Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry. Sturm Frank Pearce

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      Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs;

      Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs,

      Et quand Octobre souffle, émondeur des vieux arbres,

      Son vent mélancolique a l'entour de leurs marbres,

      Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats.

      Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,

      Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?

      Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,

      Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,

      Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave,

      Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve?

      Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,

      Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat

      And full of bitter summer, but more sweet

      To thee than gleanings of a northern shore

      Trod by no tropic feet?

      For always thee the fervid languid glories

      Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies;

      Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs

      Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,

      The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave

      That knows not where is that Leucadian grave

      Which hides too deep the supreme head of song.

      Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were,

      The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear

      Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong,

      Blind gods that cannot spare.

      Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,

      Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:

      Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous,

      Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other

      Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime;

      The hidden harvest of luxurious time,

      Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech;

      And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep

      Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep;

      And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each,

      Seeing as men sow men reap.

      O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping,

      That were athirst for sleep and no more life

      And no more love, for peace and no more strife!

      Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping

      Spirit and body and all the springs of song,

      Is it well now where love can do not wrong,

      Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang

      Behind the unopening closure of her lips?

      It is not well where soul from body slips

      And flesh from bone divides without a pang

      As dew from flower-bell drips.

      It is enough; the end and the beginning

      Are one thing to thee, who are past the end.

      O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend,

      For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning,

      No triumph and no labor and no lust,

      Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust.

      O quiet eyes wherein the light saith nought,

      Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night

      With obscure finger silences your sight,

      Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought,

      Sleep, and have sleep for light.

      Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over,

      Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet,

      Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet

      Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover,

      Such as thy vision here solicited,

      Under the shadow of her fair vast head,

      The deep division of prodigious breasts,

      The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep,

      The weight of awful tresses that still keep

      The savor and shade of old-world pine-forests

      Where the wet hill-winds weep?

      Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision?

      O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom,

      Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom?

      What of despair, of rapture, of derision,

      What of life is there, what of ill or good?

      Are the fruits gray like dust or bright like blood?

      Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours,

      The faint fields quicken any terrene root,

      In low lands where the sun and moon are mute

      And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers

      At all, or any fruit?

      Alas, but though my flying song flies after,

      O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet

      Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet,

      Some dim derision of mysterious laughter

      From the blind tongueless warders of the dead,

      Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veiled head,

      Some little sound of unregarded tears

      Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes,

      And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs —

      These only, these the hearkening spirit hears,

      Sees only such things rise.

      Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow,

      Far too far off for thought or any prayer.

      What ails us with thee, who art wind and air?

      What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow?

      Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire,

      Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire,

      Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find.

      Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies,

      The low light fails us in elusive skies,

      Still the foiled earnest ear is deaf, and blind

      Are still the eluded eyes.

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