Poetry Archives

After Charles Baudelaire.


When I behold thee, O my indolent love,
  To the sound of ringing brazen melodies,
Through garish halls harmoniously move,
  Scattering a scornful light from languid eyes;

When I see, smitten by the blazing lights,
  Thy pale front, beauteous in its bloodless glow
As the faint fires that deck the Northern nights,
  And eyes that draw me wheresoever I go;

I say, She is fair, too coldly strange for speech;
  A crown of memories, her calm brow above,
Shines; and her heart is like a bruised red peach,
  Ripe as her body for intelligent love.

Art thou late fruit of spicy savor and scent?
  A funeral vase awaiting tearful showers?
An Eastern odor, waste and oasis blent?
  A silken cushion or a bank of flowers?

I know there are eyes of melancholy sheen
  To which no passionate secrets e’er were given;
Shrines where no god or saint has ever been,
  As deep and empty as the vault of Heaven.

But what care I if this be all pretense?
  ‘T will serve a heart that seeks for truth no more,
All one thy folly or indifference,—
  Hail, lovely mask, thy beauty I adore!