
The hissing arrows make the heavens blear,
The heavy waves are clashing shock on shock.

Ares is with us, driving like a flock
The Persian ships which, when they staggering rear,
The rostrum pierces till, in mad career,
They crowd the shore and shatter on the rock.

The dusk climbs, but the most illustrious chase
The coward, and thrust from every vantage-place.
But now the moon breaks through the clouds, to show

Our native land kissed by its tender ray,
The glittering summits and the silvered bay,
And the free sea flowered with corpses of the foe.

ALBERT GIRAUD.

1860--.

THE TRIBUNES.

The people have had masters whose strong faces,
Charged with imperious will, their masses cowed,
Who spoke with regal voices ringing loud
To draw out of their sleep lethargic races.

The word they cast down from the market-places
In the four winds of Heaven vibrated proud
With bitter love and majesty unbowed,
Threatening to make of cities desert spaces.

The crowd remember yet their magic names,
And echo them with thunderous acclaims
Of welcome to the coming victory.

The legendary marble where they stand
Rises on history's threshold, and their hand
Wrathfully sways the billowing days to be.

CORDOVANS.

You leathers red with autumn's, victory's dyes!
In some old oratory's night you blaze,
Where sleeps the heavy splendour of dead days;
You with your hues of epic, evening skies,
Mysterious as fiery meres of gold,
You dream of those who trailed their swords, and bowed
Above your cushions stamped with wafers proud
Their gashed, tanned faces in the days of old,
With an odour of adventure in their capes.
Red leathers whom the peace of hangings drapes,
You are like tragic sunsets, worn were ye
By legendary heroes, who enriched
The Kings they served, and all the world bewitched,
And who upon a copper, kindled sea,
You Cordovans dyed deep with war and pride,
Embarked in summer cool of eventide!
You are chimerical with gathered lives;
Of new Americas you guard the gleams,
You sunk in dazzled and vermilion dreams,
In you the soul of ancient suns survives!

FLORISE.

Richly mature, upon the bed of joy
Strown with crushed flowers, Florise bends lovingly
Her heavy-lidded great eyes o'er the boy
Whom she has made man ere his puberty.

Fair as a sunset that on roses lingers,
Sweet as the wind is he in lilac-trees.
With gratitude he fondles the deft fingers
That guided him into love's mysteries.

Heavy with glad fatigue, their senses thus
Dream, but breaking off their amorous
Embrace, as though a cry she would withhold,

She feels her heart within her pale, and presses
Her face upon the pillow, for she guesses
Her too young lover sees her growing old.

HECATE.

The moon has a kiss that clings
Like those of cold women whom
Minions with fertile womb
Drive from the bed of Kings.

She weeps her white distress
On spires, and lays a sheet
Of suppliant light at the feet
Of crosses pitiless.

But breaks her prayer, which is vain,
And raises herself again,
In pale and barren pride;

And casts, with the cruel glance
Of her lidless eye, far and wide
Hysteric radiance.

IN THE REIGN OF THE BORGIAS.

In the gilt palace where young slave-girls show
Like bunches of gold grapes their breasts erect,
In a soft room with burning drapery decked,
The conclave's end illumes a golden glow.

Near pages who their yellow hair have smoothed,
And whom the evening's kisses feminize,
Sit, red as lava in their gorgeous dyes,
The Roman Cardinals, by music soothed.

They worship flesh; and the unnatural, thinned
Voices of eunuchs quiver o'er their napes
With a thrill of pleasure like the lust of rapes;

And Roman girls dishevel in the wind,
In the fantastic, smoky night of porches,
Their manes of fire like wildly streaming torches.

ABSORPTION.

Woman, my longing to be nothing clings
To thee, whose stagnant eyes are pools of night,
Liquid indifference, where is no light
Save the kaleidoscope of imaged things.

Thy sable hair, so sultry and so fresh,
When I untie it, billows o'er thy shape
Like evening's shadow o'er a pale landscape,
And slowly eats the whiteness of thy flesh.

The sapid kiss of thy rich-moulded mouth
Falls, with no impulse known, and with no sound,
As ripened fruit falls heavy to the ground,
In the slow silence of the autumn's drouth.

As into water I descend in thee;
And I am cradled vaguely on thy breasts,
Which are as white as billows' foamy crests,
And heave above thy breathing like the sea.

Thy cadenced walk is like old liturgies;
It trails with royal rhythm its broad verses,
And with grave grace before mine eyes rehearses
All the Gregorian chant's solemnities.

O save me from my murderous dreams, thou bright
Bosom of silence, mouth that sates the sense,
Urn of oblivion, pillow of indolence;
Annihilate me in thy bosom's night!

My weakness by thy savorous strength is nursed,
And in thy gaping love absorbing me
I taste the time when all I am shall be
In Nature's vast and flowering corpse dispersed.

THE YOUTH AMONG THE LILIES.

In the voluptuous Room of Lilies, made
As a deaf ear by the unhealthy shade
Of vinous tapestry wherein ferments
The sunset, drunk with Church and censer scents
The dying Dauphin, with his woman's slow
Eyes, sees at his feet the ermine snow
Of the hushed carpet, and the oriel's slit
Sifting a trembling glimmer on to it
Of lying lilacs and of faery roses,
And the pale youth his heavy lids uncloses
And sees upon the heaven's crimson rim
Women whose lifted breasts call unto him.

RESIGNATION.

I have fought against myself, I have cried in pain,
Writhed breathless in my wounded spirit's night,
And with my life in rags, a piteous sight,
I come out of the Hell which is my brain.

I know full well to-day, my dream was mad;
My love of autumn was a crime, no doubt;
And like a nail I tear the yearning out
That my too simple heart for childhood had.

My cross! Lance in my side! I bring to you
This verse like Christmas evenings white and calm,
When the sovran palpitation of the palm
Hovers against the heaven's freezing blue;

This verse whereinto all my grief shall pass,
Verse of a man resigned, misunderstood,
Verse into which my love must shed its blood,
Long bleeding, like a sunset on stained glass.

VOICES.

Voice of my weeping blood, voices you of my flesh,
My panting, frantic flesh, O pensive voices,
Louder than when a surging crowd rejoices,
Hush! lest the dear, dead past should bloom afresh!

Be silent, you long voices! Memory closes
On velvet voices, voices of flowers of old
That dreamt in her flesh and sang in her voice of gold;
Voice of lascivious jasmine and moss roses,

Be silent! Hush my sorrow and my shame!
Into my heart silence and winter came:
Silence is snowing into my heart's dark vast.

Snow, snow, O silence! Spread your cool above
Hell's roses, cover up their fires at last,
And in the shadow slain my only love.

VICTOR KINON.

1873--.

THE RESURRECTION OF DREAMS.

It is as warm as when the lilacs' scent
Is with the fragrance of magnolias blent,
When you can hear the seeds crack in the ground,
When first your face and hands are summer-browned
When every now and then in heavy drops
The rain begins, and all as sudden stops....
Slate and rust clouds voluptuously mass
Their bulk o'er the green corn and nibbled grass
Of fields that billow to yon purpled woods,
Which, through bronzed clouds, a sheaf of sunbeam floods.

Sweating, I climb the slope, where, like a long
White ribbon, runs the brook and sings his song.
A noisy cock pursues a clucking hen.
A sparrow flies with bits of hay. And then
Such is the silence you can hear from far,
Where the red roof-tiles of the village are,
The heavy, steady humming of the bees ...
(Can there be blossoms on the willow-trees?)
Here is the wood.--Pale with surprise you see
The ardent silence and the mystery
Whose sap swells in the branches which it studs
With downy catkins and with sticky buds.

Under the elm-trees' violaceous shade
The fresh anemones have snowed the glade;
The undergrowth bathes in a fawn half-light;
The pure air crackles with a lizard's flight;
And there, where on the hazel bough is poured
A ray of sunshine darted like a sword,
A trembling cloud of yellow pollen rises....

And now mysterious mirth my heart surprises
With words and cries of love and tenderness,
And an intoxicated glow and stress,
Because the spring with legendary dyes,
The white of snow and blue of Paradise,
And tender green of leaves all dewy sprent,
With nightingales, and honeysuckle's scent,
And chafers hanging heavily from blue
Lilacs, wet with rosy diamonds too,
With the clear crystal and mad pearls that gush
Out of the beak of quail and pairing thrush,
All the divine, forgotten spring reminds
My heart of ardours where the pathway winds!...
I love! My breast is full of flowers and birds!
I shall break out in ecstasy of words!
I love!--But whom?--I care not whom nor how!
I love, with all my blood in frenzy now,
And all the sighs that heave my breast, the maid

Who smiling comes beneath her cool sunshade....

MIDNIGHT.

The earth is black with trees of velvet under
A low sky laden with great clouds of thunder.
The gnomes of midnight haunt the dark, whose ears,
With luxury veiled, hear as a deaf man hears.
One is uneasy in one's stifling sheets,
And so uneasily the poor heart beats
That, bathed in sweat, at last you leave your bed,
And as in dream about the chamber tread.
You throw the window open. Not a sound.
Surely the wind is swooning on the ground,
And listening to some holy, mystic birth
Preparing in the entrails of the earth.
You listen, earnest, to your heart's loud shock
Beating with pained pulsations like a clock.
Then to the window-sill you pull a chair,
And watch the clouds weigh down the helpless air
Over the gardens whence, in sick perfumes,
Exudes the sweat of trees and wildered blooms.

HIDING FROM THE WORLD.

Shall not our love be like the violet, Sweet?
And open in the dewy, dustless air
Its dainty chalice with blue petals, where
The shade of bushes makes a shy retreat?
And we will frame our daily happiness
By joining hearts, lips, brows in rapt caress
Far from the world, its noises and conceit ...
Shall we not hide our modest love between
Trees wafting cool on flowers and grasses green?

THE GUST OF WIND.

I closed my window, lit my lamp, reclined
My temple on my hand, and sadly thought:
"Now let me read, and dream, and rest my mind ...
But, O my God, my heart is so distraught!
Yet, let me read." It was a traveller's book.

O sailing on broad rivers, on whose shore
Are baobabs and mangroves, while the song
Of curious birds wafts with the ship along,
Together with the tiger's grating roar....

A sudden gust of wind the window shook,
Followed afar off by continued whining.

I throw the window open wide, to look
Into the night, and see, with white teeth shining
In mocking grin, Death pass upon a steed
With yellow teeth, making its wet flanks bleed
With spurs of bone, and in the wind its mane
Tossing, together with his winding-sheet;
See Death, while all the trees moan out in pain,
Race under clouds lit by a livid sheet,
And brandishing above him his bright scythe!

Afar, Italian poplars curve their slim
And parallel trunks beneath the wind of him;
Dishevelled willows in the shadow writhe,
And the earth, looking at the monster, pants....

Now he is swallowed by the raucous squall.
Long I stand gazing at the rise and fall
Of foliage broken by a rending sob,
When suddenly the wind, with hollow throb,--
Lugubrious present from the Reaper!--heaves
Into the room a flight of withered leaves.

THE SETTING SUN.

The stainless snow and the blue,
Lit by a pure gold star,
Nearly meet; but a bar
Of fire separates the two.

A rime-frosted, black pinewood,
Raising, as waves roll foam,
Its lances toothed like a comb,
Dams the horizon's blood.

In the tomb of blue and white
Nothing stirs save a crow,
Unfolding solemnly slow
Its silky wing black as night.

CHARLES VAN LERBERGHE.

1861-1907.

ERRANT SYMPATHY.

From some unknown horizon,
Wafted from far away,
Fraternal sympathy flies on
The scented breath of the May.

Now dreamers in cloudland turrets,
And maidens ripe with the time,
Up the white steps of their spirits
Feel loves invisible climb.

They know not from what glances,
In the pensive peace of the hour,
There are unknown lips in their fancies
Opening with theirs in flower.

So keen and kind the bliss is,
That their foreheads, younger made
By these intangible kisses,
Guard dreams that never fade.

THE GARDEN INCLOSED.

_Fulcite me floribus._

Dear is thy bandage, Love,
To my heavy lids that it closes;
It weighs like the sweet burden of
Sunshine on frail, white roses.

I walk as to voices that call,
I seem over waters to hover,
And every wave, like a lover,
Folds round my feet as they fall.

Who has unloosened my tresses,
As through the dark places I came?
Girdled with unseen caresses,
I plunge into billows of flame.

My lips, where my soul is crooning,
Open in rapt desire,
Like a burning blossom swooning
Over a river on fire.

* * * * *

_Dormis et cor meum vigilat._

My hands lie for my breasts to soothe,
Of playing and of distaffs tired;
My white hands, my hands desired,
Seem asleep on waters smooth.

Far from futile, waste repining,
On this my beauty's throne,
Frail, calm, gentle Queens reclining,
My royal hands dream of their own.

And while mine eyes are closed, and still is
The golden hair my breast that robes,
I am the virgin holding lilies,
I am the infant holding globes.

* * * * *

_Si floruit vinea._

In mulberry time they sang my lips that yield
To keen caresses,
And, like the rain upon the summer field,
My long, warm tresses.

In time of vintaging they sang mine eyes,
Mine eyes half-closed,
Veiled by tired lids and lashes unreposed,
Like autumn skies.

I have all gleams and savours, I am supple
As a bindweed in hedgerow bowers,
My breasts are curved as flames are, or a couple
Of sister flowers.

* * * * *

_Ego dilecto meo et dilectus meus mihi._

When thou dost plunge into mine eyes thine eyes,
I am all within mine eyes.

When thy mouth unties my mouth,
My love is nothing save my mouth.

When thy fingers lightly touch my hair,
I am not if it be not there.

When they touch my breasts at any time,
Like a sudden fire to them I climb.

Is it this which is to thee most dear?
Here my soul is, all my life is here.

* * * * *

_In a perfume of white roses_
_She sits, dream fast;_
_And the shadow is beautiful as though an angel there_
_were glassed._

_The gloam descends, the grove reposes;_
_The leaves and branches through_
_On the gold Paradise is opening one of blue._

_A last faint wave breaks on the darkening shore._
_A voice that sang just now is murmuring._
_A murmuring breath is breathing ... now no more._
_In the silence petals fall...._

* * * * *

The angel of the morning star came down
Into her garden, and he spake to her:

"Come with me, I will show thee many a lake,
Valleys delightful, secret forest bowers,
Where still, in other dreams than ours,
The subtle spirits wake
Of the earth."

She stretched her arms, with laughter
Looking between her lashes on
The angel flaming in the sun,
And, when he moved, in silence followed after.

And while they wandered to the groves of shade
The Angel round her laid
His arm, and set
Among her bright hair longer than his wings
The flowers he gathered dewy wet
Upon the branches over her.

THE TEMPTATION.

_Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters,_
_Glittering sons and radiant daughters._
--D.G. ROSSETTI.

A silence softened the declining day,
A moan, and then a love-sigh died away.
Apples were falling one by one between
The grasses warm and shadows emerald green.

The sun sank down from branch to branch; a bird
Singing among the stirless leaves was heard.
A scent of soft and swooning blossoms strayed,
Like a slow sea-wave, through the deepening shade.

And, to hear better her who comes, with bent
Eyes, as in dream, and heart to meet her sent,
By paths where never sound the silence jars,

Voluptuous evening, in the heated air,
With hands of subtle and accomplice care,
Spread the insidious net of oblique stars.

ART THOU WAKING?

Art thou waking, my perfume sunny,
My perfume of gilded bees,
Art thou floating along the breeze,
My perfume of sweet honey?

In the hush of the gloam, when my feet
Roam through the rich garden-closes,
Dost thou tell I am coming, thou smell
Of my lilacs, and my warm roses?

Am I not like in this gloam a
Cluster of fruit concealed
By the leaves, and by nothing revealed,
Save in the night its aroma?

Does he know, now the hour is dim,
That I am half opening my hair,
Does he know that it scents the air,
Does its odour reach to him?

Does he feel I am straining my arms?
And that the lilies of my valleys
Are dewy with passion-balm
That for his touching tarries?

ALL OF WHITE AND OF GOLD.

All of white and of gold
Are the pinions of my angels;
But Love
Hath pinions changing.

His sweet wings are turn by turn
The colour of purple and roses,
And the crimson sea where uncloses
The kiss of the sun.

The beautiful wings of my angels
Are very slow,
And open closed.

But the agile wings of Love
Are impatient,
And like hearts never rest.

THE RAIN.

The rain, my sister dear,
The summer rain warm and clear,
Gently flees, gently flies,
Through the moist atmosphere.

Her collar of white pearls
has come undone in the skies.
Blackbirds sing with all your might,
Dance magpies!
Among the branches downward pressed,
Dance flowers, dance every nest,
All that comes from the skies is blest.

To my mouth she approaches
Her wet lips of strawberries wild;
She has touched me with a mouth that smiled,
Everywhere at once,
With her millions of little fingers.

On a lawn
Of sounding flowers,
From the dawn to the evening hours,
And from the evening to the dawn,
She rains and rains again,
She rains with might and main.

Then the sun with golden hair
Dries the bare
Feet of the rain.

AT SUNSET.

At sunset,
Swans of jet,
Or fairies sombre,
Come out of the flowers, and things, and us
These are our shadows.

They advance: the day retreats.
Into the dusk they go,
With a gliding movement slow.
They gather, to each other call,
Seek with noiseless footfall,
And together all
With their wings so light
Make the great night.

But the dawn in the sea
Awakes and takes
His torch, then he
Climbs gleam by gleam,
Climbs in a dream.
Out of the waves arise
His tresses fair,
And blue eyes.

At once, as they were blown
Away, the shadows flee.
Where? Who can see?
Into the earth? Into the sea?
Into a flower? Into a stone?
Into us?
Who knows?
Their wings they close,
And now repose.
It is the morn.

A BARQUE OF GOLD.

In a barque of the Orient
Maidens three are coming back,
Maidens three from the Orient
Are coming in a barque of gold.

One is black,
Her hands the rudder hold,
On her curving lips with their essences of roses
She brings to us strange stories,
In the silence.

One is brown,
She holds the full sail down,
And on her feet are wings,
An angel's mien to us she brings
In her motionless bearing.

But one is fair,
At the prow she is sleeping,
As from the rising sun her hair
The wave is sweeping,
She brings us back in her eyes so bright
All the light.

LILIES THAT SPIN.

Now in this April morning, sweet
With folded shadows and doves cooing,
The dear child with her shy conceit
What is she busy doing?

The blonde trace where her footsteps go
Is lost in the grated garden's alleys;
I do not know, I do not know
The meaning of her cunning sallies.

With a long gown down to her heel,
Pensive and slow, with a silent gesture
Upon the sun at a white wheel
She is spinning a blue linen vesture.

And with blue eyes of bridal bliss
Smiling at her dream that glances,
Weaving golden foliages
Among the lilies of her fancies.

GREGOIRE LE ROY.

1862--.

THE SPINSTER PAST.

The old woman spins, and her wheel
Is prattling of old, old things;
As though to a doll she sings,
And memories over her steal.

The hemp is yellow and long,
The old woman spins the thread,
Bending her white, weary head
Over the wheel's lying song.

The wheel goes round with a whirl,
The yellow hemp is unwound,
She turns it round and round,
She is playing like a girl.

The yellow hemp is unwound,
She sees herself a girl,
As blonde as the skeins that whirl,
She is dancing round and round.

The wheel rolls round with a whirr,
And the hemp is humming as well,
She hears an old lover tell
And whisper his love for her.

Her tired hands rest above
The wheel, its spinning is done,
And with the hemp are spun
Her memories of love.

ROUNDEL OF OLD WOMEN.

Little old women, my thoughts,
The snow falls from the vast,
Death and uncertainty palls
All the things of the past.

Why is my heart so chill
Under these skies overcast,
In these winters that last and last,
These winters calm and still?

You little old women who glean,
Make a bonfire of your past,
Of your reeds snapped by the blast,
And of all your barren dreams.

All that your sorrow remembers,
Burn it like dry brushwood,
And sit and warm your blood
Over the dying embers.

And mumble in grief and dejection
Of the happy days of your youth,
And empty with fingers of ruth
The spindles of blue recollection.

And when the cottage is damp
With the weeping of the night,
One of you will light,
Like a shaded, smoky lamp,

--Oh! why must I weep and perish,
And nothing, nothing forget?--
The best of memories yet,
The memory of Her you cherish.

HANDS.

Glued like the eyes of a thief
At my heart's window-pane, gazing in,
Were two pale hands, hands of grief,
Hands as of Death, bone and skin.

I shivered to see them stare,
Weird as the moon in the blue,
Lifting to me their despair,
As the hands of the damned might do.

And He of those desolate hands,
Who was my visitor grim?
Death on my threshold stands,
Since I gazed on the hands of Him.

It was not a blessing they shed,
Curst of a truth were they,
For I have longed to be dead,
Since I saw their ghastly ray.

For the wine of my loving is sour,
And full of tears and of harm,
And deadens the bread of the hour
That is signed with their fatal charm.

Hands of poison! Hands of despair!
Gestures of virgins of gloom!
You have shone on my house as a pair
Of candles a corpse illume!

I have seen Hope close her door,
And my mourning is watching Death,
While the North wind is blowing o'er
My candle dead in His breath.

MY EYES.

Poor eyes, you lamps that are failing,
How little remains of your glow?
Encroaching night is veiling
The things of the here-below.

Or is your gathering gloaming
Indifference alone?
O eyes that once went roaming
To Beauty and the Unknown!

You sink your lids like a curtain,
When Love goes by, a flame;
You know your sorrow is certain,
And age to you is shame.

And yet, my heart's best praising,
O flameless lamps, is for you;
Through you my spirit gazing
First saw, and felt, and knew!