^^' ■r r^ J— i ■^ svlOS ,A:OF-C/ ? ^ .§ M' •UIBI -is ^: ^,OFCAtlF0/?, The wife of Charles VI. of France. 54 PETRUS BOREL. Beneath my dubious steps casts and my tears dries up. He'll have me follow him wherever he may call And give myself to him without uncertainty, Remorse or afterthought, myself abandon all Unto his vermeil wave and thereof cradled be. The joyous world, all full of becks and smiles, it is That to my youthful sight half-opes, on either side, The Future's close, that close all full of witcheries, Whereas my glorious days rise radiant as a bride: Distance ineffable, still bright with stars unpaled ! 'Tis the loved world, with all its passions great and small, Its goodly dim-veiled loves, its fouler loves unveiled, Its thousand pleasures, joys and prostitutions all ! The world 'tis, with its balls, its banquets sumptuous, Its nights, its festivals, its games, its women, where The simple abject are, the hapless infamous And he who most enjoys is the most virtuous there; The world and all its towns, resplendent, vast and fair, Its Oriental lands, its barks adventurous, Its reputations, loud resounding everywhere. Its deathless heroes all, warriors victorious. Its poets, very Gods, whose work, in all the lands. Strewn by the way, the tribes intoxicated kiss. Its palaces, its fanes, its gilded royalties. The creaking of its wheels, its sounds, feet, voices, hands; It is the world ! He says, "Come thou with me, young man ! Have confidence in me; thy wishes I'll fulfil; Yea, great as they may be, I satisfy them can. Wilt pleasures, glory have? These all are at my will. Yon women, so admired, so fair and amorous. Whose very looks the hearts of men to madness fret, Thou shalt possess them; yea, on their lascivious Bodies, as on a stone, thy passions thou shalt whet!" The second fighter, he, to wit, whose attitude So grave is and benign his mien, whose unctuous face Is with compunction dusk become, is Solitude, PETRUS BOREL. 55 The Desert; yea, he is the cloister, where the grace Of God falls down in floods, whereas the dulcet dew Of silence and of calm the gall edulcorates, Whereas the heart with light is watered still anew, Mount where the Christian soul with heav'n communicates. And unto me he saith, "Young man, come up to me; Put thou thy trust in me and leave a world of lies. Where all things, like to sleep's vain visions, fade and flee. Believe it me, the sole redeemer from the sighs And miseries of life the convent is. Past price Its contemplation is and its austerity. All things upon the earth infection are and vice: Glory a vain thing is; yea, and posterity A foolish error is, a folly, pride-begot. Wouldst thou upon thy way erect thee, ere thou go, A lively monument? The world remembereth not, Alas! And our life here no morrow hath below. Come, come ! Retirement's peace with me taste in the shade ; Abandon carnal love and its impurities: Break with the world; yet time it is. Thy soul not made Was for a world like this; of its virginities A faithlul guardian be. Come ! And if prayer nor hymn Nor meditation strait to heal its wounds avail. Well, then, thou shalt descend into the quarries dim Of science sage and staid, and there thy forehead pale With vigil shalt thou bend above its crucibles And Christ's name magnify, pouring a sage disdain On that philosophy that scorns his miracles From its jackpudding booths, that creak beneath the strain. Or, if thou wilt, thou mayst the study else ensue Of Art the well-belov'd, like many another saint. As did Lesueur sad, fervent Bartholomew, And on this dome and walls God and the Bible paint." The last one of the three, the clanking cavaUer, The fish-net bearing gnome, the phantom cold and stern, Reaper implacable and leveller etern, S6 PETRUS BOREL. Is he whom over all in secret I revere; Death, Nothingness he is. With subterranean voice, "Come down to me, my son," I hear him murmuring Without cessation. "Come: it were the better choice; For Pain of earth accurst is queen and Hatred king. Come, redescend to me; replunge thee in the clay, Ephemeral chrysalis ! Shadow ! Velleity ! Come rather soon than late. I garner day by day The grapes that ripen on the vine Humanity. Before the heavy maul of woe and sufferance Have brayed thy heart to dust, upon thy flambeau blow ! Our Lady of Liesse and of Deliverance Is Death; the Promised Land the grave is evenso. What wilt, what waitest thou ? Trust thou not anywhit The cheating cloister's speech: rather give ear to mine. Thou knowest not to what the cloister doth commit. It promises repose: a trickster 'tis, in fine. That, lying, you cajoles and takes you in its net. To his obsessions there man still abideth prey: Beneath the desert-wind, there is no peace to get For man; the passions' fire it quickens night and day. The cloister (hearken me !) to thee no apter is Than is the world; fear thou its lying airs of peace; Fear thou St. Anthony's dread satyriasis; Temptations fear, remorse and dangers without cease; The pricks fear of the flesh and the soul's backslidings. Under the desert-wind desires in thee to flame Will wax; for solitude inflames, breaks, tortures, wrings: Thy senses into ills will fall without a name. There's no true happiness, no rest but in the grave. One's ill upon the earth and well the earth below; No fretting pleasures there, no friend that proves a knave; There no ambition is, no hope deluded, no. Nothing but nothingness, absence of wish and lust, A sea without a shore, void without echo ! So Come, at my voice and thou shalt crumble into dust, As, at the trumpets' sound, the walls of Jericho." PETRUS BOREL. 57 So, for this many a day, this trio out of hell Each other hack and hew; and for their battle-close They've chosen, woe is me! these three swashbucklers fell. My sorry heart, all bruised beneath their swashing blows. My poor confounded heart, which, turn by turn, as they, Each of the other, get the better in the fray. Religious, sceptic, mad, mundane and doubting grows. When 'twill all end and which will have me for its prey, The Desert or the World or Death, God only knows ! ALFRED DE VIGNY. THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. 'Twas night and Jesus went, all clad in white, as 'twere One of the shrouded dead, athwart the dusky air, Whilst the disciples slept at the hill-foot below. Among the olive-trees, bowed by a wind of woe, He fared with hasty steps, still shuddering, as did they. Sad unto death, with eyes dark as a Avinter's day. With bended head and arms crossed on his robe of white, Even as a robber hides the spoil he's stolen at night, Knowing the rock-strewn hills better than beaten ways. His steps in a place called Gethsemane he stays. There, on his knees, his front against the earth, he falls. And looking up again to heav'n, "My Father !" calls. But black the skies abide and God respondeth not. Amazed, he riseth up and hasteneth from the spot. Grazing the olive-stems that tremble. Cold and slow, A sweat of blood bedews his cheek. To where below His followers sleep he fares; and in his sad surprise, "Could ye not watch and pray an hour with me ?" he cries. But by a sleep of death th'apostles are possest; Peter to his Lord's voice as deaf is as the rest. The Son of Man reclimbed with slow steps the ascent, Like an Egyptian herd, searching the firmament. If in some star his eye the Angel might avail To espy : but a black cloud spread like a widow's veil, Enveloping the waste as far as eye might see: And Jesus momently, remembering him what he ALFRED DE VIGNY. 59 Had suffered in his span of thirty years and three, A mortal for the nonce became and mortal fear Over his human heart, invincible and sheer, The mastery gat. Three times, "My Father!" all in vain He cried. The wind alone gave back his words again. Upon the sand he sank a-sit, and in his dole. Thought of the world and man as thinks a mortal soul ; And the earth shook and quaked, the Saviour's weight to feel. Who did before the feet of the Creator kneel. II. "Suffer me yet to live, o Father!" Jesus said. "Close not my book of life, ere the last word be read. "Feelest Thou not mankind, the world, sky, sea and land, "Suffer with this my flesh and shudder in Thy hand? " 'Tis that the world fears lone to bide on widow-wise, "When one who hath in mouth a new Evangel dies. "But one word hast Thou let from heaven's treasury "Upon its withered breast from my lips scattered be; "But that one word so pure, so sweet, so full of grace, "Intoxicated all the common human race "Hath with a drop of life and of divinity, "When, opening mine arms, I said, 'Fraternity!' "If, Father, I've fulfilled my mission to mankind, "If I the God have hid the sage's face behind, "Of human sacrifice if I have changed the goal, "For body in exchange taking the contrite soul "And substituting still the symbol for the thing, "The token for the ore, discourse for warraying, "The vermeil floods of wine for those of hate blood-red "And for the bleeding flesh the white unleavened bread, — "If I the times have rent in two parts, one a slave, "One free, — in the Past's name, that with my blood I lave, "By this my suffering flesh, that to its end draws nigh, "With half thereof let us the Future purify ! "Cast, Father, cast, to-day, from out Thy realms above, 6o ALFRED DE VIGNY. "One half part of this blood of innocence and love "Upon the heads of those who yet shall come and say, " 'Lawful it is for all the innocent to slay !' "We know that, in the times afar, there will be found "Harsh dominators, with false sages compassed round, "Who will each nation's wit and judgment turn awry "And my Redemption's sense corrupt and falsify. "Alas ! And yet I speak, already when my word "In every parable to poison turned I've heard. "Turn from my lips this cup impure, that's far to me "Bitt'rer than wormwood, gall or water of the sea. "The crown of thorns, the scourge, the nails that are to come, ''The lance that shall be thrust into my bosom numb, "The torments of the cross, for me that waiting is, "Have nothing, Father mine, that fears me, as doth this. "When a God deigns to set his foot on mortal ground, "The traces that he leaves thereon should be profound; "And if upon this globe, this world-all incomplete, "Whose restless moaning called me still, I've set my feet, '"Twas that I there might leave two angels in my place, "Whose footmarks should be kissed by all the human race, — "Sweet Certitude, to wit, and fair confiding Hope, "Who calm and smiling walk in Paradise's scope. "But I shall leave it now, this hungering earth, ah me! "Yet having only raised the pall of misery "Whose vast lugubrious folds o'er all its face extend, "Doubt holding still the one and 111 the other end. "Doubt ! Evil ! With one word both can I put to flight. "Thou hast foreordered them. Suffer me wash Thee white "Of having suffered them ! The accusation this "That in all places weighs upon Creation is. "Nay, Lazarus again from out his tomb raise we; "Of the Great Secret let him no more niggard be; "Let him impartment make of that which he hath seen, "Let him speak ! — What endures and what must perish e'en "And what the Lord of all hath set in Nature's heart; "That which she gives and takes of every creature's part; ALFRED DE VIGNY. 6i "That which with heav'n above her dumb discoursements be. "Her loves ineffable, her bonds of chastity; "How all's destroyed and all's renewed; her mysteries; "Why this in them is hid and that discovered is; "If the stars of the skies, each, in their order, tried, "Are, like this world of ours, sin-stained and purified ; "If earth that unto them which they to it appear ; "What fable hath of true and mystery of clear, "What false in reason is, what ignorant in wit, "Why to its jail of flesh this soul of ours is knit "And why no path there is between the two high-ways, " 'Twixt weariness of calm and peaceful, pleasant days "And the unbounded rage of passions vague, between "Lethargic quietude and frenzied heat no mean; "Why, like a sombre sword. Death hangeth over all, "Still saddening Nature with its fore-expected fall. "If just and unjust, right and unright, good and ill, "Are chances vile, that but their fated round fulfil, "Or if of th'Universe the two great poles they are, "Upon their shoulders vast sustaining sun and star; "If nations women are, that by the shining sign "Steer of the stars of gold of the Ideas divine, "Or children reasonless, that wander without light, "Weeping, without a guide to lead them, in the night; "And if, when, with the years, Time's perishable glass "Shall have its grains of sand, unto the last, let pass, "A word from out Thy lips, a look from out Thine eyes, "A signal of my cross or one of my heart's sighs "Shall make the Eternal Pains their dreadful claws unclose, "Loose their man-prey and fold their pinions for repose ; — "Nay, all shall be revealed as soon as once man knows "The places whence he came and whitherward he goes." III. Thus the Divine Son spake unto his Sire Divine; Prostrate, once more, he waits, he hopes; and then, in fine, 6a ALFRED DE VIGNY. Raising himself anew, "Thy Will accomplished be !" He saith, "and not mine own, to all eternity !" A terror deep and dumb, an anguish without bound, Doubles his pain and makes his torments more profound. Long looks he; long he seeks, unseeing. O'er him, all The heav'ns were blank and black as a funereal pall; The earth, unlit, unstarred, undawning, round him lay, Devoid of the soul's light, e'en as it is to-day. And shuddered. In the wood he heard the tramp of feet And through the gloom he saw the torch of Judas fleet. THE SILENCE. If true it be that, as they tell of days gone by, The Son of Man, indeed, what is reported said And if, blind, dumb and deaf unto their creatures' cry. The heavens abandoned us, as 'twere a world born dead, The just to absence will henceforth oppose disdain And but by silence cold, in times to come, reply To the Divinity's eternal silence deign. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. THE DEATH OF LEPIDUS. Brothers, man reckoneth not by mere accomplished time, But by the fair full hours that render life sublime; My ravished youth I've seen in varying pleasures speed, So that a whole long life I've lived in very deed. Then, brethren, let me die; 'tis time: I hold it, I, A guerdon of the Gods at twenty years to die And not to feel the wreaths of our young years gone by Upon our wrinkled brows grow withered, sere and dry. Pure, candid, in the Gods believing yet, to-day If I for ever close mine eyes, I pass away. In fatherland and hearth believing, in the cheer And solacement of love and friendship cherished dear; Whereas, in future days, despoiled of all my store. It may be I should die, in nought believing more. Nay, as observer true of what the Master taught, I to this moment long had braced me aforethought; And well 'twas ! For more soon than I had hoped for it, Death, coming on me, finds me all prepared and fit. Besides, what is this death, so sore of mortals feared? A screen, betwixt this earth of ours and Phoebus reared. If good and ill arise from sensibility, Once sensibility in man extinguished, he Pleasure forthright no more distinguishes from pain; Free is he, or of gold or iron be his chain. Death hath no hold on those resolved to any lot; It is not and I am ; it is and I am not. And now farewell ! About to die I am, to reap Repose. The Master said, "Death is a dreamless sleep." Caligula. Prologue. 64 ALEXANDRE DUMAS. SONGS OF THE HOURS. I. THE HOURS OF THE DAY. The Hours, the warrior Hours we are, Whose sway the world of travail knows. When Mars unchains the dogs of war And Caesar marches on his foes, Our cohorts, with dishevelled hair, Through the hot mellay flying, fare. And drive the battle here and there, With many a stratagem and wile. Like vultures hovering o'er the plain, Heaped, as a cornfield is with grain, With the red harvest of the slain, Upon the hecatomb we smile! 2. THE HOURS OF THE NIGHT. The Hours of happiness and love Are we, the Hours that lead delight. When amorous stars in heav'n above Have pierced the dusky veil of Night, Toward the couch, where beauty lies, On roses couched, with half-shut eyes And mouth half-open, rosebud-wise, Caesar and Love at once we guide: And there we dwell till morning gleam. Till, with its first awakening beam, The Dawn disperse us like a dream And new day waken, srailing-eyed. Caligula. Prologue. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 65 SPRING AND LOVE. The Winter fleeth; balmy Spring once more Returneth, followed by the Loves and flowers. Let him now love who never loved before And him who loved relove in Spring's sweet hour ! Winter sole lord and master was of Time, When Venus issued from the briny sea; Her first breath brought to birth the pleasant Prime And it, in turn, begat the World-to-be. The burning Summer can its harvests show And Autumn rich its jewel-clustered vines; The surly Winter hath its ice and snow: But Springtide only love and rose combines. Caligula, Act V, I. BANQUET-SONG. With red roses all Fulfilled is the land; On trellis and wall. Ripe grape-clusters call For the gathering hand. Since every new year, To Winter ofifthrown Its robe old and sere. New-crowned doth appear With blossoms fresh blown, II. 66 ALEXANDRE DUMAS, Since all that which grows To us is foresaid, Thereof to dispose, Let's gather the rose, The grape let us tread ! For Time without stay Our trace followeth: 'Twas youth yesterday, This even age gray, To-morrow 'tis death. Strange myst'ry, heigho! His desolate way, A day here below. Each mortal must go; But, during that day. With red roses all Fulfilled is the land; On trellis and wall. The grape-clusters call For the gathering hand. Caligula, Act V, III. DON JUAN'S SONG. This evening, whilst walking alone on the strand, Where I for an hour went, in dreams of you drowned, My heart I let fall and forgot in the sand. Where you, lady mine, coming after, it found. Now how shall we do to arrange this affair? Long lawsuits are; judges are bought, every one. The cause I shall lose; and yet how shall I fare? For you have two hearts; and poor I, I have none. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 67 Yet eath with good will 'twere the thing to arrange And loss often leadeth to vantage, in fine: Between us let's make of the two an exchange ; Nay, give me your heart, lady fair, and keep mine. DON JUAN DE MARANA, Act II, Tab. 2, Sc. I. RAFFAELLO'S SONG OF ITALY. What vengeful, fated hand, proud Italy, the crown From thy diminished head, alack ! hath smitten down ? Where are thine eagles gone. Thine eagles of red gold, that, in the scarlet West, Sparkled on Britain's hills and from Euphrates' breast Were mirrored in the dawn? Queen of the nations, lo ! how parlous was thy fall ! Who was it made thee like unto the Christian thrall, Whom hangmen, armed for war. Bind to the stake within some amphitheatre And who about her sees, poor helpless maid, for her The hungry lions roar? Alas ! Alas ! 'tis thou thyself that on thy head The diadem of thorns hast set in crownal's stead, That hast, withouten ruth, Of thine own passions base forging thyself a chain. Thyself enslaved, that wast thyself to proffer fain Unto the lion's tooth ! you, upon whose brows glory hath set a star. Whose hands to make stone live and canvas gifted are, Elect ones of the sky ! Unto thy Jesus pray, stern Michael Angelo, And thou, Raphael divine, the angel-named, e'enso To thy Madonna cry! 68 ALEXANDRE DUMAS. And sacred poets, you, the ardent and ill-starred, Exile of Florence town, Ferrara's captive bard, O Dante, Tasso, ye. Whom your own age proscribed and whom ours honours, this With Leonora, that with his fair Beatrice, Pray each on bended knee ! Pray ye for Italy ! Unceasing, night and day. For Italy, alive by her sons buried, pray, Pray, hearts fulfilled of faith ! So, at the day whose date the Future hides from us. Freedom may come and ev'n as Christ to Lazarus, Bid her awake from death ! JULES LEFEVRE-DEUMIER. THE WHALER. Behold yon ship, whose route, within the Boreal zone, The fatal sea with reefs of trenchant ice hath strown ; Which, Winter's prisoner ta'en, — Winter, whose dire despite Her metal muscles hath with rust bereft of might, — Hath seen the barbarous Pole, bristling with stirless wrecks, Her cordage paralyse about her ice-bound decks And by the Springtide borne far from the Pole away, Hath felt the newborn sun's returning ardent ray Supple her rigging stiff, beneath the vernal gales. From the hybernal sloth awakening her sails, She cleaves the swelling surge, that seemed of bronze whilere, And o'er the dangers passed on sovran wise doth fare. But the cold clime, wherein she late enslaved did lie. Its ravage dull ensues beneath a harmless sky; And victim of the North, a water-logged ship, she Founders beneath the sun that lately set her free. The moral of this tale, that thus to you I tell, Seek; more than one you'll find beneath this parable: But the significance which I therefrom derive Is that men ofttimes fate outwarred do not survive: Defeated destiny doth longsome malice hold. If one but let the heart once take misfortune's fold, Help comes too late and with some secret wound downcast, In full mid-happiness one dies of misery past. 70 JULES LEFEVRE-DEVMIER. SPRING-SADNESS. When, in the cold North wind, the willows of the vale Bowed their dishevelled heads before the whistling gale, "When the snow, from the skies falling without surcease. The grassless meadows hid with its chill argent fleece, For mine own idleness I blamed the winter drear. But on the meads, I said, let the grass reappear, The frozen rivulet begin again to run, The bee to hum, the rose to bud beneath the sun, Let but the bird once more its leafy lodging take And like a flying flower, reanimate the brake, And the old light, that sleeps, shaU waken in mine eyes; My brow shall be serene, my heart in joy arise And of my captive rhymes the source, that slumbers now, Shall, like the bee, the bird, the stream, the rose, the bough, Leap, murmur, hover, sing and flutter, leaf and flower. Indeed, who can be gay, in Winter's deathly hour. When, widowed of the sun, whence all its life doth flow, The earth lies stark and still beneath its shroud of snow? Wait but till Nature cease awhile to weep; and I Shall peradventure sing, that now can only sigh. All is at present drear; and that is why my lute And why my spirit sad, unsmiling is and mute. Spring now rejuvenates the woods, the plains, the steeps ; No more the stream benumbed beneath the ice-yoke sleeps : With the new season come, the swallows, see, again Their wing-tips in our lakes bathe and the golden wren, The glittering nightingale of merry morning-tide. His satin plumage preens, by sunshine glorified; The bee from flower to flower still honey-seeking goes And every newborn ray awakens a wild rose. Yet Winter's numbness still hath mastery o'er my heart And languor from my soul refuseth to depart; JULES LEFAVRE-DE UMIER. 7 1 Sadness I've changed, not wont. It is that, come what will, Care for the morrow is a sorry study still, That with a sable veil all seasons doth endue. The futureless sad soul hath not horizons two. Care withers, in their birth, our highest, purest joys And of our goodliest fields the dear first-fruits destroys. This, this is why I weep and why my loveliking. Midst the Prime, feeleth not the coming-back of Spring. When childhood first I left behind, how glad was I! My incredulity all sufif'rance did defy. Then greener were the fields, the trees were fairer far. The air more birds and heaven had many more a star. At this age. Nature teems with charms; all things are fair And each idea past a tear from us doth bear. A score of paths at once one tries, for lack of choice; Since pleasure from each one calls with an equal voice. We on our genius think our memories to assure; To glory's dreams we give a form that shall endure. Love's talons then constrain the heart without duresse; Even when we weep, hope wears the traits of happiness. Later, without our choice, we're ordered each his way: How little glory's worth and what the price we pay We come to know; disgust upon us hands doth lay. Half of our early ties have broken by the way; Those which we fain would form impossible become; And old, though young in years, with spirit bald and dumb. The heart all furrowed deep with wrinkles yet in germ. Our lonely way we plod toward th'unquiet term That proffers us from far a doubtful rest. For death Comes only drop by drop to him that suffereth. This is the reason why my soul is sad and why The Spring, without a glance at me, hath passed me by. 72 JULES LEFEVRE-DEUMIER. HUMAN LIFE. This life of ours is like the star that fleeteth by, Like the white clouds that fleck the azure of the sky, Like to the small bird's song among the rushes green, Like to the eagle's flight across the heav'ns serene, Like to the silver rains fallen from Aurora's veil, Like to the flickering flame that gilds the shadows pale, The wandering butterfly that takes it for the day. The breezes of the East, whose fickle fluttering play Rouses to rippling life the dreaming streamlet's glass, The furrows which it leaves upon the meadows' grass, The rainbow seven times dyed with borrowed hues and sheen. The worm, that lamplike, shines against the swart night's screen, The Angelus sighed out by the complaining bell. The incense of a flower, born of the Springtide-spell, Like lovers' talk a-nights, beneath the plumy trees, — — Life is all this; and yet these smiling similes, In fine, but images afflictive of it are. The snowy cloud the fate shares of the flitting star ; The eagle comes no more; the bird away doth fleet; The tears of morning-dew dry up beneath our feet; The butterfly its wings burns at the dying flame; The wind-waves in the meads go even as they came; The very sun that paints the bow its charm deflowers; The plaining bell falls mute, the glowworm fades, the flowers No incense more exhale; the history begun Arrested is, nought more hearkens .... and Life is done ! JULES DE SAINT-FELIX. SOLITUDE. Suff' ranee and solitude, ye fair, ye noble things, Angels that stray by night, Happy is he can touch the feathers of your wings And happier yet the soul that followeth your flight! On the banks of the Lake of Galilee, of yore, A dreaming youth there came. Beside a lonely rock to sit upon the shore; In linen was he clad and Jesus was his name. Scarce twenty years of age he was; his golden hair Did on his shoulders lie; And at a venture still his humid gaze did fare From the shore to the tide and thence unto the sky. Gentle he was of heart and yet austere of thought, Silent and poor and wise: One saw this was a soul that but the earth had sought To weep a moment there and soar back to the skies. Whence came his pallor ? What his modest head did weigh Thus tow'rd the sands? What cark Drew from him those long sighs, more dulcet than the lay Of the seraphic hosts that couch beside the ark ? 74 JULES DE SAINT-FELIX. Why? Anguish infinite 'twas that he suffered; he Could see the coming stress, The bitter crown of thorns and the death-agony Draw near him, him who came from heaven to love and bless! Suff 'ranee and Solitude, how holy are your hours! Grace is your sister dear; And even as the rocks their hyacinthine flowers, Perfumes and balms you have of sweetness without peer. You only lesson us that frail are woes and pains; By your sole influence, Man, purified, his wede of mortal clay disdains For his white native robe of stainless innocence. O pallid Solitude, o lonely Suff 'ranee, he Who loves you not e'enso The Saviour's self disdains, Jesus of Galilee, Who even to the end sought for you here below. Hope, then, my soul, and choose thy refuge far from vile And lost Humanity. My soul, hope on; for earth is nothing but an isle Upon the sea divine, that's called Eternity. LUCULLUS AT SUPPER. "Which of us mad enough to say is, 'At my list The Future is and I to-morrow shall exist?' The slave from Afric's strand, who yesternight did pour To us the Massic wine, is presently no more. Our days are reckoned all, the future as the past; Maybe we shall not all rise from this glad repast. What? Of Avernus gulf, my friends, you are adread? I'll drink to Acheron. Fill me the wine-cup red. JULES jDE saint FELIX. 75 Come, slaves; my forehead crown with wreaths of myrtle green : Unto the Gods, to Rome, the universe's queen, Unto my grandeur past, I drink, to Asia, To king Tigranes dead, to thee, Aspasia, That, on yon couch reclined, intoxicat'st mine eyes! Let others run the risks of battle and emprise Or for the Consul's rank strive in the market-place; Let others seek to buy the commons' clamour base. The arena I forswear; the athlete is tired out. Applaud him, citizens, if well he fought his bout. The Parthians, so they say, our frontiers menace still. Eh well, my litters, then, to meet them send I will. I will intoxicate them with Falernian wine And sleep by them upon those vermeil beds of mine. To sleep! To wake! Behold Life and its mystery! Nay, do we even live? Upon the earth are we? Who told us so? And you all, are you Romans, you? Are these that in my hands I carry blossoms true? This sword, from the Great King, from Mithridates, torn, And yonder standards, from Euphrates' shores off-borne, Who can assure us that they are and do not seem? Lived Mithridates e'er? Upon its swelling tide Hath th'Oriental flood e'er seen my galleys ride? Belike, all these are but delusions of a dream. No matter! Slave, come fill with wine my golden cup, So I may drink to Chance, to God that fashioned me. To all that is no more, to all that yet may be. To thee, Aspasia young. Slave, brim the beaker up." And so Lucullus drained the cup of Hercules : Three times he emptied it, filled it again with wine And proffered it to those that lay by him recline. They drank, each in his turn, to the Eumenides, To Rome, its fortune high, to victory and reverse. To chance, to nothingness, the dubious universe. 76 JULES DE SAINT-FELIX. Meanwhile upon her couch Aspasia lay prone, Peaceful, half-naked, decked with loveliness alone, Whilst a Numidian slave, black-haired, with eyes of blue, With Tyrian essences her tresses did indue, Tigranes' diadem sparkled upon her head, Erst by Lucullus won. Raising her jewelled fan. Of Orient feathers wrought, the youthful courtezan Commanded silence; then, with smiling lips, she said, "Oh, with what vain discourse you trouble this our feast! Drink to my beauty ; deck my head with flowers. The East Already waxeth red; the Great Bear is in flight. Already the first dawn hath paled the waning night. On Vesta's temple-frieze the vermeil morning breaks. Confused noises, hark, I hear! 'Tis Rome that wakes. Rome ! at that glorious name my heart leaps up once more. Life, life I recognize and thank the Gods therefor." ANTOINE DE LATOUR. LOVE. Love! Word with irony and mocking sadness rife For who lives but a morn ! Sad, fatal word, that hath no echo in this life But bitterness and scorn ! To choose a woman out and round about her make, For her therein to be, A whole enchanted world, to wish, but for her sake, For immortality ! Unto her lightest wish one's being to suspend. To die, alas! all day, Still promising oneself a smile, at the day's end, Which shall one's pains repay ! And when the look, which is the longing lover's goal, One hath implored in vain, To feel the Future 'scape from the affrighted soul And the bewildered brain ! In one's insane despair, to life, to happiness A dull farewell to sigh. Fallen on one's knees, one's brows against one's couch to press And "O my God!" to cry, 78 ANTOINE DE LA TO UR. "Instead of suffering them one after other fall So heavy on my heart, My God, canst Thou not take these days of misery all Together back and part?" These torments to endure, for which no name men know On this our earthly ball, And slowly so of them to perish, here below Is what "To love" they call. HAPPINESS. Out of the mountain's womb, where God had hidden it. There fluttered down a flower; and I, I bless the hand Which, gathering it up, upon its stem half-slit. Brought it before your steps, friend, from so far a land. You know, henceforward, where there grows the holy balm That life enbalsameth and better rendereth man; On your soul, drop by drop, it falleth soft and calm. And on your life henceforth no sorrow batten can. For me, I fared alone my path more rough and rude: You made a sign to me and at your beck I came: Therewith you carried me unto your solitude. And there this happiness I knew without a name; The high serenity of two twin souls of choice. That of their mutual love have made their universe And in the sacred floods poetic still rejoice Of Nature, Beauty, God and Faith themselves t'immerse. But have a care lest you e'er sufier before all Ring out th'exultant hymn of your felicity; Upon a jealous ear it might by hazard fall. And but too much observed are those that happy be. ANTOINE DE LA TOUR. 79 Beware lest any sigh betray the sacred wood, Whereas your rapturous dream, in shadow hidden, lives; The world is little kind and in its rancorous mood, The happiness that flees from it uneath forgives. When once the jealous steel hath smitten to the ground The ancient oak and bared the forest's mysteries. The bird, that cradled slept by the soft fountain's sound, Forth of its nest of moss, with its sweet ditties, flees. So happiness from us flees, which its rapid wing Soon, unreturning, bears to other shores away And which twice nevermore, shy bird, returns to sing Or build its broken nest upon the selfsame spray. THE BEACON OF THE LORD. When twice I furrowed heretofore The waters that to-day I traverse without thee, My treasure o'er th'abyss at least with me I bore; I knew, I felt thee near to me. Then, from my shores paternal far, Tow'rd exile's port, content of heart, I steered; but now I go alone and God, who is my guiding-star. Alone knows whither tends my prow. But since God knows, what matters it? In vain the raging waves upon my bark are poured; A strong calm hand aloft, with fire eternal lit. Will bear the beacon of the Lord. The fiercelier the surges roar. The more the way's fulfilled with terror and with grief, The more the eternal sign mounts upward and the more Its light shines soft upon the reef. 8o ANTOINE BE LA TO UR. Those by men kindled but a ray, A pallid glimmer have, a mockery of light. The tempest, passing by, casts them a whiff of spray And yet more sombre grows the night. But Thine, o Lord, Thy beacon-light. Which never morning had nor night shall know, pure flame, Lamp of the evil days, o'er all, shines for the spright; And Duty is its real name. EMILE DESCHAMPS. TO AN UNKNOWN POET. The treasures wherewithal the Muse hath you endowed, Like gold that men to all deny, Were they intended thus hidden in thy heart to lie? Arise, young man, and speak aloud ! The world on genius mute did ever look with doubt. As 'twere a God in marble hid. Out of your heart, of bonds of stony silence rid. Cause thou the poet startle out! Yes, o my friend, your lyre, when we our ditties sing, Amidward tears, smiles, hopes, desires. Lacks to the high concent of the harmonious lyres, As to the brakes a flower in Spring. In the great orchestra the listener feels its lack; The thousand-chorded symphony Needs that its vast frame by your soul enlivened be. Then give it all its puissance back. Nay, poet, render us again that voice sublime. Which echoing heaven envies you And which, beneath the limes that hide your life from view. We once did hearken aforetime. II. 6 82 EMILE DESCHAMPS. What fear you, that so long to silence you are fain? Fools? Nay, at fools one laughs, in fine. If oftentimes we cast our pearls before the swine, They never in the dust remain. Some one still passeth by, some farer to and fro, By whom they're taken up and worn; Some sought of kings I know and others that adorn A tress of jet or hand of snow. The envious? Rather look on them indulgently. They so unhappy are : their thought Is still to do us harm. Against them do we nought ! Success our only vengeance be ! Genius upon your brow, virtue at heart, so live And double praise deserve. At you The envious double mud will cast. But what's to do? They give but what they have to give. The foul toad croaks to hear the nightingale. A slave Insulted Caesar's self whilom; His glorious chariot splashed was by the mire of Rome: But what recks Caesar in his grave? Thus peril, battle, snare, lie ambushed for your soul: Many recoil would in dismay: But you, mortal divine, unlocking on the way, March, singing, eyes upon the goal! Whenas the hurricane athwart our meadows howls, Whenas the hail, the scourge of the fast-ripening sheaves, Smites on the sounding roofs and bounds from off the eaves, And in the mountain-clefts afar the thunder growls. The timid sparrows, then, the turtles white and weak, The shelter of the thatch and of the coppice seek; EMILE BESCHAMPS. 83 Whilst, at the noise of winds and waves, to waking fanned From his strong sleep by the storm's breath, The eagle, on king-wise, the heavenly fatherland Of sun and tempest traverseth. ST. MARTIN'S SUMMER. Bytimes, beneath a sky open to the tepid West, November hath its suns, a summer brief and bare, Where, midst the crossing boughs, with leafage brown and rare Thin spread, the pallid ghost of Winter stands confest. Then, to avoid this brow with woefulness opprest. The frolic year takes flight among the grasses spare And winds itself a wreath with mallows pale yet fair. With pinks yet red and thyme yet green, the season's best. So with this life of ours, it seems, its evening come, A short and second youth is born again for some, Whereon the sun of love burns as at middle day ; The dormant heart relives and to the flowers, elate. Its waking chants and doth itself intoxicate With nectar that age will to morrow bear away. JULES DE RESSEGUIER. CREDULITY. In youth I trusted all I heard. The tales my nurse to me chanted believed I still ; I in the fairy folk believed, both good and ill, And in my secret acts told by a little bird. I in the wolf believed, when ill-behaved was I, And fancied I could see, crooning his doleful air, The sable chimney-sweep coming, as he passed by. To bear me off unto his lair. When fifteen years had passed away, More credulous was I a thousand fold and more; For I in speech believed, in oaths that lovers swore And that our looks alone our secrets did bewray. That Love should last as long as life itself I thought; I thought that "Always" did "Eternal" signify And that, what time we love, our loving souls are caught, Like angels, up into the sky. I loved, believed all this and more; His voice so dulcetly expressed his tenderness And promised me such dreams of endless happiness; No, never had I been so credulous before. He cheated me; he lied; and now but lies all seems. I in his heart believed and now I doubt of mine. Songs, prodigies and oaths, tales, promises and dreams. Nought more do I believe, in fine. JULES DE RESSEGUIER. 85 THE PAST-TIME. Oh, how I suffered in my youthful prime, When in the long enchantments I believed. And how I suffered in the happy time When I for joy unto my torments cleaved ! All's over now and I've forgotten, too. The name I softly used to murmur o'er. Tell, tell me that which in the world men do! I live no longer^ suffering no more. Seeth one yet, at even, in the dale, Pass, like a phantom, through the misted glade. As heretofore, a woman 'neath a veil, Who's not alone, yet saith, I am afraid? Do jealous steps the lovers' track ensue? Are their souls stirred by Love's perturbing lore? Tell, tell tne that which in the world men do! I live no longer, suffering ?io more. Doth one, light loves secure to bind and hold, A flexible and yielding net yet weave? Do men delude themselves still as of old, Th'impossible still possible believe? Doth yet remorse the youngling maid pursue, That yieldeth after many an inward war? Tell, tell me that which in the world men do! I live no longer, suffering no more. Do folk yet pray for dear ones day and night, What while the incense-fumes the chapel fill ? Do men love still and still love-letters write And are these letters intercepted still! 86 JULES DE RESSEGUIER. Doth a kind word yet ravish lovers true And an unkind one cause them suffer sore? Tell, tell me that which in the world men do! I live no longer, suffering no more. Are there yet found, beneath the veils discreet, Eyes of heav'n's blue and trailing locks of gold, Mute mouths and rosy lips and voices sweet, Farewells and broken hearts for absence cold? Are talents still and enviers ever new And benefits and ingrates, as of yore ? Tell, tell vie that which in the world men do! I live no longer, suffering no more. ERNEST FOUINET. THE YOUNG WIDOW. Often, in the Orient lands, one happens on a town, Extending far and wide, through fertile vale and down, Whose cupolas uplift to heav'n their globes of gold. One enters ; but, alack ! the yet new houses hold No sole inhabitant, only some bird of prey, Some greedy jackal, that for joy doth yelp and bray, Snuffing the camels' scent upon the passing breeze. One questions in oneself what fell catastrophes Can all at once have caused ruins so young: in fine, One thinks of the Simoum or of some wrath Divine, Such with a lightning-flash as slays a people sheer. But, if by you there pass some sombre cameleer. He'll say to you, "Behold, God's Shadow upon earth, The Sultan, hath been pleased to constitute this dearth. Another place it was his will to populate: This remains void. No God there is but God most great !" Yet, when th'inhabitants their dwellings edified. They said, "How eath our days in this fair place shall glide !" Each mother hoped to see her son to manhood rise Within this smiling vale, far from the smothering skies. That o'er the desert sands hang like a dome of brass. The old men reckoned there their lives till death to pass; The merchants smiled to see the glittering bazaars Piled with the wares of Ind, of Araby and Ears ; Yea, and the pious said, "Thither", and louted low Before the mosques, "at th'hours prescribed for prayer, we'll go." 88 ERNEST FOUINET. Muezzins called the folk from every minaret And by the hollowed graves tall cypresses were set. "Friends," said they, each to each, "our cemetery here This is; we'll nevermore depart this city dear." — One sole command sufficed; the Sultan spoke the word: And in the town thenceforth was no one seen or heard. The new bazaars are void and in the desert place Sandheaps and weeds of man have blotted every trace. Sad desolation ! So it is with this my lot. All happiness I hoped: but Death said, "Hope thou not! Hope not for evermore !" And now my youth I see To sadness vowed fore'er and lonely misery. My soul unpeopled is. Oh, had I but the hope, — When, through my tears, what while, in heav'n's unclouded scope. The setting sun sinks low, I view th'empurpled sea Or when I wake anights, — there might appear to me A beacon-light afar upon the dim sky-line. If I might then expect to see his signal shine And say, "He comes again and his true guiding star The night-lamp is, from out my bovver that shines afar!" But never, never more! And nought I hear by night But a long moaning sigh, that wails, "All's over quite!" The voice 'tis of the sea, that whelmed him in its flow. And to sustain my soul, in this its poignant woe, There's nothing left to me save memories and dreams, A portrait and the Past. How drear the Future seems ! CHARLES DOVALLE. A MARCH DAY. Where shines the sun ? I'm cold. Show me, for pity's sake, Some stretch of wall that lies wide open to the light. Some sunny window-pane or some broad stone of white, Which, till the night, the rays of noontide burning make. Here. Heavens, how at ease one is ! New life well-nigh It is, a dulcet warmth, after long winter's sway. Heat comes from heaven. How it doth revivify The soul, that by the frosts benumbed was yesterday ! At present all to me smileth; the shining fly. That on its azure wings doth yonder rise and fall. Yon tufts of moss, the blades of greening grass hard by. That timid peep from out the crannies of the wall. The trees are nigh to flower : each bough the red buds shows : The butterflies I see about them and above. Another month and time 'twill be for the first rose. I love the time of flowers, for the flowers speak of love. The time of flowers! And soon the mornings bright and blue; Then the clear silver rills, that through the meadows pass; Then the plants bending down beneath the drops of dew And many-coloured bells that hide among the grass; Then the long days of heat and lassitude supreme. When the cool shade one seeks and sleeps at middle day, When luxury and sloth on silken beds recline And idle heads on arms of ease and languor lay. 90 CHARLES DOVALLE. Then come the twilights warm, the dulcet evening dews, The hour when we a-field fare with our sisters young, Whenas the children blend the fragile poppies' hues And sport with buttercups, to one another strung. Fair evenings, sunny days and stormless morning-tides. The flower-enbalsamed Spring, the splendid Summer-days, All make one glad Alack ! I feel a cloud that hides The sun and chills my blood, as over me it strays. Where shines the sun ? I'm cold. I prithee, if the light Yet warm some windowpane or some broad stone of white. Which to the night retains the rays of noontide heat. Tell it to me; 'tis there I fain myself would seat. AFTER THE RAIN. Chrysa, no more I hear the play Of rain-drops dripping from the trees; The sky is clear; the storm-wind flees; The small bird sports beside the way. Among the wood-ways overgrown, Athwart the flowered hawthorn-close, Between the hedges of wild rose. Wilt thou with me, we two alone? The moths, that in the twilight fleet, Already glitter on the leas; The grasses flutter in the breeze; The quail sings in the flowering wheat. Come, whilst the light of day yet gleams ; Come, Chrysa, give thy hand to me: The pathway of the vale take we; The hour is apt for happy dreams. CHARLES NODIER. THE BANK. If there a bank be anywhere, Broidered with strawberry bines or dusky bryonies, Whereas the laughing-eyed forget-me-not one sees Along the ditch, beneath the hedge's shelter, fare; Ah, if its sheltering shade in Spring Cover with tender care the current of a rill. As o'er its stones it bounds to turn the waiting mill And without halt or stint its course goes following; If, with its trailing bells of white. About th'embroidered boughs the coiling bindweed twine. The lily of the vale shelt'ring and columbine, Wherewith the village maids to busk their heads delight ; If it, the wild bee's nesting-place, Bytimes thereto attract some soft-eyed smiling maid, Who, tripping gaily, comes, unheeding, unafraid, Her basket purposing with half blown buds to grace; If of the birds beloved it be, If hop amid its twigs it see the flitting wren Or if the linnet seek its shelter now and then, Escaped, with limping foot, from out the meshes free; 92 CHARLES NODIER. If it from dawn be fain To greet th'inconstant flight of the gay butterflies, Bespangled all with red and gold and azure dyes, That, coming, light and flee and light and flee again; If, in the ardent sumniertide, Pricking with light the night's un-moonenlightened veil. The glow-worms thither come to sow their lamplets pale, Strewing the grass with stars of silver far and wide; If it of evenings overhear The simple tender talk of some enamoured pair, When the swain, putting back his fair one's clustering hair, Murmurs the words she burns to hearken in her ear; If long it may avail to keep From the sun's burning rays a nameless sepulchre, Nay, children, tell it me: the welcome hour is here: The air is cold; 'tis late; I'm weary and would sleep. ULRIC GUTTINGUER. ALL ABOARD ! Quick ! Quick ! Aboard with all of you ! The shallop in the reeds doth ride. The wind is fresh, the sky is blue, The elms are mirrored in the tide. Lord of these smiling shores and skies, Love watches over lovers true. Young men and old, mad maids and wise. Aboard with you! The rocking shallop with my feet Far from the shore I push and start. Nay, be thou not so fearful, sweet: Press me against thy trembling heart. Wreck fearest thou? Sweet in mine eyes To die together 'twere, we two. Young men and old, mad maids and wise. Aboard with you! Come you, as well, ye timid ones. Young children of the hamlet I Mark How limpidly the water runs, How, like a cradle, rocks the bark. Come, fare with me: ere daylight dies, I'll bring you back here all anew. Young men and old, mad maids and wise, Aboard with you ! 94 ULRIC GUTTINGUER. Unto the island of my choice I'll bring you, where they dance and sing, Where echo to the loved one's voice Is never tired of answering. True pleasure still in travel lies : Come, friends, come, lovers old and new ! Young men and old, mad maids and wise, Aboard with you ! LOUIS BERTRAND. SONNET TO EUGENE RENDUEL. » Whenas the grapes are ripe and heav'n is mild and clear, Upon the vineclad slopes a merry folk we see; Then in the vines it is, not in the granary. That masters, servants, all, assemble in good cheer. I knock at thy closed door. Sleepest thou, then? Give ear. With its angelic voice the morning wakens thee: All folk with vintaging at this time busy be. We have a vine ourselves: let's vintage, gossip dear. My book is such a vine, where, ripened in the sun. The golden grape but waits to flow into the tun. Let but the winepress groan; the wine will follow eath. My neighbours I invite, — without the trumpet's sound Convoked, — with reaping-hook and crate to gather round. Let them but turn the leaf; the fruit is underneath. TO THE MOON. Fair pilgrimess of heav'n, whose course mine eyes ensue, In th'azure pale, whereo'er thou farest wandering, Hast thou encountered e'er, in those high plains of blue, A precinct compassed round with sempiternal Spring? ' Exhorting him to publish his book, "Gaspard de la Nuit." 96 LOUIS BERTRAND. There, without hope, for me, dream-eyed betrothed one, A youngling angel waits — snow-coloured are her wings — To knit again in heaven the chain on earth begun. Of brilliant blossoms made are its light gracile rings. Like to a pallid ray of thy mild dulcet light. That angel's spirit, bathed in my supreme adieu, Remounted to its home in heav'n's eternal height, Still worthy of the skies and God's transcendent view: And I alone remained, I, scion of the clay. O angel of my youth, when I have sung of thee, In the bed of the tomb my lonely head I'll lay. To dream of thee, I have a whole eternity. AUGUSTE BRIZEUX. THE TWO PATHS. Two paths with equal step to Good conduct us still, The love of Good itself and eke the hate of 111; And each man, as the bent inclines him of his soul, Or love or hate ensues toward the common goal. Hate from a sense assured and a proud heart doth grow, Which peril still excites and drives upon the foe; Love from a pensive heart, tender, intelligent, Which, pitying the perverse, would have them fain repent. Love, Hatred, which were best, the other one above, To choose? Each certain is. For me, I've chosen Love. II. If evil pass me by, as if invisible, 'Tis not that I am blind or senseless of its spell; Nay, more than once mine eyes with horror wide have grown And my heart blows, that caused it bleed amain, have known. But why recall to mind the inexplicable? Man should the fardel scorn that bows him. Ill or well, Each day of march, on him the burden lightlier lies. Until the hour when, grown more tender and more wise, The years unto that world harmonious him shall bring, Which my synthetic soul unceasingly doth sing. II. 7 98 AUGUSTE BRIZEUX. III. And yet it lives, it lives, this Evil that should die, Stronger the more it sees us suffer, hears us sigh; Many an unfortunate, devoid of self-avail. Beneath its hideous hands o'erthrown is and death-pale. Well, we must strive withal. Like the first saints, whose fame 'Tis that they forced the Fiend to serve their pious aim And led him in a leash, a sign upon his head. The Beast, iuvoking God, behoveth us downtread, Crying, "O obstacle, thou shalt unto my will Bow! Good to bring about, thou shalt obey me, Bl!" MARCELINE DESBOR DE S-V A LMORE. REFUGE. I'll go, I'll go and bear my withered laurel crown Unto my Father's garth, where all flowers live again; There forth at length I'll pour my soul, with grief bowed down : My Father secrets hath to solace every pain. I'll go, I'll go, with tears, at least, to Him to cry, "Look on me of Thy grace ! I sufl"ered have." And He, Beneath my pallor void of charm and under my Changed traits, because He is my Father, will know me. " 'Tis you, then," will He say, "dear desolated soul ! Have your feet weary grown of yonder world of sin? Dear soul, I'm God : put off" your trouble and your dole. Behold your house! Behold My heart! Come, enter in."' O refuge sacrosanct! O mildness! Father mine. Thou heardst thy child that wept and hearkenedst to her. Mine art Thou now, since hope I have in Thee, in fine, And Thou possessest all that I have lost down here. The flower that's fair no more Thou spurn'st not, Father mild; This, that's a crime on earth, in heaven pardon they; Thou wilt not angered be with Thine unfaithful child. For that she nought hath sold, but all hath given away. I oo MAR CELINE DESBORDES- VALMORE. THE ROSES OF SAADI. To bring thee roses, dear, this morning I was fain, But in my girdle took more than it might contain And the strained knots refused to hold their load for thee. The knots, alack! gave way and let the roses go, That fled to-ocean-ward on all the winds that blow; The unreturning stream they followed to the sea. The wave was all ablush with their encumberment. My dress is yet to-night enbalsamed with their scent: Come, then, and breathe on me their fragrant memory. FERDINAND DE GRAMONT. SONNETS. THE MEN OF THE DESERT. Not every man is born to tread the beaten ways, Open to every foot that walks this worldly scene; For desert-dwellers some of God have fashioned been; The sterile paths they love and the free nights and days. Like the wild ass, they scorn the towns; the rill allays Their thirst; they feed on fruits; the forest's ceiling green Is, with the sky above, their shelter and their screen; The shadow of a yoke their tameless fronts affrays. Upon some mountain top, a whole day standing still, Their sadness stern and lone they ruminate in peace; And "What is it they do?" men from afar demand. But "Woe", the Lord hath said, "to who on these lays hand ! Their exile unto Me pertaineth, good or ill; My hand 'twas from the bit that did their mouths release !" 11. THE PRESENT AGE. \ The worship of the Past hath not made me unjust. I come not to attack the Present evermore. Because upon its front it bears a stain of gore, I02 FERDINAND DE GRAMONT. By the Red Terror's hand bequeathed, its nurse robust. Upon Procrustes' bed thrice measured, needs it must Be said, this age is far more decent than of yore Was that, whose shame, allwheres uprising us before, Itself in Gilbert's ' verse so rudely doth encrust. No more colossal crimes, no more excesses vast, No bloodstained ravisher, no fastuous publican, Who unto all the winds the plundered funds doth cast! Vice loves home-peace to day and habits regular: Debauch is business-like; the thief's a family man; Folk impious, infamous, with calm and reason are. ' Nicolas Gilbert (1751 — 1781), the French satirist of the l8th century. He is now known only by one stanza of his poem, "Adieux a la vie," i. e. "Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive, J'apparus un jour et je meurs; Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, ou lentement j'arrive, Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs." ELISA MERCCEUR. PHILOSOPHY. When to Life's banquet first myself I did address, And to the new-come guest the cup they passed to drink, I knew not the disgust that follows drunkenness Nor yet how heavy weighs a chain at its last link. Yet knew I, none the less, that torches festival, Extinguished or consumed, eclipsed are, one by one, And eke the flowers I saw, that from our heads did fall, Show, in their shredded leaves, their one day's life fordone. On the brows of the guests, already, mid the flowers, I saw the fleeting signs of sadness or of hope And smiling, as they passed, unto the fleeting hours. Waited to see the dawn toward the evening slope. Well knew I that regret experience doth repay Nor with my tears was fain experience to buy; But, treasuring e'ermore my careless calm and gay. Still, in their beauty fresh. Life's blossoms culled have I. Preferring my unwit to reason, if, forsooth. Unto a moment's bliss my life I've limited. Thou, that hast ne'er belief given to the dreams of youth. What matter if thou blame my error, when I'm dead? I04 ELISA MERCCEUR. In vain, with counsels cold, thou wouldest me confound. Wilt thou obtain it aye, this morrow of thee sought? When for us twain the last dread summons shall resound, I shall at least have lived, whilst thou wilt but have thought. This maxim, at thy will, wisdom or madness style. For me, my life-time day by day to spend I mean; And happy over all is he who yet can smile, Whenas the moment comes to quit the festive scene. AIME DE LOY. RESIGNATION. Thou proffer'dst to my lips the cup of bitterness, Lord, and I thereof have drunk, unmurmuring; And now unto Thy throne I come in my distress: DeHver me, my God, of my sore suffering! The bed whereon I He is with my weeping wet; v My youth hath withered up, as withereth the grass. If ever to my lot a bright day fell, 'twas yet But as a rapid stream, that did, flower-carrying, pass. This ocean of the world, where all must suffer grief, I've traversed, credulous, upon the faith of pride; And when the winds have blown my vessel on a reef, No hand hath held aloft a lamp to be my guide. See, sundered am I now from all that's dear to me: Yet, let Thy will, o God, accomplished remain ! Resigned is this my mouth and I, if need there be, Shall know the bitter cup even to the dregs to drain. Yes, Lord, Thy child hath need of prayer and from the deep He turneth unto Thee of the Eternal Vast; 1 at Thine altar's foot have bitter tears to weep: And I henceforth would live to expiate the Past. io6 AIME DE LOY. Desire no longer binds my heart unto the earth; What skills the frail support of mortals in mine eyes? I come to ask of Thee, in my profoundest dearth, The water thirst that slakes, the bread that fortifies. Of that pure wheaten bread but give me day by day; Vouchsafe me at Thy springs to wet my wistful lips; Even as the wayfarer, that would his thirst allay, Into the torrent's flow his hand for water dips. REGNIER-DESTOURBET. CANZONET. Sad silence holds the valley's air, — Now thou art absent, — that whilere Did echo to so many a bird. My fair, Whenas, anigh the woods, they heard Thy word. The floweret in the meads its head At present hangeth, sere and deadj The primroses, that in the sun Out spread, When thou wast here, are every one Fordone. Nought left for him in earth and sky, The loveless lover can but sigh. My soul within your eyes of blue Left I, Lone where I happy was with you, We two. The homing swallow is less sad. That finds the turret ivy-clad No more, where, coming back each Spring, Heart-glad, Of Love she wont, on wheeling wing. To sing. A. FONTANEY. AFLOAT. The harbour sinks from sight; The sea sleeps; 'tis the hour When the flower opens out, that loves the brooding night. The soul, on like wise, waits till day be dead, to flower; Then brims the heart with tears and love-delight. The harbour sinks from sight. Unto the waves trust we ! No need of oar or sail : As it my rudder were, I sit at thy dear knee; Over our little bark for canvas spread thy veil; In thy blue eyes my guiding star I see; Unto the waves trust we! The wind's voice I adore; Its lone sound's dear to me. Might it but waft our skiff" to thee, oft-dreamed-of shore, Island of happiness, region of mystery, Pleasaunce where heav'n to earth reveals its store ! The wind's voice I adore. Breeze, rock us to repose ! To slumber on the tide Of Life 'tis sweet, unscathed of all its cares and woes; Over Death's threatening reefs, in peace profound, to glide And on another world the eyes t'unclose. Breeze, rock us to repose ! PAUL JUILLERAT. AUTUMN LEAVES. The Autumn wind goes by, Off bearing, as it flees, The birds out of the sky, The dead leaves from the trees. Warm suns and breezes mild Are past for many a day. Dance, dance your dances wild. Poor leaves, then, dance away ! On every highway's hem, Before the wild wind's breath. East, West, South, North, see them All dance the dance of death. Enough of them the blast, That bids, them, never may Discover. Turn more fast, Poor leaves, then, turn away! Yea, every leaf must iall. Oak, alder, beech and lime; And men, sires, children, all Death-destined are by Time. The dreams of this our earth Are doomed to swift decay. Dance in your frenzied mirth, Poor leaves, then, dance away! ETIENNE EGGIS. CANZONET. The moon shines brightly; the soft air swells. Young lovers, come fondle your bonnibelles ! Whenas the storm in heav'n is near, Tranquil the lake becomes and still: Whenas our life is free from ill, 'Tis that the hour of death is here. The moon shines brightly; the soft air swells. Young lovers, come fondle your bonnibelles ! Our sweetest joys have swiftest wing; Filled full of pain is this life of ours; The canker creeps in the fairest flowers And Winter follows the feet of Spring. The moon shines brightly; the soft air swells. Young lovers, come fondle your bonnibelles ! The world is poisoned with falsehood's breath: All false is, even remorse. Heigho! Love but a dream is here below, Whose waking is in the arms of death. The moon shines brightly; the soft air swells. Young lovers, come fondle your bonnibelles ! GEORGES FARCY. DE PROFUNDIS. Ah, who shall be my guide among these shades profound ? Creature of a day, among these worlds that ring me round, That, whilst they, turning, show, in heav'n's coerulean frame. Their splendour and their mi-jht, their nothingness proclaim, My forehead from the dust how shall I dare to raise? Each vaster sky-scape adds amaze to my amaze: In these eternal wastes my vital spirits grow Bedazzled more and more with fatal vertigo. And fail, before the sight sublime, like unto him Who hangs, afar from help, upon th'abyss's brim And stretching out his arms in vain for holding-stead, Rolls, dying, in the waves that close above his head. What am I? What was I, or e'er I first drew breath? A shadow now, belike a nothing after death. What? Nothing afterward? Yet why to terror yield? Take courage, o my soul ! The doom is yet unsealed. Who will the riddle read to me of death and birth ? The oracle's in heav'n, th'enigma here on earth; And the soul, in despair and doubting still involved. Consumes itself in quest and dies, its doubts unsolved. IMBERT GALLOIX. VISIONS OF THE PAST. Then the flowers grewupon the meadows green and wide; In a resplendent sky triumphant shone the sun; Then dreams of Spring and Love my slumbers did o'errun ; The heav'ns were the7i not cold, the waters not updried Then ! But to-day all drear, all frore is and aghast ; All Nature withered shows; the heart is petrified. Where are the visions of the Past? Sun, thou will render us the splendours of the morn ; Stars, ships of heav'n, you yet shall oar again the sky; Harvests of gold, green slopes, blue days of mid-July, Lake of Leman, old Alps, whereunder I was born. Mine ancient treasures, you to see once more I sigh. Shores of my lakes, I then believed in glory yet; In love and faith and hope my trust was firm and fast. Love hath forsworn me now and glory me off-cast; My heart is desolate. O memory, forget The sorry visions of the Past ! PIERRE LEBRUN. TRIOLETS. When to my tomb a thought I spare, My chief regret is for the Hght : The sunshine seems to me so fair, When to my tomb a thought I spare. What? Yonder glorious lamp up there No longer shall rejoice my sight? When to my tomb a thought I spare, My chief regret is for the light. Beyond the marble monument Yet there's a dawn, a dawn etern: The soul thereon is still intent. Beyond the marble monument. God in the starry firmament Suff'reth our senses this discern: Beyond the marble monument Yet there's a dawn, a dawn etern. II. ANTONY DESCHAMPS. LAST WORDS. This many a day between two enemies live I, Whereof one's Madness called, the other Death. My wit This taken hath and that will have my life, 'tis writ: And I, unmurmuring, my destiny aby. Yet, when of all my friends I think of days gone by, View my poor soul and see, at thirty withered, it, And like a summer spate, my youth dried everywhit, I ope my shroud halfway and o'er myself I sigh. "Natheless, he breatheth still," among themselves folk say,/ "And upright as ourselves, on this earth where we stay, "Yet many a winter will outlive us, it may be." Ay, as the polypus the fishes of the sea Or as the shapen stone, immortal on its base, Outliveth those of flesh that pass before its face. ' 1 The unhappy poet's presage was realized; he lived nearl; forty years longer, dying at 69. THEODORE CARLIER. THE DESERT. A waste, whereon the skies no fecund waters fling, Sahara without bound, ocean of sunburned sand, The desert, serpent-like, its coils on either hand Unwinds, when the Simoum smites it with burning wing. There Thirst with hanging tongue goes crawling, languishing ; There the soil burns the feet; nor rocks nor bushes stand For shade there and no sound is heard in all the land. Save the hyaena's voice discordant, echoing. There, bathed in sweat, one errs, seeking the date-palm trees, With their great fans of fronds that cool the burning breeze, And the thin rill, that winds the oasis around. Point vague, invisible, lost on the sky-line dim. So, the heart, filled with cares and sorrows to the brim, So wide is to chagrin that happiness is drowned. FELIX ARVERS. A SECRET. My life its secret hath, my soul its mystery; A love eternal, born and ripened in a thought. The ill is without hope, so must unspoken be; And she who is its cause knows not what she hath wrought. Alas ! I shall have passed by her, unseen, unsought, Still by her side, yet still alone. For grief or gree. My time upon the earth I shall have spent, ah me ! Undaring aught to ask nor having gotten aught. For her, though heav'n hath kind and tender fashioned her, She fareth on her way, distraught, and doth not hear The breath that round her stirs of love on every side : To duty still, austere and pious, true, one day. She, reading these my lines, full of herself, will say, "Who was this woman, then?" and will not understand. THE REARGUARD. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. BENEDICTION. When, by the stern decree of the supernal Might, The poet in this world of weariness appeared, His horror-stricken dam, in blasphemous despite, Her two clenched hands to Heav'n, that pitied her, upreared. "Why brought I not a brood of vipers to the light, "Rather than nourish this derision in my womb? Ah, cursed be the joys ephemeral of the night When I conceived mine own expiatory doom! "Since Thou hast chosen me, among all women, Sire, That I might the disgust of my sad husband be. Why can I not cast back again into the fire. Like an old love-letter, this monster born of me? "I will pour out the hate, with which Thou whelmest me, Upon the accursed tool of Thy despite and thus So sore will I constrain this miserable tree That it shall not put forth its buds pestiferous." Thus cheweth she her cud of hate implacable And understanding not th'Eternal's aims sublime, Prepareth for herself, within the pits of Hell, The fires that consecrate are to maternal crime. 1 2 2 CHARLES BA UD EL AIRE. Natheless, by angels led, unseen of humankind, The disinherited child rejoiceth in the sun; In all whereof he eats ambrosia doth he find And all the streams, whereat he drinks, with nectar run. He communes with the clouds and gambols with the breeze And singing, bears his cross along the fated way: His guardian angel weeps for pity, when he sees Him gamesome as the wind and as the woodlands gay. All those whom he would love upon him look with fear, Or, taking heart of grace by his tranquility, Vie with each other who shall draw from him a tear And make on him the assay of their ferocity. With all that for his mouth's intended, meat and drink, They mingle ashes, dust and impure poison-dews; They with hypocrisy from all he touches shrink And in his steps themselves for having trod excuse. His wife still cries aloud in every public way, "Since fair enough adored to be he findeth me, "The antique idols' part I'll set myself to play "And have myself like them regilded cap-a-pie. "Yea, and my fill I'll take of incense, nard and myrrh, "Of genuflexions low and humble, meat and wine, "So haply in a heart, that is my thurifer, "I, laughing, may usurp the homages Divine. "And when I shall be tired of these unholy sports, "Upon his breast my frail but puissant hand I'll lay "And these my claws, like those which history reports "Of harpies, to his heart shall rend for me a way. CHARLES BA U DEL A IRE. 1 2 3 "As 'twere a trembling bird within the kestrel's clavv, "His smoking heart I'll tear from out his bleeding breast "And to my favourite beast, to stay his hungry maw, "I'll cast it down with scorn upon the earth unblest." Meantime, toward the Thrones and Splendours of the sky The poet pious arms uplifts, serene of mind, The lightnings vast, that play about his spirit high, Hiding from him the sight of frenzied humankind. "Blest be Thou, o my God, that givest suffering "To our impurities for remedy divine, "The purest medicine, the holiest healing thing, "That to divine delights the strong man doth incline ! "Thou for the poet hast, among the blest that hymn "Thy praise, a place reserved in thy celestial bowers "And to th 'eternal feast, I know, hast bidden him "Of Dominations, Thrones, of Virtues and of Powers. "I know that sorrow is the sole nobility "Whereon nor earth nor hell may bite and that to tress "My crown of mystic flowers, o Lord, behoveth Thee "The universes all and ages all impress. "But all the unknown ores and jewels, aforetime "With old Palmyra lost, the orients of the sea, "By Thine own hand enchased, might not to that sublime "Resplendent diadem, indeed, sufficing be; "For it shall fashioned be of pure unsullied light, "Drawn from the sacred fount of those primaeval rays, "Of which our mortal eyes, at their sublimest height, "Are but as mirrors pale, illumined by its blaze." 124 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. THE LITANIES OF SATAN. O thou, of angels all the fairest and most wise, God by the Fates betrayed and banished from the skies, O Satan, pity take on my long misery! O Prince of Exiles, thou to whom they have done wrong, Who, vanquished, risest up still greater and more strong, O Satan, pity take on my long misery ! Thou that know'st all, great lord of subterranean things, Familiar healer thou of human sufferings, O Satan, pity take on my long misery! Thou that to lepers e'en, to Pariahs, without price, Teachest, by means of Love, the taste of Paradise, O Satan, pity take on my long misery! Thou that on darkling Death, thy leman Time-assayed And strong, begattest Hope, that mad and charming maid, O Satan, pity take on my long misery ! Thou that the outlaw lend'st the eyeglance high and free, That damns a people all about the gallows-tree, O Satan, pity take on my long misery ! That knowest in what nook of hard and envious earth The jealous Gods have hid their gems of price and worth, O Satan, pity take on my long misery ! CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 125 Thou whose clear vision knows the arsenals profound Whereas the metals lie, like peoples slumber-bound, O Satan, pity take on my long misery! Thou, whose large hand, outstretched, the precipices hides From the sleepwalker, poised upon the gables' sides, O Satan, pity take on my long misery ! O thou that supplest still, by magic methods meet. The aged drunkard's bones, beneath the horses' feet, O Satan, pity take on my long misery ! Thou, who, frail suffering man to solace in his pine, Saltpetre taughtest us with sulphur to combine, O Satan, pity take on my long misery ! Thou, that upon the brows of Croesus pitiless And vile thy brand, unseen accomplice, dost impress, O Satan, pity take on my long misery! Thou, to the cult of wounds and love of raiment fine That dost the eyes and hearts of womankind incline, O Satan, pity take on my long misery! Staff of the banished folk, lamp of the men of lore, Confessor of the hanged and the conspirator, O Satan, pity take on my long misery! Adoptive sire of those whom, in His angry haste. Forth of His Paradise hath God the Father chased, O Satan, pity take on my long misery ! 1 26 CHARLES BA UDELAIRE. PRAYER. Glory and praise to thee, o Satan, in the heights Of Heaven, where erst thou reign'dst, and in th'abysmal nights Of Hell, where, vanquished, now thou musest silently ! Cause thou my soul repose by thee, beneath the Tree Of Knowledge, on the day when it above thy brows, As o'er a temple new, shall spread its waving boughs! O Satan, pity take on my long misery! MOESTA ET ERRABUNDA. Nay, tell me, Agatha, fleeth thy heart not whiles Far from the ocean black of yonder town obscene, Toward another sea, that in resplendence smiles, Blue, clear, profound and pure as maidenhead of sheen ? Nay, tell me, Agatha, fleeth thy heart not whiles? The sea, the vasty sea, our labours solaces. What demon dow'red the sea, that chantress hoarse, perverse. Which the colossal choir of winds accompanies. To play the part sublime of soother and of nurse ? The sea, the vasty sea, our labours solaces. Carry me, chariot, bear me, frigate, far away, Far hence, whereas the mud is fashioned of our tears ! Is't true that Agatha's sad heart bytimes doth say, "Far from remorse and crime, from sorrows, pains and fears, Carry me, chariot, bear me, frigate, far away!" CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 127 O perfumed Edens all, how far you are removed, Where, 'neath the azure clear, all is but love and joy, Where everything we love is worthy to be loved, Where in delight the heart is steeped without alloy! O perfumed Edens all, how far you are removed! But the green Paradise of infantile delights, Races and kisses, songs and dances, wreaths of flowers, Vibrating violins, behind the wooded heights. And flagons eke of wine anights among the bowers; But the green Paradise of infantile delights, That Eden innocent, so full of furtive joys. Already farther is 'tthan China or than Ind? Might one with plaintive cries recall its simple toys, With silvery voices but revive its day declined, That Eden innocent, so full of furtive joys ! ELEVATION. Above the fields and vales, above the rills and meres, Above the mountain-tops, the woods, the clouds, the seas, Beyond the splendid sun, beyond the boundaries Of the ethereal plains and of the starry spheres, Thou flittest, soul of mine, with pinions frank and free, And like a swimmer skilled, that revels in the main, Thou furrowest joyously th'illimitable inane, With an ineffable and male felicity. Uplift thyself afar o'er these miasmas base ; Go purify thyself in that supernal air And drink, as it a pure celestial liquor were, The fluid fire that fills the limpid plains of Space. 1 2 8 CHARLES BA UD EL A I RE. Forth of the vast chagrins, the sorrow and despite, That this our clouded life o'erburden evermore, Thrice happy those who can, with vigorous pinion, soar Up to the fields serene of pure and limpid light, Whose heaven-aspiring thoughts, lark -like, with unclogged wings, At break of morning take their flight toward the skies, That hover over Life and effortless comprize The language of the flowers and of the silent things! THE VOICE. My cradle was set up against a library, A Babylon of books, where all things, high and low, Greek ashes, Latin dust, law, science, history, Romance, were blent. To me, high as a folio, Two voices spoke; the one, insidious and firm. Said, "Earth's a cake that's full of sweets : I can create (And thine enjoyment then would be without a term) An appetite for thee of equal size and rate." The other voice said, "Come, a-travel go in dreams, Beyond the possible, the known, the common lot." And this one warbled like the wind beside the streams, A wailing phantom, come from whence oneknoweth not, That doth at once caress the hearing and appal. I answered it, "Yes, yes, sweet voice !" It is from then - That dateth what, alas! one my disease may call And my fatality. Beyond the world of men, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 129 Behind Life's stage, within th'abysses of the night, Strange other-worldly worlds distinctly I espy, And victim ecstasied of this my second-sight, Serpents behind me trail, my feet to bite that try. Since then it is that, like the prophets old divine. So tenderly I love the desert and the deep. That I a dulcet taste find in the bitterest wine, That I at funerals laugh and but at banquets weep, That oftentimes I take the facts of life for lies And fall in holes, with eyes on heav'n fixed. But the voice Consoles me, saying, "Keep thy dreams; for none the wise So fair possess as those in which the mad rejoice." SPLEEN. When the low heavy heav'ns weigh like a coffin-lid Upon the groaning soul, in prey to long despite, And the horizon black, the circling clouds amid. Pours on us a black day, yet woefuUer than night; When earth a dungeon dank and dark is grown, where Hope, Like to a prisoned bat, half-mad with doubt and dread. Beating its timid wings against the walls, doth grope And on the rotten beams and ceilings strikes its head; When, spreading o'er the world its nets immense, the rain Its mimic prison-grate across the air doth spin, And in the innermost recesses of our brain A sort of spiders foul their webs to weave begin; Bells all at once leap out in fury near at hand And hurl their fearsome yells against the trembling sky, Like errant exiled souls, without a fatherland. That of a sudden lift their voices up and cry : II. 9 1 30 CHARLES BA UD EL AIRE, And long funereal trains, uncheered by flutes or drums, Slowly athwart my brain defile, whilst Hope, forspent, Sits weeping, and Despair, despotic, ruthless, comes And plants its standard black upon my head down-bent. MUSIC. Music oft like a sea takes me. Before the blast, Toward my planet pale, Under a roof of brume or in an ether vast, Onborne by it, I sail. With lungs to bursting filled and forward-swelling breast, Like canvas on the gale, I climb the surging waves, the tumbling billows' crest, That night from me doth veil. All, that a vessel feels, upon the surges piled, I feel, for woe and bliss; The favouring winds, the storms, with their convulsions wild, Upon the immense abyss Rock me ; and whiles dead calm ; a sea of glass is there, That mirrors my despair. EVENING HARMONIES. Behold, the hour's at hand when, in the sunset-glow. Each flower its soul exhales, as it a censer were. Perfumes and sounds revolve upon the evening air, Slow, melancholy waltz and languorous vertigo ! CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 131 Each flower its soul exhales, as it a censer were; The violin laments, as 'twere a heart in woe. Slow, melancholy waltz and languorous vertigo! Like a great altar-space, the sky is sad and fair. The violin laments, as 'twere a heart in woe, A tender heart that hates nonentity the bare. Like a great altar-space the sky is sad and fair; Drowned in its clotted blood, the dying sun sinks low. A tender heart, that hates nonentity the bare. Gathers all vestiges of the bright long ago; Drowned in its clotted blood, the dying sun sinks low: Thy memory, monstrance-like, within me shineth e'er. MAN AND SEA. Free man, for evermore thou cherish wilt the sea: The sea thy mirror is; thou contemplat'st thy soul In its eternal tide's unending surge and roll; Nor bitt'rer is its gulf than is the thought in thee. Thou dost delight to plunge into its kindred breast, Embracest it with arms and eyes and whiles distraught Thy heart is from the din and clamour of its thought By the waves' wail of wild, untameable unrest. Both of you, you are dim and dark, discreet and deep. Man, none hath ever plumbed thy soul's abysmal gloom; Nor, Sea, may any know the riches of thy womb; Your secrets, both of you, so jealously you keep. And yet, for ages past, whose number none may tell. Without remorse or ruth, each against each you fight, In carnage and in death so greatly you delight, Eternal combatants, brothers implacable ! 132 CHARLES BA UDELAIRE. THE CLOCK. Clock, thou sinister God, affrighting, stern and stark, Whose threatening finger still to us "Remember!" says, "Within thy heart, fulfilled with terror and amaze. The shafts of sorrow soon will thrill, as in a mark. "Brief Pleasure's vaporous shapes will on th'horizon flee, Even as a sylphid flees across the changing stage : Some part of the delights, to each for all his age Accorded by the Fates, each hour devours from thee. "Three thousand times an hour the second that hath been Whispers, 'Remember thee!' And rapid, evermore, NOW, with its insect voice, says, 'I am HERETOFORE And I have sucked thy life with this my trunk obscene.' "Memento ! Souviens-toi ! Remember, prodigal ! (My tongue of metal made all languages doth speak.) The minutes all are gangues, which, mortal wild and weak, With unextracted gold, behoveth not let fall. "Remember thee that Time, voracious gamester, gains, Uncheating, at each cast: it is the Fates' decree. The day still wanes ; the night draws on : remember thee ! Th'abyss is still athirst; each breath the hourglass drains. "Soon, soon, the destined hour will strike, when godlike Fate Or Virtue, the august, thine ever virgin bride. Or else Repentance eke (last inn by the wayside !) When all to thee will say, 'Die, laggard: 'tis too late !' >> CHARLES BA UDELAIRE. 133 SONNETS. I. THE ENEMY. My youth was one long storm of darksomeness and woe, By bright and brilliant suns now traversed and again: So ravaged were its beds by thunder and by rain That but few ripened fruits my garden hath to show. And now, behold, I've reached the autumntide of thought And needs to spade and fork behoveth me betake, The overflooded earth together to re-rake, Whereas the water holes as big as graves hath wrought. Who knows if the new flowers, indeed, of which I dream, Will find, in this scoured soil, like the bed of a stream, The mystic aliment which strength to them shall give? Alas ! Alas ! Time eats this life of ours away ; Yea, and the foes obscure, that on our vitals prey, Upon the blood we lose still lustier wax and live. 2. ANTERIOR LIFE. Long heretofore I dwelt beneath vast porticoes, By the suns maritime with thousand colours dyed. Which, with their pillars tall, majestic, side by side, Like grottoes of basalt, in endless vistas rose. The surges, as they rolled their mirrors of the skies. After a mystical and solemn fashion blent Their far-resounding chant's accords omnipotent With the sunsetting fires reflected in mine eyes. There 'tis that erst I dwelt in peace and pleasance calm. Beneath resplendent skies, mid waters azure-hued. Tended by naked slaves, with fragrant oils imbued. Who still my forehead cooled with fans of fronded palm And whose thoughts were fore'er on the sole care intent To find the secret woe that caused my languishment. 134 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 3. EXOTIC FRAGRANCE. In the warm Autumn eves, what while, beloved one, The fragrance of thy breasts, with both eyes closed, I scent, Bright bays and smiling shores unto my thought present Themselves, dazed with the fires of a monotonous sun. An isle, where Nature kind bestows, without work done. Strange trees and luscious fruits for shade and aliment, An isle of men well-knit, though slender, toil-unbent, And women, whose frank eyes your own seek not to shun. Toward delightsome climes thy scent my fancy hales: In thought a harbour filled I see with masts and sails. That bear th'impress of waves and winds and travel long; What while the luscious scent of the green Tamarind-trees, Which to my nostrils here is wafted by the breeze, Blent in my musing soul is with the sailors' song. 4. SEMPER EADEM. "Whence cometh it to thee, this sadness strange," you said, "Mounting as mounts the tide upon the bare black stone?" Its vintage when the heart hath once accomplished. Life is an ill: to all it is a secret known. A very simple grief, mysterious nowhit, And like your gladness, plain to all folk. Wherefore, cease, My pretty curious maid, to question more of it; Nay, though thy voice is sweet, I prithee hold thy peace. Peace, ignorant one ! Peace, child-lips with laughter rife ! Peace, ever-ravished soul ! For stronglier yet than Life Death ofttimes holdeth us by bonds of subtle braid. Suffer my heart itself intoxicate with lies; As in a lovesome dream, let it in thy fair eyes Plunge deep and slumber long, beneath thy lashes' shade. 5. OBSESSION. Great woods, cathedral-like, my soul with awe ye fill: You like the ocean roar and in our hearts that ache, CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 135 Halls of eternal dole, which old death-rattles thrill, The echoes of your De Profundis answer make. Ocean, I hate thee; all thy tumults and thy bounds In me I find : the laugh of bitter irony Of vanquished man, of sobs full and insulting sounds, I in the laughters hear enormous of the sea. How I should love thee, Night, without thy many a star. Whose light a language speaks too common and too known ! For I, I seek the void, the darkling and the lone. And yet the darknesses themselves but canvas are. Where live, projected still by thousands from mine eyes. Evanished things, that gaze upon familiar wise. 6. THE SUNDOWN OF ROMANTICISM. How goodly is the sun's first frank, resplendent beam, When, with a burst of light, he throws us his "Good day !" And happy he who can with love his setting ray Salute, his setting ray more glorious than a dream ! I mind me to have seen all, field, flower, furrow, stream, Throb like a flutttering heart, beneath the flooding sun. Toward th'horizon, come, 'tis late, quick! let us run. So at the least we may catch some last slanting gleam! But I in vain pursue the God that sinks in death; Th'inevitable Night its realm establisheth, Black, humid, sinister and full of shadows grim. Out of the darknesses a grave-like breath exhales And my shy feet impinge, along the marish-rim. On unexpected toads and cold and slimy snails. 7. THE ABYSS. Pascal had his abyss, that moved with him. For me, Alas, all is abyss, desire, thought, action, dreams. Language; and in my hair, that stands on end, meseems The winds of Fear ofttimes I feel, that pass and flee. Above, below, allwhere, the deeps, the shores, the streams, 136 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. Silence and Space's dread and captivating sea; On my nights' darkness, limned by God's own hand, I see A truceless nightmare grow, with horrent shapes that teems. I go in fear of Sleep, as a great hole it were. All full of horror vague, that leads I know not where ; Through every window nought but th'Infinite I see; And my soul, haunted still that is with vertigo, For nothingness's blank doth ever yearning go. Alas! From Being ne'er and Number to win free! 8. CONTEMPLATION. Compose thyself, my grief, and tranquiller abide. Thou didst for evening call; it falleth; it is there. The dark envelopeth the town on every side. Peace bringing unto some, to others bringing care. Whilst the vile multitude, with Pleasure for a guide, That hangman pitiless, beneath his whip doth fare. In servile feasts to cull repentance heavy-eyed. Give me thy hand, my grief! Come with me, anywhere Apart from them. Behold the dead years, how they lean Forth of heav'n's balconies, in robes of faded sheen ! Smiling Regret from out the waters deep see rise. The dying sun sinks slow behind the arches' piers And like a winding sheet, sweeping the Eastern skies, Hark, dear one, hearken to the dulcet night that nears. 9. lovers' death. We will have beds fulfilled of odours light And couches deep and easeful as the tomb. And on the stands strange flowers, 'neath heav'ns more bright In warmer lands that broke for us to bloom. Their last-left ardours using for the flight. Our hearts two vast twin torches in the gloom Shall be, that still shall with their double light CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, 137 Our dual souls, like mirrors twin, illume. Some evening, all of mystic rose and blue, One long last look will we exchange, we two, Like a long sob, all charged with long farewells; And later on, an angel, opening The doors, the light back, with his glad true spells. Shall to the dead flames and dimmed mirrors bring. 10. MORS PAUPERUM. 'Tis Death, alack ! consoles and is of Life the cause. 'Tis living's aim: it is its hope alone in sight That us intoxicates, elixir-like, and draws Us on and gives us heart to trudge it till the night. Athwart the storm, the snow, the hail, it is the pause Of peace, the ray that gilds our sky-line black \vith light; It is the inn of hope, ^vritten in the Book of Laws, Where one may sit and eat and sleep without affright. A very angel 'tis, whose hand magnetic teems With slumber and the boon of sweet ecstatic dreams, Who makes anew the bed of those who're poor and lone. The glory of the Gods, the poor man's purse in hand, His mystic granary, his ancient fatherland. It is, the open porch upon the heav'ns unknown. II. day's end. Beneath a wan and squalid light. Lewd, strident Life, without avail. Cries, dances, sings, runs left and right. Thus, when upon the sky-line pale The dim voluptuous Night mounts high, That all, e'en hunger's self, allays, And all, e'en shame, can nullify, "At last, at last!" the poet says. "My spirit, weary of the day. 138 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. Even as my limbs, doth rest invite. Heart all with dreams funereal dight, Upon my back myself I'll lay And lap me in your mande gray, O dim refreshing shades of night !" THE VOYAGE. I. For children, who in maps and pictures take delight, With their vast appetites the world is of a size : Ah, how the universe is great in the lamp-light! And ah, how little is the world in memory's eyes! One morning we set out, brain all a-fire with hope. Heart full of long desire and bitterest unease. And journey, following on the rhythmic surges' slope, Cradling our infinite upon the finite seas; Some, glad their native land's hate-desecrated skies To flee and other some their mean environment; And some, astrologers, drowned in a woman's eyes, A tyrant Circe, armed with many a parlous scent, Not unto beasts transformed to be, with light and space And flaming skies themselves would fain intoxicate: The ice that nips the skin, the sun that tans the face, The scars of kisses bit by bit obliterate. But some there are that for departure's sake depart: These the true travellers are, that never swerve nor stray From their fatality, balloon-like light of heart. But still, unknowing why, "Let us be going!" say; CHARLES BA UD EL AIRE. 1 39 These, whose desires are vast and vagrant as the cloud, Who dream, within their hearts, as conscripts dream of fame, Of pleasures changeful, vast, unknown unto the crowd, Whereof the human wit hath never known the name. II. We imitate, ah woe is me! the cup and ball In bounding and in dance; nay, even in our sleep, By curiosity tormented are we all, A cruel angel like, that herdeth suns for sheep. Strange fortune, where the goal goes shifting day by day, And being in no place, may be no matter where, Where Man, in whose heart hope may never die away, To find repose, still, like a madman, runs fore'er ! Our soul a vessel is that its Icaria seeks. A voice upon the deck "Look out !" cries. From the cock Another voice, with fire fulfilled and madness, shrieks, "Love! Glory! Happiness!" — O Hell, it is a rock! Each islet in the haze signalled by the look-out An Eldorado is by Destiny behight; Imagination's dream and Fancy's revel-rout A reef and nothing more find in the morning-light. Ah hapless worshipper of the chimeric lands ! Must one in irons clap or cast him in the sea. This drunken sailor-wight, that dreams of golden sands, Whose frenzied mirage makes the gulf yet bitterer be? So, the old tramp, that plods in mud up to his knees, Nose in the air, of heav'ns and paradises dreams; His thought-enchanted eye a golden Capua sees In every garret-hole, wherein a rushlight gleams. I40 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. III. Amazing wayfarers, what noble histories We read in your eyes deep as oceans ! Ere they fade, Show us the gem-cases of your rich treasuries, Those jewels marvellous, of stars and ethers made. Fain would we voyaging go, without steam or sail. Cause then, — our weary souls to cheer, with prison tamed, ■ Across our minds attent, like canvas, pass the tale Of your remembrances, with far horizons framed. Tell us what you have seen !" IV. "We've looked on skies and stars And surges; yea, to boot, rock, reef we've seen and sand; And many an unforeseen disaster, shocks and jars, Despite, we've often been aweary, as on land. The flooding sun upon the sea of violet, The glory of the towns beneath the setting's flame, Enkindled in our hearts an ardour, all a-fret To plunge into the heav'ns from which such splendours came. The vastest, richest scapes, the cities most of might, For us have never held the charm mysterious Of those which hazard whiles doth shape of clouds and light, And yearning evermore careworn hath rendered us. Enjoyment addeth still new puissance to desire, Desire, old tree to which pleasures manure supply; What while its bark grows thick and hard, its boughs aspire And seek unceasingly to see the sun more nigh. CHARLES BA UDELA IRE. 1 4 1 Wilt thou still wax, vast tree, that dost for life outvie The cypress? — Yet, with care, aweary as we are, Some sketches have we culled for your voracious eye, Brothers, who find all fair that cometh from afar. Gods have we seen, with trunks like elephants beseen, And constellated thrones, with jewels bright a-gleam, And fretwork palaces, whose fairy pomp and sheen Would for your bankers be a vain and hopeless dream; Costumes, which him who sees intoxicate like wine, Women, whose teeth and nails are dyed with crimson stains. And jugglers skilled, about whose bodies serpents twine." "And what more? And what more?" VI. "O childish scatterbrains ! Not of the thing supreme and capital to fail, We've seen, unsought of us, wherever we might win. From bottom unto top of Fate's foreordered scale, The sorry spectacle of ever-during sin ; Woman, proud, stupid slave, without disgust or smile, Loving and worshipping alone herself impure; Man, greedy tyrant, hard, voracious, lustful, vile. The slave of his own slave and sewer in the sewer ; Butchers that life enjoy, martyrs that sob and sigh And festivals, with blood that spiced and scented are. Despots, that poisoned by power's venom, droop and die, Folk amorous of the scourge, that doth their manhood mar ; 142 CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. Religions many an one, all, like unto our own, Scaling the heav'ns with prayer; recluses pale and meek, That, as voluptuaries on feather beds lie prone, A pleasure of their own in nails and haircloth seek; Prating Humanity, drunk with its genius, As frenzied evermore to-day as it was erst, Crying, in its wild rage and anguish furious. To God, "O master mine, my like, be Thou accurst!" Frank lovers (least unwise) of senselessness, that flee The great herd, parked of Fate a common fold within, And shelter from Life's woes in Opium's shoreless sea; — Such of the world-all is th'eternal bulletin." VII. O bitter wisdom, this which one from travel gets ! The world, monotonous, small, before us constantly, To-day, to-morrow, still our proper image sets. Oasis of horror in a desert of ennui ! Go must we or remain? An if thou mayst, remain: Go if thou must. One runs; another in the nest Crouches, the watchful foe to cheat, the common bane Of mankind, Time. There are runners that never rest, Like to the Wandering Jew and the apostles old. Whom nothing may suffice the Retiary dread. Railway or ship, to flee; whilst, luckier or more bold. Others can slaughter Time, unrising up from bed. When at the last he sets his foot upon our necks, We yet can hope and cry, "On! On!" with eager throat, As when we started erst for China, on the deck Standing with roving eyes and hair to breeze afloat. CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. 143 Upon the Shadow-Sea shall we embark, as glad At heart as boys that hold the unknown things for sweet. Those voices hear ye not, so charming and so sad. That "Hither! Hither!" sing? "O ye that fain would eat The fragrant Lotos! Here it is they cultivate The fruits miraculous for which you hunger sore. Come, with the sweetness strange yourselves intoxicate Of this our afternoon, that endeth nevermore !" At the familiar tones the spectre we divine. Yonder their arms to us, see, our Pylades hold ! "Tow'rd thine Electra swim and that hot heart of thine Refresh!" We hear her voice whose knees we kissed of yore. VIII. Old Captain Death, 'tis time. The anchor come let's weigh ! We're weary of this land : let us make sail forthright ! Though sky and sea as black as ink be, full of day Our hearts, thou knowest, are and radiant with light. Pour on our suffering souls thy soothing poison-spell ! Plunge would we, such a fire burns in our heart and mind, Into the nether gulf, — what matters Heaven or Hell? — In the Unknown's abyss somewhat of new to find. THEODORE DE BANVILLE. 11. 10 THEODORE DE BANVILLE. ROUVIERE. 1 Rouviere ! ^ He was of those whom Art for victims seeks ; He was of those one sees into the night descend, Whereas with words subUme th 'ecstatic poet speaks, Words that their sobs and sounds still with the whirlwind blend. Those artists, nay, those kings, those lawless strivers, who, Themselves unto the storm yielding, its kisses seek. Who scale the steeps, where but before the eagles flew. Come back one day therefrom, pale, broken, mute and weak. They come back, mute with awe and terror ; and the world Indifferent, alas! that nothing doth divine, Seeing the beads of sweat, wherewith their brows are pearled, "What aileth him to day, this mummer" saith "of mine? Can't be he suffereth from these chimseras vain?" Good public, tender whiles and mocking whiles that art. What ails him is, he feels the frost usurp his brain, For that he all the blood has given thee of his heart. Yes, strange to say, there are some actors, who succumb. The puppets of their love and passion, unto death Strained by the Drama's claws, who totter, overcome. Scourged by the burning blast of Inspiration's breath. 1 Philibert Rouviere (1809 — 1865), the great Romantic actor. 2 Dissyllable. 148 THEODORE BE BANVILLE. We've known of such; we've seen Dorval's * dishevelled hair, Frederic Lemaitre, ^ the tears outpouring of Ruy Bias, Seen Malibran, ^ the lyre in hand of her despair, Seen Rachel, * dying, pale, and him, Rouviere, alas ! Since no audacity unpunished goes, in fine. He too, must dree the weird of his foreordered fate, Himself for, at the feast of Genius, with that wine Of fire, th'Ideal named, he did intoxicate. 'Twas Shakspeare bore him off into the haunted wood, To which his puissant wit a folk of dreams doth lend ; And he, by that august Prometheus soul-subdued. Came back to us, a prey to visions without end. Hamlet, poor, wavering heart, Ophelia's sombre knight, Whose doubt-distracted soul the dead her blossom in Bore off with her into her gentle madness' night. There's none that meddle can, unscathed, with thy chagrin. The words thy lips pronounce for ours are o'erdivine; To joy forever lost, brows knit and eyes distraught. Is he who once hath known those fevered woes of thine. And lifelong are the wounds that in his soul they wrought. How Rouviere loved this vast, this mighty tragedy, Whereof one dies ! It was, indeed, a noble sight, Whenas the simple folk, that loved the man, might see Him wrestle with the God, that overbrimmed his spright. ' Marie Dorval, the greatest of Romantic actresses. 2 The greatest of modern actors. ' Maria Malibran, the well-known singer. * Rachel Felix, the celebrated tragedienne. THEODORE DE BANVILLE. 149 Them, too, these common folk, he loved, whom it doth irk To drink the trumped-up wine, wherewith we ply them, we ; And haling on the stage the stubborn master-work, "Here," unto them he said, "is Shakspeare ! Share with me." O cruel strifes, where man by dreams is overborne, Dire contests with the high ancestral lords of Art, Where th'artist, in the end, with ceaseless stress outworn. Succumbs, fall'n ill and poor, alone and sick at heart! Yet let my ode, at least, o miserable age! Blessings on th'artist high, magnanimous, outwarred, And on his sister sweet invoke and let my page Upon the roll of praise their nobleness record ! Blest be they! Blest be those that live rejected by The hateful vulgar's base and imbecile opine. Who think and with their lips and voices glorify The races of the Gods and of the bards divine ! Blest, over all, be they, that from the world exiled They lived, austere and poor and naked, at their lot Unmurmuring, walled about with peace profound and mild. Full for the age of love that saw and knew them not ! For, if the accustomed ways their feet have left untrod And if the beaten roads their footsteps must ignore, Traces of light each leaves behind him, like a God, And their names are of those which perish nevermore. And in the Eternal Aye, which keeps its festal days For them, injustice, tears and poverty, affronts And hate shall gems become and form with spotless rays The crowns of living light that glitter on their fronts. 15© THEODORE BE BANVILLE. GOOD DAY, MONSIEUR COURBET ! i When, in October last, afield I chanced to stray, I'd have you judge th'efifect the country had on me. Like an old negress, with her waistcloth girt, that day, Nature, the truth to tell, was horrible to see. In vain the myrtle flowered, the jacinth and the rose; For, shouldering in the sky the shrunken stars away. Old Grassot's ^ twisted phiz and Hyacinthe's ^ great nose Stood out on every side against the cloud-rack grey. Like monstrous fabled beasts of old, the caverns gaped ; Ay, and the willows showed such gibbous spinal bones, Such paunches and such wens, fantastically shaped. That I mistook them all for worn-out baritones. The blossoms in the meads, hope of the herbalist, (For but to buy and sell this faithless age is fain) Like pictures by a too, too zealous colourist. Crude hues, like sealing-wax or wafers else, had ta'en. And like a landscape made and planted for a Kurd, The elms in Tartar caps flaunted on every lawn; The tunes the brooklets sang were patently absurd And one would say the rocks by Nadar ^ had been drawn. Grief-stricken at this sight, I cried: "O Cybele, Thou that for our behoof producest corn and wine. Thou that I yesterday so strong and fair did see. Who on this fashion hath awried thee. Nurse divine?" 1 Gustave Courbet, the vvellknown Realistic painter. 2 Well-known low comedians of the day. 3 Felix (Tournachon) "Nadar," the wellknown caricaturist and photographer. THEOD ORE BE BANVILLE. 1 5 1 "And thou, o puissant Night, the floods that dost refresh, Daybreaks, clear rays, pure stars, whose course of old," I said, "Did vivify her heart and fertilize her flesh, Planets and moon and sun, o hasten to my aid!" The Goddess, hearing me aloud for succour cry. Was touched and on this wise did, answ'ring, to me say, "If, friend, thou me thus sad and ugly dost espy, "'Tis Monsieur Courbet's fault, who hath just passed this way." Withal the leafage dark, arched like a tiger's tail. The grass, the boughs, which fruit big-bellied down did weigh, "Good day. Monsieur Courbet !" sang out. "Arch-painter, hail ! "Hail, Monsieur Courbet, hail! Monsieur Courbet, good day !" And the squat willow-trees, more solemn and more glum Than ever was the staff of Buloz's Review, * With burgrave-gestures sang in chorus, all and some, "Good day. Monsieur Courbet ! Good day ! How do you do !" A voice all full of pride and joy and ravishment, That startled up the stag from out his native dell, Responded from afar and with the breezes blent, "Good day to you again! Yes, thanks; I'm pretty well." On hearing this, I turned in haste and was in time This group to see, outlined against the sky-line pale. Monsieur Courbet in act the diligence to climb. With pointed beard, that seemed the frighted heav'ns to scale. • The well-known "Revue des Deux Mondes," as proverbial for "gravity" as our "Nineteenth Century." 152 THEODORE DE BANVILLE. THE POVERTY OF ROTHSCHILD. The other day, in vain awaiting the receipt Of cash for that and this, I could not choose but weep for thinking in the street Of how poor Rothschild is. Without a rap I was, propped up against a post, Like any beggar base; And yet, above all else, that which concerned me most Was Rothschild's sorry case. Time (said I) money is; then I'm a wealthy man. Since, whensoe'er I choose. After the Lesbian mode at leisure sing I can, Not read the Daily News; Can, like a hatched-out egg, lie basking in the sun, Strew salt on sparrows' tails. Tell myself that Duvert, Legouve, Ponsard, ' — one And all, — are no Corneilles; Nay, verses I can make for all posterity And without care or stress, For three days running kiss, if so it pleases me, The front of idleness. But blind and deaf, alack! to all he, Rothschild, is; No ash he makes, ^ heigho ! But works without surcease and nothing sees but his Mahogany bureau. 1 Well-known dramatists of the "Ecole du Bon Sens. 2 i. e. has no leisure to smoke. THEODORE DE BANVILLE. 153 When, in the East, Day's steeds of flame, at morning-break, The blushing heav'ns o'erfloat And I, with laughing lips and full of ditties, wake, He dons his office-coat. While, taking lute or fife, I follow Fancy's flight. Where'er the baggage gads, He, convict of the desk, divorced from all delight. Figure to figure adds. Each day he reckons up that fabulous amount Of his, his milliards twain ; And if the wretched man but farthings two miscount. He must begin again. O Monselet, ' whilst thou, outbraving Death's dismays. At Bignon's ^ stuff 'st thyself, "Monsieur le Baron, time it is," his cashier says, "To figure out your pelf." O how poor Rothschild is! He never has the meads Seen, where the sun shines bright. The true rich man for me the poet is, who needs But sun and air and light. Muse, how poor Rothschild is! The man you'll never find In woodlands all aglow With summer. This is why I often have a mind An alms to him to throw. 1 Charles Monselet, the well-known author of Les Treteaux^ Theatre du Figaro and other light-hearted books. 2 The well-known Parisian restaurant and supper-place. 154 THEODORE DE BANVILLE, MONSELET IN AUTUMN-TIME. PANTOUM. ^ The autumn's fair. Bookshops, adieu ! The small bird carols by hedge and ditch. Monselet says to the scribbling crew, "Which are you, gold or pinchbeck, which?"* The small bird carols by hedge and ditch; The soft sky kindles o'er copse and fen. "Which are you, gold or pinchbeck, which? "Answer me, soldiers of the pen !" The soft sky kindles o'er copse and fen; Come, to the woods, my fair, let's go. "Answer me, soldiers of the pen ! "But don't speak all together, though." Come, to the woods, my fair, let's go, Where the breeze sighs the ways about. "But don't speak all together, though. "Which of you's Shakspeare? Come, speak out." Where the breeze sighs the ways about. There for the wounded heart 'tis well. "Which of you's Shakspeare? Come, speak out. "Which of you's Balzac? Frankly tell." There for the wounded heart 'tis well: There to be loved on the moss I sigh. "Which of you's Balzac? Frankly tell." "Balzac?" each answers. "That am I. )) ' Song in the Malay manner. 2 In allusion to the review of contemporary men of letters published by M. Monselet in 1857, under the title ol La Lorgnette Littcraire. THEODORE DE BANVILLE. 155 There to be loved on the moss I sigh, Of the sole stars above watched o'er. "Balzac?" each answers. "That am I." Monselet laughs till his sides are sore. Of the sole stars above watched o'er, Burning kisses devour me still! Monselet laughs till his sides are sore. Good biographer, laugh thy fill! Burning kisses devour me still ! Alack, content is little long. Good biographer, laugh thy fill! Mute for ever is Mirecourt's ' song. Alack, content is little long. Oh wishes frail and fleet as dew! Mute for ever is Mirecourt's song. The Autumn's fair. — Bookshops, adieu ! THE NIGHTINGALE. See, on the violet-tops, Pearls of the summer eves, Glitter the dew's first drops: Hark, in the thickset leaves. Yet with her flight a-swale, Carols the nightingale. ' Alluding to the (then) recent death of Eugene Jacquot (self- styled de Mirecourt), a fifth-class journalist and hack-writer, who is now remembered only by his infamous and scurrilous attacks upon Alexandre Dumas and other great writers of the Romantic period, in which he out-Heroded that rancorous old Jacobin and "Perruque", Querard. 156 THEODORE DE BANVILLE. The moon rides high and free; The sea, afar that throbs, The mild melodious sea. Heaves long and lingering sobs Of passion and affright, As I do in thy sight. As thou art, half-arrayed, Bide at the window-sill. My tender, artless maid. Dost thou remember still What thou to me didst say In Paradise one day? Nay. speak not ! At thy knee Thus seated, let me view Thy lips that sigh for me, Thy black-browed eyes of blue. 'Twas yesterday. Thy hair Fain would I loose, my fair. O fleece, o glad array Of tresses, that I love ! Thou art not faithless! Nay, My golden-plumaged dove, My angel found again, 'Twas but a dream insane. TO THE NEW GENERATION. You all, in whom a dawn, a daybreak new I hail. You all who will love me. Youths of the times to come, yet in the Future pale, Battalions sacred ye ! THEODORE BE BANVILLE. 157 And you, o poets, full of tenderness as I, My rhymes who shall re-read, Whilst with your youthful loves among the trees you lie Or on the blossomed mead! Yea, you shall read them, youths with gracious golden hair And hearts fulfilled with wine Of rapture, when, amid the flowering roses, there Shall sleep this heart of mine. But I, with purple clad, in joy that never palls. For ever shall abide And nectar quaff within the poets' banquet-halls, With Ronsard by my side. There, where all things and shapes with radiance divine, Waves, lights, tones, blended are, Our eyes shall ravished be with phantoms feminine. Than bodies fairer far. And both, in th'intervals of that enchanted spell, That never shall abate, Our lyric battles past shall each to other tell And our fair loves relate. But you, meanwhile, my sons, for rhyming set aside And th' Ode's triumphant swell. You shall drink joy and hope at that ambrosial tide, Which from our hearts did well. Even as, to-day, a-dream, I ask and ask in vain. By some well-spring supine, The secrets of the loves of Marie and Helene * From my master divine, 1 Unknown or imaginary ladies, to whom Ronsard addressed his "Amours." 158 THEODORE DE BANVILLE. Aurelia's graces eke unto the roses pale, The myosotis blue, To Cytherea's doves and to the nightingale. You shall relate anew. Asking my verse who was the beauty of old times. Whose rosy smile, elate With loveliness and light adorable, my rhymes In flower did celebrate; And they herself, these rhymes, whose tune the hautboys' air Envies, — to you shall show, Radiant with light as is a vermeil morning fair, Roses at once and snow, And such, a haughty fair young maid, as now is she, With deep delightsome eyes. That ravished have for love the emerald from the sea, The sapphire from the skies. To look upon her grace, with His almighty hand, God's self, one might believe. Had fashioned her anew, in a new world to stand, A new black-eyebrowed Eve. For she, an angel proud, with mystery beseen. Smiling, herself doth hold With the sole majesty of a victorious queen, Cuirassed with glittering gold; And like unto the Muse, that time forbears and leaves Soilless, without affront. She well might on like wise a crownal wear of sheaves Of stars upon her front. THEODORE DE BANVILLE. 159 On that her smiling front, smooth as the ivory-white Of lilies virgin-fair, Which with their heavy rings encircle, as with light, Her waving clouds of hair. Upon her cheek there shows a mole of ambergris, Mid the thin down enisled. And eke her amorous mouth, for all its redness, is That of a little child. Under the eyebrows' shade, their sable arch within, Like suns in heav'n above, Two great and glorious eyes are open wide, as in To drink whole seas of love. Child-head and Goddess-shape, that each with other blend. Harmonious and fair. To her the youth serene and sempiternal lend. That Gods with children share. In the days when the Gods of Hellas in live sheen Yet over-flowered the lands. Proud Cytherea had my lady's servant been. For kissing of her hands. 'tp Yea, on the blossomed grass kneeling, with tearful eyes. The Goddess sad, in turn, Had with her own hands laced upon her pearly thighs The silver-wrought cothurn. So shall you see her, midst the frenzy of desires Of your hearts drunk with bliss. And know that her soft speech the sweetness had of lyres And of the first love-kiss, i6o THEODORE DE BANVILLE, Lovers of days to be ! And Laura's dulcet name, Renowned in ancient lore, And fair Elvira's ' eyes, the poet doth acclaim, Shall trouble you no more: And you shall cause some proud young poet presently, My rival and my son, Sing women who shall but imperfect copies be Of this ideal one. THE DAWN OF ROMANTICISM. O Eighteen-Thirty, * dawn That dazzles, though bygone. Mine eyes yet, smiling sign Of full day-shine, Dawn, where the full sun smiles, A bright dream brings me whiles Again the golden gleam Of thy first beam. Yea, with thy blue and rose Once more our dull sky glows; Thou shinest and the night Takes, sudden, flight. Nymph Poesy the fair, With her ambrosial hair And subtle spell, comes back From exile black. • Elvira^ the name of Lamartine's (imaginary ?) lady-love. 2 A. D. 1830, the typical epoch of the Romantic period, renowned {inter multa alia) for the production of Berlioz's "Symphonie Fantastique," the unsurpassed prototype of Romantic music. THEODORE DE BANVILLE. i6i The Ode rings out, new-born; The Sonnet lifts its horn; Its web the Drama rears Of smiles and tears. Here Shakspeare's thunders rise And yonder Petrarch sighs; Boon fellow Horace sings Of workday things. Right Ronsard hath his part And one again the art Findeth of good old Baif, * Shrinking and naif. Back from the nether glooms, Rejoicing, Rabelais comes, His talisman to impose Upon our prose. Yea, and the amorous heat. With which our bosoms beat, Forbiddeth e'en the Press From prosiness. Whilst architecture great, The pure prayer incarnate In wood and stone, its eye Lifts to the sky; And Sculpture, for its part, Saints models, high of heart, Like unto lilies, dight With virtues white. ' Jean Antoine de Baif, the well-known poet of the Pleiade. II II i62 THEODORE DE BANVILLE. And Music, by the gate Of Song th'inviolate, Our souls on high doth bear To heaven's air. O conflict high, sublime, Of Rhythm and of Rhyme ! Renascence triumphing ! Ideal Spring ! * ***** * * * * * * * * * But whither doth my dream Transport me on its stream? Dead, dead's the time when we Such lights did see! Where are the poets all, That decked our banquet-hall? Where are those ne'er-grow-olds, Those heart-o'-golds. Apostles, soldiers? Dumb In death are some and some, Already age-opprest, Desire but rest. Their history august Is but a tale adust. That by the hearth anights The grandsire cites. 1 I omit nineteen stanzas, reciting the names of the principal authors and artists of the period. THEODORE DE BANVILLE. 163 Hamlet, by all forsworn, In Elsinore forlorn, Doth lone and crownless fare. Adieu fore'er The high Romantic age ! But of its glorious page No word unprized let go, Asselineau ! ^ Like ancient Homer, all The muster-roll o'ercall Of kings and men of fame ; The vessels name; Tell us again the war; The books of heretofore, Made after Renduel's ^ rite, To us recite. Come, let them all defile, Even to the Bibliophile ; ^ Be page and padding, e'en To Borel, * seen. For thou so know'st their tale. Remembrance might not fail Nor fall away from thee For Lassailly. ^ ' Charles Asselineau, the well-known author of "Melanges tires d'une Petite Bibliotheque Romantique," to which Banville's Ode served as Prelude, the Epilogue being Baudelaire's Sonnet, "Le Coucher du Soleil Romantique," see ante, p. 135. 2 Eugene Renduel, the celebrated publisher. 3 Paul Lacroix, known as Le Bibliophile Jacvb. * Petrus Borel, see ante, p. 52. ' Charles Lassailly, Balzac's Secretary and author of the fantastic novel, "Les Roueries de Trialph." 1 64 THEODORE BE BANVILLE. Do thou then, whom I name The herald, the fair fame That for the universe Repair'st of verse, Us Eighteen-thirty tell, Date unforgettable. The ardours and the strife, The splendours rife Of that Apocalypse, Which now unto eclipse Theresa's ^ puissant rheum Alack! doth doom. To this our frenzied age. That after gold doth rage, "Gloria" to cry "victis!" Full fair it is. The castles, overgrown With ivy, stone by stone. Crumble away; but ne'er Hath aught whate'er Tamed the fanaticism Of our Romanticism, That Rhenish Titan old, With heart of gold. * Theresa, the well-known music-hall "gueuleuse." LECONTE DE LISLE. LECONTE DE LISLE. HYPATIA. In the wane of the mights that did the old world sway, Whenas the cults divine, beneath the centuries bowed. Taking oblivion's sad and solitary way. Beheld the thunderstroke crumble their altars proud; When the dead leaves, that heaped the desert porches round. The path that led whilere to Hellas' oak effaced, And when, beyond the seas, where the deep shades abound. Toward a younger sun the human soul did haste; The fortunes of its gods, though vanquished, following still, A noble heart relights their sunken altar-fires; The dawn of the new days is harm for it and ill; The star, on heaven's marge, it follows of its sires. Let other ages born be for a better doom And so without remorse forsake a world forsped! True to the happy dream, wherein its youth did bloom, It hearkens stir again the ashes of the dead. The heroes, sages, all, rise full of life and strong; Their fair names, as of old, the poet-choirs repeat; The old Olympian gods, evoked by sacred song, In the white Parthenons sit on the ivory seat. 1 68 LECONTE DE LISLE. virgin, with the skirt that of thy pious dress Coveredst the tombs august, wherein thy dead gods lie, Of their eclipsed cult harmonious priestess, Chastest and latest ray dissevered from their sky ! 1 love and hail thee, I, virgin magnanimous. That, when the tempest broke thy father-world above, In exile foUowedst on that glorious (Edipus And compass'dst him about with an eternal love. Pale standing underneath the sacred porticoes. Forsaken by the stream of worshippers ingrate, Thou feltest. Pythoness, chained to the tripod's throes, ThTmmortal ones betrayed in thy breast palpitate. Thou saw'st them pass on high, throned on the clouds of fire ; With knowledge and with love they fed thee as of old; And the world hearkened still, charmed with thy dreaming lyre, The Attic bees that sang between thy lips of gold. Like a young lotus grown beneath the sages' eye, Flower of their eloquence and of their equity. In the less sombre night of ages long gone by, Thou through thy beauty mad'st thy genius shine in thee. The teachings grave and mild of the eternal things Deep in the charmed hearts from thy young lips were shed ; Yea, and the Nazarenes, that dreamed for thee of wings. For thy beloved Gods forsook their own God dead. But the age snatched these souls inconstant from thy hands, These whom too frail a bond enchained unto thy lot; Thou sawest them depart toward the promised lands; But thou, that knewest all, thou followedst them not. LECONTE DE LISLE, 169 What mattered unto thee their madness, holy maid? Hadst thou not in thy hand th'ideal that they sought? Nay, in these troubled hearts thou readest, undismayed. And the benignant Gods had hidden from thee nought. O youngling sage, so pure, thy mortal peers among, O brows unstained, midst all that serve on sacred wise, What sweeter soul on lips more fair hath ever sung Or burned more limpidly in more inspired eyes? No stain hath ever soiled thy robe immaculate; Thy hands escaped the soils wherewith the age was rife ; Unknowing of the crimes and ills of human fate, Thou faredst, eyes upturned toward the starry life. Men in their madness smote and cursed thee. None the less, The greater didst thou fall; and now thou art at peace, Alas! for Plato's breath and Venus' loveliness Departed have with thee for the bright skies of Greece. In our profoundest soul, pale victim, sleep serene! White-shrouded, lotus-crowned, sleep with thy virgin smile ! Sleep ! Ugliness impure of this our world is queen And men forgotten have the way of Paros isle. The Gods are in the dust and heaven and earth are dead ; Nothing will speak again in thy deserted sky. Sleep! To the poet's heart, but in him living, come. Sing the melodious hymn of holy Beauty high. She, she alone survives, immutable, etern; Death may the trembling worlds disperse; but Beauty sweet Still blossometh: all things to life in her return And the worlds roll fore'er beneath her silver feet. I70 LECONTE DE LISLE. ANTIPHON. HAEC. ' Athenian goddess, in transparent robes arrayed, Thy folk 'twas, Hellas white, that fashioned me erewhen : Unto my kiss profane the Gods themselves I bade; With an immortal love I fired the hearts of men. ILLA. * I, in my long strait gown, veiled humble virgin, see, Come from the mystic East, with folded arms, cross-wise : I flowered on thy sands, o Lake of Galilee ! Born was I of the tears that welled from a God's eyes. HAEC. Wreathed are my rapturous brows with laughters all-divine; A radiant trouble sheds, from out mine eyes, its sheen; Thy honey. Pleasure, breathes upon these lips of mine And thy flame gilded hath with fire my shape serene. ILLA. The pious pensiveness, wherein my life is spent. Upon the wounded hearts a balm of shadow lays : When tow'rd the Bridegroom flies the soul in ravishment, 1 lighten for the heav'ns the burden of past days. HAEC. My tunic never yet hath known constraining string And forth my free breasts stand like Parian treasures sweet; Still Cypris' praise upon th'Ionic mode I sing, Lotus and hyacinth trampling with ivory feet. • Haec^ Profane Love, the Pagan spirit. 2 ///«, Sacred Love, the Christian spirit. LECONTE DE LISLE. 171 ILLA. Happy who warms him at my pious heat! Indeed, Happy who hath at this my sacred altar knelt! The heav'ns are as a book where every man may read, Provided only he have wept and love have felt. HAEC. Eros of the keen shafts, with an assured aim, Even in my cradle, shot and wounded me in play; And ever since Desire, that arrow barbed with flame, In my tempestuous heart sparkles and quivers aye. ILLA. The lily of the hills, the rose of Sharon's shrine. Of this my pallid front have never been the dower; But I the stem of gold have and the scent divine. Ay, and the mystic sheen of the eternal flower. HAEC. Fairer than Artemis, among th'Ortygian trees. Casting the buskin, come undone with dancing, by. Upon the flowering slopes of holy Phrygia's leas, I've drunk the sacred wines and "lol" carolled high. ILLA. A Spirit luminous hath hailed and crowned me queen; Pale as the lily, flowered in shelter from the sun, I perfume every heart; and virgin maids serene Veil themselves in my shade and sleep, when day is done. HAEC. In sacred Attica, where pleasure laughs nnd grace. Upon the sounding shores of the Ionian main. Thy fecund glittering flower, upon my flying trace, O Beauty, have I seen bloom out and blossom free. 172 LECONTE DE LISLE. ILLA. The soul its wings had closed; the wise must hesitate; Man unto heaven a sad and sombre farewell said; But I eternal hope in him caused germinate And to the presence of its God the world I led. HAEC. O honeyed cup, whereat the whole earth drank whilere, O pleasure, happy world full of immortal song, Thy daughter well-belov'd, lone wandering here and there, Over her altars sees oblivion's grasses throng. ILLA. Love, Love immaculate, imperishable light ! Man shuts his heart ; the world is orphaned. Flame divine, Wilt thou not rise again upon his spirit's night. Dawn of the only day that knoweth no decline? A LATIN SPRING. No snow more in the fields; upon the blossoming Wet grass the dancing nymphs their naked charms display ; But death is near at hand and with its passing wing, The hour bears off the dear-loved day. A fresh breeze dulcifies the sharp air; on the grass The summer burns; and here, with glowing fruitage fraught. Is Autumn purple-browed; then Winter. All things pass To live again, nor changed is aught. All lives anew, repaired, and flowers ; but, when needs must Thou sleep th 'eternal sleep, o proud patrician one. Thy virtues all, gone down into the general dust, Will not restore to thee the sun. LECONTE DE LISLE. 173 THE NAIAD. A running water gleams within the forest dumb, Far from the ardours of the day; Reeds bend and jacinths flower thereby, and in the May, The ckistering violets there come. Neither the herds, unto the sacred flutes that sing. Nor yet the goats, on the hill-top The bitter cytisus along the slopes that crop, Have ever troubled the clear spring. Peace on the lovesome spot by the black oaks is sprent, Beloved of the faithful bees ; The turtle-doves, that nest among the thick-leaved trees, Their heads beneath their wings have bent. The indolent tall stags, along the mossy glades, Snuff up the dews that linger yet; The lazy Sylvans sleep upon the grasses wet. Under the leaves' translucent shades. Within the sacred stream, Nais the white, meanwhile, Lies pillowed soft, with lidded eye. She sleeps and dreams ; and on her lips of Tyrian dye There floats a soft harmonious smile. No amorous desire, on this enchanted strand. Hath seen, beneath these veils aflow, The nymph with floating hair and body white as snow. Asleep upon the silver sand. None hath indeed availed the adolescent cheek. The neck's, the bosom's ivory, The milkwhite arms nor yet the artless lip to see. The shoulder delicate and sleek. 174 LECONTE DE LISLE. But lo! a curious Faun, upon a bough astride, Athwart the thickset leafage pries. And her fair body, all by water clipped, espies Glitter like silver through the tide. In his inhuman joy, he laughs; the cool grot hears And Echo answers all around; And so the virgin wakes and paling at the sound, Like a vain shadow disappears. Like to the Naiad, in the wood removed and sole, Sleeping beneath the water clear, When the profane one's hand and eye impure are near, Flee, Beauty, sunlight of the soul ! JUNE. The meadows smell of hay new-mown and wet with dew; The fresh light penetrates the thickest of the brake; All things beneath the sun glitter; the leafage new And palpitating nests together all awake. The busy water-brooks, descending from the hills, Fare, frolicking, among the mosses and the thyme; And midst the hawthorns white they sing, the merry rills, Sing with the laughing wind and bird of morning-time. The brakes and bowers of sounds harmonious are full; The dawn a web of pearls about the wood- ways twines ; And the bees, from the yews straying beside the pool, Hover with wings of gold about the eglantines. The earth smiles, half-abashed, like to the virgin shy, That by the first love-kiss with languishment is filled; Vermeil her blushing cheek and humid is her eye And by her lover's lips her very soul is thrilled. LECONTE DE LISLE. 175 O rosy ecstasy of summer-ravished earth, Whispers of murmurous woods, mysterious sounds and sighs. Perfume his heart who fares to-Hfe-ward with your mirth, Temper him in the peace and freshness of the skies ! For soon, alas ! too soon, drenched with the tears of Spring, His dreams, in frenzied swarms, ensuing stranger fires, At the consuming light will fly to burn their wing Of Summers without shade and turbulent desires. Then tender to his lips your cups of dewy wine, O blossoms of his Spring, o dawn of his sweet days ! And sun of his first loves, pour forth, o sun divine, On his exhausted soul the purple of your rays ! NOON. Noon, king of summer-time, hangs hovering o'er the plain ; The sunlight falls in sheets of gold from out the sky : All's mute; the breathless air beneath the fiery rain Ablaze is and the lands in slumberous silence lie. Immense is the expanse, the fields are without shade; Dried-up the well-spring is, where drank the kine and sheep ; The woods, whose borders far upon the horizon fade. Yonder, immoveable, in heavy stillness sleep. Only the tall ripe sheaves, like to a sea of gold, Into the distance stretch, sleep having in disdain; Sons of the sacred earth, pacifical and bold, The goblet of the sun without affright they drain. Bytimes, as 'twere a voice from out their burning soul. Among the heavy ears, that each to other sigh, A wave of motion slow, majestic, roll on roll. Awakes and fares, upon the dim sky-marge to die. 176 LECONTE DE LISLE. Hard by, white oxen, couched among the flowered grass, Upon their dewlaps broad their dewy muzzles bend And with their velvet eyes ensue, as in a glass. That inward dream of theirs, that never hath an end. Man, if, the heart fulfilled with gladnesses or glooms. Thou pass, at noontide, through the meadows summer-bright. Begone; for Nature void is and the sun consumes; Here nothing living is, nor sorrow nor delight. But, if, of smiles and tears, of better and of worse Awearied, to forget the troubled world thou yearn, Unknowing any more to pardon or to curse, A last delight thou wish to taste, supreme and stern, See, the sun speaks to thee in splendour out of space; In its relentless flame come plunge that soul of thine; Then get thee slowly back unto the cities base. The heart seven times annealed in nothingness divine. NOX. Along the mountain-slopes the dying airs diff"use The balms of coming sleep upon the murmuring trees; The birds are fallen mute and slumber in the dews; The starlight pricks with gold the azure of the seas. About the long ravines, around the wilding height. The mists of early dusk have made the ways unclear; The moon the tree-tops steeps in melancholy light; All human sounds have died upon the hearkening ear. But on the distant sands soft sings the sea divine; From the high forests breathe the voices of the trees; The sonorous air bears up to heav'n, with night ashine, The murmurs of the wood, the carol of the seas. LECONTE DE LISLE. 177 Mount, mount, o holy sounds, o superhuman strains, O converse grave and mild between the earth and sky! Mount and the stars serene ask in the heavenly plains If an eternal way there is to them on high. O seas, o dreaming woods, kind voices of the earth, My cry, when on my soul the evil days were sore. You answered; you consoled my sadness and my dearth And in my grateful breast you sing for evermore. THE LAKE IN THE WOODS. I. Like ocean-billows, tow'rd the beach that surging fare. Your tides of leafage green, with scent and song a-thrill, O forests, you unroll, in the blue radiant air; Still old you are and yet rejuvenated still. Time hath respected you, monarchs of many a year. And your colossal brows, with silver mosses crowned; No foot shall evermore trample your leaves unsere; You shall see man pass by and the world's changing round. You, from on high, upon the gullies' slopes incline Your long and ponderous boughs, by levin-flashes seared : How dulcet is repose beneath your shades divine, Where but the breezes' sigh and rillets' song is heard! The sap in you throbs high, beneath the noontide beams: Clad with their purple robes, you sit, a speechless throng; But night-time, over all dispensing dews and dreams, Appeases souls and woods and fills them both with song. II. 12 178 LECONTE DE LISLE. Past the lush zones whereas the green maternal glows, Whence you your stirless stems thrust up to heaven elate, Nearer to heaven alone, the sempiternal snows Mantle with their white folds the peaks immaculate. O natal woods, beneath your mighty crowns I strayed ; Dawn on the dark hills' slopes mounted with vermeil feet : The slow-awakening sea its murmurous voice essayed And from all living eyes on earth fled slumber sweet. On his nest's margin set, opening his sleep-closed wings. The bird the new-come day hailed with a fresher song Than, in the roses' bower of green, the streamlet sings Or the wind's amorous laugh the forest-aisles along. Forth of the natural hives came fluttering the bees And soared in humming swarms to meet the sunshine new ; And opening to the light its fragile treasuries. Each flowery chalice shed its drop of crystal dew. Heav'n in the glittering dews descended, where the sward Upon the mountains blue sparkled afar: the smoke Of incense from the lips of the slaked blossoms soared Tow'rd holy Nature, her with whom my spirit spoke. Midmost the forest, steeped in a celestial haze, A limpid water was, where nothing stirred or spoke: Tall rushes, guardians green of rustic water-ways, Whispered around it; else no sound the silence broke. There floated lilies broad, with straying creepers twined. White archipelagoes upon the water's brim, In whose pellucid deeps, limpid as air, there shined Another mirrored heav'n, wherein the birds did swim. LECONTE DE LISLE. 179 O coolness of the woods, limpid serenity, O winds, the songful trees caressing in your flights, Lake, in whose happy flood the sun-rays dance and flee, Eden to flow'rage blown upon the verdant heights! All hail, sweet peace and pure melodious breathings, hail! And you that from the heav'ns and boughs descend, repose Of heart, forgetfulness of joy and weal and bale! All hail, o sanctuary, forbidden to our woes! II. Beneath the forest's deep thick dome of leafage wide. In the blue lake, embowered with trees on every hand. Slept, in the winding-sheet enveloped of the tide, A dead man, with his face set skyward, on the sand. He lay not, slumbering, calm, Ophelia-like, nor yet Smiling as sl^e, with arms crossed on his breast. He seemed. Indeed, to be of those whom quickly men forget : Pallid and sad, beneath the basin clear, he dreamed. His head, with eyes astare, upon the stones reposed; In the folds of his cheek, where the sand-sparkles shone, It was as tears had tall'n from out the lids unclosed; It seemed as if the heart throbbed ever and anon. The lips the impress bore of stern inquietude ; Attent and still, he seemed to hearken and expect, As if some human step, troubling the solitude, Him yet from his supreme asylum should eject. O youth, that chosest out, thy watery bed to be, This lakelet of the woods, with waters still sedate. None knows what manner draught was measured unto thee From the eternal cup of souls disconsolate. i8o LECONTE DE LISLE. From what tempestuous fierce onslaught of passions wild Came thy youth hither, driv'n in death to seek repose? Thy soul was not unto departure reconciled; The trace of life's remorse upon thy forehead shows. Why even to the tomb this bitter sadness ! Say, Broken was the heart in thee for having loved o'erwell? Thy hopes ephemeral, white, vain visions of a day, Found they the gates of heav'n fast shut against their spell ? Doubtless thou wast not born beside the gold sea-sands: Thou grew'st to manhood not beneath the palms divine ; Nay, and the niggard suns of other distant lands Ripened to flow'rage not those early dreams of thine. Whenas from out thy breast life's flame was torn away, O youth, that hither cam'st, in this fair place to die, An image still divine and followed without stay, A melancholy heav'n, hath passed before thine eye. If thy soul's fetters here below unbroken are. If the fount have not laved thine eyes of weeping clear, If thou canst not depart toward the neighbouring star, Abide, sad soul, exhaust Life and thy dolours dear. Then, stranger pale, in this thy watery sepulchre. Free of the suffered woes, veiled by the shadows' spell. May Nature be to thee at least no stepmother ! Within her arms repose, consoled and peaceable ! III. So dreamt I, whilst the woods, in odorous shadow rapt. Kept on their tide of song, whose current none may dry, Unheedful, in their far, indifferent glory lapt. Of how men suffer can and of their sufferance die. LECONTE DE LISLE. i8i The limpid waters still, in all their native sheen, Reflected heav'n's fair face, with rosy flames o'erspread, And ne'er a plaintive breath the mirror pure, serene. Broke of the smiling flood, above that woeful head. The small bird lighted down upon the lilies white And with his rosy bill drank from the basin fair; Then, heedless of the dead, bristling with bubbles bright. Flew up, his dripping wings to dry in the warm air. Yes, Nature laughs to scorn these sufferings of ours ; Her own sole greatness still to contemplate she deigns; Upon all things that be she sheds her sovereign powers And calm and splendour still for her own part retains. DIES IRAE. There is a day, an hour, when, in the rugged road. Beneath the burden bowed of years remembered not, The soul of man stands still and weary of its load, Turns back its pensive gaze unto the days forgot. Life's barrenness hath slain the hopes which once he knew ; Of the God disabused, the God that was to be, The childhood of the world in him he feels renew; He hearkens to thy voice, o sacred memory! The stars that erst he loved, with their pacific ray. Still silver, in the night, the woods' mysterious deep, The mountains sacrosanct and ancient valleys gray, Where, 'neath the sombre palms, his primal Gods did sleep. He sees the free young earth, he sees the wilding green Float incense-like upon the sacred rivers' breast; He hears the oceans blue pulse on their shores serene And tow'rd th'Unknown divine roll on without arrest. 1 82 LECONTE DE LISLE. From the hill-summits, nest of races pure and nurse, He hearkeneth the growth, of stain and soil yet free, Of young Humanity and the young Universe Wax to the surges' song and voice of flower and tree. O happy one ! He deemed the earth perdurable ; The firmament at hand spoke to his listening ear; He had not soiled his robe unsullied; in the spell Of the world's beauty, strong he lived and void of fear. The light, that makes us love and is our altar-shine, Burned in him without cease, a century as a day. And Faith the confident and Candour the divine Watched o'er the sanctuary, illumined by Love's ray. Why of familiar joys aweary is he grown? Why for the Future strive and labours vain essay? The wind had massed the clouds into a vault of stone; Yet in one stormy hour it blew them all away. Oh for the desert tent upon the glorious hills, The visions high beneath the pensive cedar-trees, The virgin liberty and its magnanimous thrills And the o'erflooding tide of primal ecstasies ! The anguish of desires in vain doth us invite ; Who in the primal book henceforth shall look for lore? Men of the words of life have lost the sense; the spright Silent, the letter's dead and dead for evermore. None tow'rd the mystic West the arras purple-twined Henceforward shall divide before the altar high Nor hark the passing by, on the prophetic wind. Of the primaeval speech between the earth and sky. LECONTE DE LISLE. 183 The lights from heav'n above go waning, day by day; Th'impenetrable night sinks on us from the steeps; Old Ormuzd's star is dead behind the cloud-rack gray And in its dead God's dust the dying Orient sleeps. The Spirit now no more upon the Chosen Race Descends; it consecrates no more the strong and just; And on the arid sands of Asia's changeless face The sterile suns consume the dead germs in the dust. Th'ascetics, as of old, beside the river sit And hear the pure slow rill its rushes trickle through. Weep, contemplators, weep ! For widowed is your wit : Vishnou no longer thrones upon the lotus blue. Hellas th'harmonious, the virgin golden-tressed, To whom a whole world's love of old hath altars dight, Dumb lies for evermore, beside the ocean blest. Upon the dust divine of her Immortals white. No more on prophet-lips the glowing coals are red. Adonai ! The winds have borne thy voice away ; And thou, pale Nazarene, bowing thy weary head. Thy cry supreme exhaled, art fallen dumb for aye. O fair-haired preacher, veiled with peace and gentle gloom, Wandering beside the lakes, beneath thy halo's shade, All hail to thee, o young Essene! In thy sealed tomb Humanity to rest its last of Gods hath laid. The dull barbarian West with vertigo is bound; The virtueless lost souls in heavy slumber prone Lie, like to sickly shrubs, root-smitten in the ground, That but one day have leafed and but one sun have known. 1 84 LECONTE DE LISLE. The sages, couched beneath the secret porticoes, View, having found the cahii desired of all that be, The periods of storm and epochs of repose Mankind, with equal course, roll to eternity. But we, but we, consumed with vain desire, a prey That are to void belief and love without return, Answer, new days, will you life render us? And say, Old times, will you restore the love for which we yearn ? Where are our lyres of gold, our hyacinthine curls. Hymns to the happy Gods, our virgins white-attired? Where are our sacred courts, our choirs of singing girls. And where our holy chants, by the glad heart inspired? Where are the promised Gods, the forms ideal fair? Where are the glorious cults, purple and gold beseen? Where, opening their wings of snow on heaven's air. The Virtues' white ascent, triumphant and serene? Celestial mendicants, the Muses with slow tread From town to town, a prey to bitter laughter, creep. Enough, enough beneath the crown of thorns we've bled ! Enough of sighs we've heaved, unending as the deep ! Yes, the eternal 111 is in its plenitude; The age's air for souls in pain is full of harms. Oblivion of the world and of the multitude. Hail ! Take us, Nature, back unto thy sacred arms ! Come, in thy vest of gold and pearl, mysterious Dawn ! Deep in the thickset woods evoke an amorous psalm ! Thy glorious robe once more, sun, spread o'er hill and lawn ! Ope thy lap, mountain, full of perfume and of balm ! LECONTE DE LISLE. 185 Majestic murmuring tides of ocean calm and blue, Thrill ye our careful hearts profoundlier with your sighs ! Pour, forests, pour on us your urns of silver dew ! Shower, glittering, on our heads, star-silence of the skies ! Console ye us of hope in vain and baseless joys ! Our naked feet are torn with the way's barren clods. From the great capes' high tops, far from all human noise, Winds, carry us away toward the unknown Gods! But, if there answer nought, in space unvarying. But th'echo of desire eternal, vain, adieu. Deserts, wherein the soul beats with impuissant wing! Adieu, o dream sublime, since none may seize on you ! And thou, divinest Death, where all returns apace. Welcome thy children back unto thy starry breast! Enfranchise us of Time, of Number and of Space And render us repose and Life-untroubled rest! THE DAWN. Down from the paly gold of heaven, soft and fresh, Upon the yellow canes, upon the mosses nesh. Upon the rose-trees thick and the wild saffron-flowers. Athwart the leaves, the light, thin-filtering, fell in showers. There rose from flower and herb a fragrance faint and rare ; A murmur without end throbbed in the subtle air, Choir of mysterious sprites, the souls of every thing, That make the roses blow and bid the brooklets sing, Gods young, benefic, kings of magic worlds above. Where linked in one the strength and beauty are of Love. About the sloping glens hovered a thin blue mist; And preening their bright plumes with bills of amethyst. 1 86 LECONTE DE LISLE. The glittering humming-birds, upon the nutmeg-trees, Drenched with the dew, awoke in myriad companies. Serene the ocean lay and on the surges white The newborn morning shot its myriad shafts of light. The mountain seemed to swim, poised, in the dazzling air, With its green slopes of maize, maturing stair by stair. And its tall cones of blue and woodland-mantled steep, Rocked by the morning breeze upon the dancing deep; And all the isle, ablush and tired of slumber done. Carolled in choir beneath the kisses of the sun. O holy, holy youth, joy nevermore refound. Lost happiness, wherein the soul in tears is drowned, O light, o freshness sweet of the hills calm and blue, O waving, shimmering green of woodlands wet with dew, Songs of the happy seas, dawn of a day divine, Fair flow'rage vigorous of those sweet days of mine. You live, you sing, you throb, holy realities. As in the days bygone, beneath your golden skies. But you, o natal heav'n, bright ocean, sacred hills, Woods, which the friendly breeze with murmurous music fills, Ye forms ideal fair, magnificent to see. You've disappeared from this forgetful heart of me ! And now, of bitter joys aweary unto death. With quest of thousandfold chimaeras out of breath, Alas ! I have unlearned the hymns of heretofore And my forsaken Gods give ear to me no more. PHIDYLE. Soft is the sward for sleep beneath the poplar-shades, Beside the moss-clad fountain-heads, Which from the flowered fields well in a thousand threads And lose themselves in the dark glades. LECONTE DE LISLE. 187 Sleep, sleep, o Phidyle! Noontide upon the trees Shines and invites thee to repose; Alone, in the full sun, whereas the clover grows And thyme, there hum the frolic bees. A scent of summer-heat is in the burning air; The flowering wheat its head inclines; The birds all to the shade of the lush eglantines For shelter 'gainst the sun repair. Mute is the underwood; along the glades the harts. Before the baying hounds, no more Bound; and Diana's self, in the deep woodlands' core, Sits furbishing her deadly darts. Sleep, sleep in peace, fair maid, with artless smile so sweet. Like to the rustic nymphs; the bee From thy pure honeyed mouth I keep and watch o'er thee, To guard from harm thy naked feet. Over thy shoulders soft and on thy breast divine, Like fluid gold, as light as air. Under my amorous breath, stray, fluttering here and there, The tendrils of thy tresses fine. The fillet-bands undone, not troubling thy repose. About thy brows' pellucid white. Unto the violets pale the jacinth I'll unite. And to the myrtles sweet the rose. As Erycina fair in the Sicilian meads And dearer to my jealous heart, Repose, and I will my most dulcet breath impart Meanwhile to the obedient reeds. i88 LECONTE DE LISLE, With thy familiar praise, o maiden white as snow, I'll charm the woodlands far and near; So that the nymphs, when in their ivied grots they hear The strain, shall pale and troubled grow. But, when the sun sinks low upon his course of light And sees his ardency decline, Let then thy sweetest smile and thy best kiss combine My expectation to requite. THE ASCETES. Since Hellas, 'neath the yoke of bronze, a chained white Had ended its fair course, beneath the Roman glaive, [slave, And with a sigh of last harmonious lament. Its shadow with the shades of its dead Gods had blent, Caesar, with thirst etern devoured, unceasingly Drained of their milk the paps of ancient Cybele. Pallid, with bloodstained hands and heart fulfilled of care, His nights with terrors vague racked, in his gilded lair. On his imperial bed of purple couched alone. He heard the human race in sombre concert groan. And whilst beneath his feet, back bended to his sway. Prone, with her paps of bronze, the she-wolf sleeping lay, Th'expiatory days to hasten, in their dens The lions hungering kept, torn from the Atlas glens, Down from the Seven Hills' crest, an inexhausted flood, Covering the empire all with its unholy mud. Bare, horrent, with its crew of pleasures bald and vain In leash, Debauch still led its Saturnalian train; For 'twas the sombre hour, when the old universe. Unable to forget its fetters and its curse. Devoid of God and force and tired of life, did lie, A coward like, that drugs himself, afraid to die: LECONTE DE LISLE. 189 And then it was one heard, above the orgy's roar, The appeal of the new days, that mounted evermore, A voice of allegresse and anguish, terrible That was with frenzied love toward th'Invisible. II. "The noises of the age, thy voice, Lord, have they drowned ? Till when wilt thou abide upon the cross, Lord, bound? In vain the dregs thou'st drained and bitterness of death : In its old madnesses the world yet revelleth And singing at the feet of its dead Gods still lies. Unto the deserts all, the pure, the strong, the wise! Unto the deserts those who're of the Spirit called, Who by the storms of Life have overlong been mauled ! Let's smother in our hearts the lusts unholy ! Then Unto the deserts, to the deserts, women, men ! Toward the eternal joys of heaven the golden gauze Of rapture's wings let's spread, beneath the lion's claws! Come, multiply on us thy glorious woes at will! Lord, let us errant be and miserable still ! Let the devouring sun our flesh consume and sear! Outrage is sweet to us and ignominy dear; So but to Calvary's top still climbing, striving up, We may unto the end avail to drain thy cup And with opprobrium crowned and laden with affronts. Yet with the bloodstained thorns may aureole our fronts. O solemn solitude, o sea of sands and skies, Of perishable things assoilzie thou our eyes! Sweep thou to all the winds the vanities untold, The dust without a name of creeds and cities old, And to deliver us from matter's foul disease. Open thy breast of flame to the world's refugees ! Come, let us flee! Behold, the day mysterious nighs. When, like as dust upon the four winds of the skies, The universe in space inane shall pass away. How many in th'abyss of fire shall fall that day ! I go LECONTE DE LISLE. But th'angel by our names shall call us all, in fine; Yea, and the face of God Most High for us shall shine." III. O dreamers, martyrs all, o warriors brave and leal. That, in the noble stress of your ecstatic zeal. Toward the ideal heaved your sempiternal sighs, I hail you, lovers fond and frenzied of the skies ! Sooth did you say : the heart of man is void and dead And the accursed world is but a sterile stead. Whereas th'infecund thorn, which we uproot in vain, The furrows sere o'erruns and chokes the better grain. Sooth did you say; this life is but a fleeting ill And bitt'rer far than death and tomb is woman still: Wherefore, from cities far and their tumultuous drone. With cross and staff equipped, you wandered forth alone. The promised halo still your heads illumining. And tow'rd the goal of death, pale anchorites, took wing. So that no human eye might see you evermore, You hither, thither strayed, th'infecund summits o'er, And yielding up your souls unto the tempest's breath. Your bones in caverns laid, to sleep the sleep of death. By times, bethinking you, upon the sands of fire. Of some sweet carnal bond unbroken of desire. Whereby th'abandoned age yet ruled it in your thought, Whereby a distant whirl of living pictures wrought With visions of a world o'erloved your hearts to fill. And feeling heaven afar and flesh triumphant still, Convulsing with your sobs the silence of the sands. Your bosoms and your flanks ye tore with trembling hands, With your repentant blood redd'ning the arid stones; And all the desert wastes, white with the martyrs' bones, Hearing their lions midst your relics range and call, Grew peopled in the night with visions biblical. LECONTE DE LISLE. igj THE HOWLERS. The sun its dying fires had drowned in ocean's caves; At foot of the high hills cloud-capped, the city slept; And on the massy cliffs, with clouds of foam o'erswept, The sullen growling sea outpoured its surging waves. The swart night multiplied the ocean's long-drawn sigh; No solitary star shone in the sombre blue; Only the pallid moon, the cloud-rack thrusting through, Like a sepulchral lamp, hung sadly in the sky. A mute world, with a sign of choler branded, she. Wreck of some perished globe, in space at hazard shed, Let from her frozen sphere, set in its orbit dead, A ray funereal fall upon the wintry sea. Boundless, to Northward spread, beneath the stifling sky, Africa, 'neath thick mists and shadow sheltering her. Upon the sweltering sands her hungry lions err And by the lakes her herds of elephants let lie. But on the arid strand of insalubrious smell. Among the scattered bones of horses and of kine. Stretching their pointed snouts to heaven, with many a whine, A crew of lean dogs wailed, and many a longdrawn yell. Tail under throbbing paunch indrawn, upon the sand, With haggard eyes, aquake, upon their fevered paws Crouched, here and there, they sat; and still, from pause to pause, A sudden shudder ran along the shivering band. 192 LECONTE DE LISLE. The salt f6am of the sea glued to each meagre back The wiry hair, that let the vertebrae stand out; And when the billows whiles encompassed them about, Beneath the blood-red gums, one heard the white teeth clack. Under the erring moon's phantasmal lurid light, What anguishes untold, beside the black wave-roll, In these your forms obscene caused weep a human soul? Why thus bewail yourselves, ye spectres of affright? I know not; but, o dogs that howled by the sea-oaze, After so many suns that will return no more. Still, from my darkling Past, I hearken, as of yore. The wild despairing cry of your unearthly woes. THE ELEPHANTS. The tawny sands are like a sea immeasurable, That flameth, in its bed supine, low-sunken, still; An undulating wave, fall'n motionless, doth fill Th'horizon, copper-hued with smoke, whereas men dwell. No life there is; no noise; the lions all, full fed, Sleep in their darkling lairs an hundred leagues away; And yonder, 'neath the palms, where else the panthers prey. Beside the well-springs blue, giraffes drink unadread. No bird there passeth by, dividing with his wing The dead thick air, wherein a vast sun circulates; But whiles his scaly back, that shines and scintillates In the fierce heat, betrays some viper slumbering. So the plain flames beneath the heavens' brazen glare; But, whilst all else there sleeps in that stern solitude, The rugged elephants, slow travellers and rude, Toward their native land, across the deserts, fare. LECONTE BE LISLE. 193 Out of the distance gray, like monstrous masses brown, Raising the dust, they come; and one sees, far away, How, not to turn aside from the directest way. They with their large sure feet the sandhills trample down. He who the vanguard leads an old chief is; his hide Is fissured like a log, that ages undermine; His head is as a rock; the column of his spine Grows arched above his back portentous at each stride. Unslackening evermore nor hastening in his pace. Unto the certain goal he guides his dusky band, As, hollowing a road behind them in the sand. The pilgrims huge ensue his patriarchal trace. Ears standing out like fans and trunks their teeth between, They fare with half-shut eyes. Their bellies pant and smoke ; Their sweat, as 'twere a mist, mounts in the sheer sun-stroke And round them buzz and hum a thousand insects keen. But what of thirst reck they or of the ravenous flics Or of the sun, that burns their wrinkled hides and tanned? They're dreaming, as they go, of the forsaken land And of the fig-tree woods, wherein their race had rise. In dreams they see again the mighty stream, that speeds Down from the mountains vast, where swims the river-horse, And casting, 'neath the moon, large shadows in their course, Down to the drinking-place go crashing through the reeds. So, in a sable line, courageous, full of cheer, Unslackening, if slow, they trudge the sandy sea, And the great waste resumes its immobility, As on the sky-line dim the huge beasts disappear. II. 13 194 LECONTE DE LISLE. THE DESERT. When th'Arab, from Horeb to Syria who doth fare, Unto the date-palm's trunk tethers his meagre mare And 'neath the dusty shade, whereas the dead fruit heaps, In his coarse cloak of hair enwraps himself and sleeps. Doth he again, — truce made with weariness, — behold The distant oasis, where grow the figs of gold. The valley strait, wherein his father-tribe camped erst. And the clear stream, whereat of old he slaked his thirst, The bleating sheep, the kine, that stand in browsing ranks. And women gossiping about the watering-tanks, Or see the cameleers close-seated in a ring, The tale-tellers, beneath the moonlight, hearkening? Not so : beyond the course of fleeting day and night. His spirit to the land of dreams hath taken flight: He dreams that El Borak, the Mule of Paradise, Neighing, upbeareth him unto the topmost skies: Himseemeth in the nights he sees, love-glorified, The girls of Paradise ecstatic at his side. Up from their sable locks, black as th'infernal nights, An acrid perfume mounts, that on his senses bites: He cries aloud and fain would press against his breast. Between his outstretched arms, the vision fair and blest. But on the sandhills far he hears the jackals scream; His filly paws the earth and broken is his dream. The heavens are gone; o'er all but silence still and same And copper-coloured skies above a waste of flame. In his halt, for a day, under the withered tree, Each dreamer life-opprest to rest hath bent the knee And like the Bedouin's self, bowed down with lassitude. Hath slept thy heavy sleep, o tristful solitude ! Aweary of himself and of the things that be, Fain would he seize on Love in its eternity And still awakes again unto this world of strife, Pale and despairful in the desert wastes of life. LECONTE DE LISLE. 195 THE RUNE-KING. » Driven from the lonely Pole in wild and whirling clouds, The snow primaeval all the universe enshrouds. Livid and drowsy-eyed with the eternal sleep, The sun hath drowned himself in the divine sea-deep. Athwart the hoary pines, that bow beneath the blast, The wind howls; through the mists the iron hail falls fast And scatters, with its scourge wild-whirling, far and wide, The troops of wolves, that howl and wander by the tide. Alone, immoveable among the wastes forlorn. Like unto Ymir ^ grim, evoked by Scald and Norn, Unshaken of the wind and silent in the storm. Into the whirling clouds plunging its head enorm, Upon the clouded cape, above the wild wave-wrack, The tower of Runoia * arises grim and black, Black as the mirk black night, high as the mountains hoar And looking out at once on the horizons four. 1 In accordance with his somewhat unfortunate habit, the French poet has given no note or hint of the meaning of the following poem; not even calling it "Poeme Finnois," which would at least have supplied some sort of key to the educated reader. As it is, the poem must be absolutely unintelligible to those who are un- acquainted with the ancient Finnish mythology and are thus unable to discover for themselves that it is founded upon the last canto of the great Finnish folk-epic, the Kalewala, and turns upon the primitive mythological version of the expulsion of the old Finnish deities by Christianity. I have, as in other places, supplied, by way of notes, the information absolutely indispensable for the intelligence of the poem and (as usual) mostly absent from the pages of Encyclopaedias and the like. 2 Ymir., the primaeval Frost-Giant of Scandinavian mythology, out of the different parts of whose dead body the universe is fabled to have been constructed. 3 Rimoia, the Runemaker or Bard. I adopt the French poet's accentuation {Rti-no-ya) of this word. 196 LECONTE DE LISLE. Natheless, about the halls a thousand torches burn And not a breath aside their towering flames doth turn. Huge crouching bears of gold colossal shafts uprear, Whereto there hang great skins of wolven and of deer, Bucklers and spears and swords and mighty bows and strong And quivers full of shafts, bristling with feathers long. A thousand huntsmen there, pell-mell upon the floor Seated, the foaming mead from golden flagons pour. The scalds, whose eager eyes from out the shadow glow, Over their harps of stone with panting breasts bend low. The ancient choral tales unroll their sounding flood And in the hearer's heart there mounts his father's blood. But, with his beard of snow, the ancient Northern King Silent upon his seat abideth, pondering. With an eternal care his godlike brows are knit: Upon a serpent-skin of blue, with runes o'erwrit, He dreams and takes no heed of the heroic hymns. A magic web of rings of gold engirths his limbs : Silver his corselet bright, his tunic iron is And eyes of the sea's blue in summer-calm are his. Erect beside the God, in sombre solitude. There stands the warrior mute men call Inquietude. THE SCALDS. Where are the heroes dead, the kings of the high sea, That with their sturdy keels the sluggish ocean shore? No more the bitter blasts of winter shall they dree; The driving hail shall scar their doughty brows no more. O nerveless warriors, ye, who chase by hill and flood The great wide-antlered elks and draw your plenty thence, Your forefathers are couched beneath the deep sea-mud, Their winding sheet the foam, and their grave is immense. THE HUNTSMEN. Peace is upon the earth; behoveth us bestow The masts, with canvas red enwrapped, away and glaive LECONTE DE LISLE. 197 And buckler on the wall, with arrow, spear and bow, Uphang. O bards, repose is needful to the brave. Our ships are worn and old ; our swords with rust are stained ; The gold of conquered folk cncumbercth our bowers. The better to enjoy the goods our fathers gained, Would we might stay the course of the too rapid hours ! THE SCALDS. Hark to your children, hark, warriors of ancient days! Like hunger-bitten wolves, they batten on your store. The battle-axe upon their hands unnerved weighs And in their sterile veins the red blood runs no more. Sleep, sleep! Your seaweed bed, beneath the angry seas, Were better — better far for you your moving bier. Better the stormy hymn that rolls upon the breeze, Than these degenerate sons of yours to see and hear. Weak children of the strong, eat, drink ; ensue your course, Inglorious race? But ye, like steel for all avail Tempered, souls of our sires, ye swarms of black remorse, Hail ye the age of swords, for evermore all hail! THE HUNTSMEN. To-morrow morning, glad, with bow in hand, we'll track And slay the antlered stags, that on the mosses graze, And toward nightfall, bowed 'neath heavy burdens, back Will we return in peace from out the desert ways. The girls with eyes as clear as morning in the East, With their bare rosy feet, swift as the reindeer flits. Shall run upon the snow and for the toothsome feast Shall cause the red fire jet beneath the ashen spits. The foaming hydromel brims up the pots of gold ; Let us praise drunkenness and suffer the swords rust And let the eternal storm, that spares us yet, the old Dreams and the labours vain bear hence away, like dust! 198 LECONTE DE LISLE. THE RUNE-KING. * Runemakers, hath the sun supreme in heav'n yet beamed? Hath the day reddened yet the sky, of which I dreamed? Have ye yet heard the Crone the hour which is to come With magic finger beat upon the Runic drum? The eagle from the tower yet hath it fled away? Answer me, children mine, have ye yet seen the day? THE SCALDS. Ancient of Karjala, ^ yet sombre is the night; Nor hath the cloudy cape yet seen the morning light. THE RUNE-KING. He cometh ! He hath passed our thickset woodlands ! Spring And river, frozen yet, thaw at his voice and sing. The great Pohja'ian wolves, moaning for tenderness, Their bloodshot eyes have closed beneath his mild caress. The steed carnivorous, the stallion sable-maned. Whose feet are brass, teeth steel, whose neck was never reined, The steed, that rears and neighs in the divine waste lands. The taming bridle ta'en hath from his childish hands. THE SCALDS. Eternal Runemaker, what seest thou in the dark? The shade immense of heav'n rolls, full of thunder, hark. Across the forests, by the raging tempest bowed; The snow in whirlwinds wheels and hardens in the cloud. • i. e. the hero Wainamoinenn, the Eternal Runoia or Runemaker, according to the Finnish my thology, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. 2 Karjala or Karelia, the southernmost and most fertile portion of Finland, the land of the Gods and Heroes, as opposed to Pohja or East Bothnia, the northernmost province and the abode of witches and demons. LECONTE DE LISLE. 199 THE RUNE-KING. The king of the last days, my sons, approach I see. Feeble and rosy, clad in linen white is he. The narrow ring of fire, that binds his temples bare, Like to a summer ray, pierces the clouded air. He at the raging sea smiles and the billows straight Abase their raging crests and their hoarse cries abate. The adamantine blasts, that slaughter branch and tree And lame the wings of steel of th 'eagles of the sea. Dare not on his frail neck the tresses disarray; And from his blue eyes shines the dawn of a great day. THE HUNTSMEN. The old Pohjaian crone, the sorceresses' queen, Hath laughed into thine ears and burned thy lids, I ween, Ancient of Karjala, king of the forests high. Even as the captive stag that in the snare doth sigh, Thou moanest, wound about with tragic spells. Behold ! Sire of the Runemakers, God of the men of old, We sing, forgetfulness of the ill days, within The intoxicating flood of mead, seeking to win. Nay, imitate us, chief of all the sacred climes. And drink, unpaling, to the expiatory times! THE RUNE-KING. The times are come ! My sons my name have outraged ! When, Upon the anvil vast of gold, Ilmarinenn, ' Th'eternal blacksmith, had the world-all's covering * made, The canopy of steel, pure, glittering, round, arrayed. And with the maul divine set in the vermeil air The silver stars, the sun and moon, and fixed them there, « Ilinarmcnn^ the Finnish Vulcan. 2 The heavens. 200 LECONTE DE LISLE. Seeing from the forge the fire leap forth on every side, I said, "The work is good and soUd." But I lied; I lied. The smith did ill. Yea, he had better done In the ice-mists to leave heav'ns, stars and moon and sun. When from the primal egg the germs of life I'd brought. The ocean surging set and promontories wrought. Made the bears growl, wolves howl, stags bound across the green And caused the birches leaf upon the waste immense, The silence and the void, I saw, had better been. When I'd begot the child of mine omnipotence, Man, the world's king, the blood that mine own flesh had bled. His heart of iron was and eke his skull of lead. I swear it by the Runes, my glaive and crown supreme, Man and the universe I've ill dreamt in my dream. The iron door, with bars of bronze thrice fortified. Creaks on its shaken hinge and opens sudden wide: A woman and a child the high-resounding hall Enter, in robes of mist auroral shrouded all. The hair on the king's head for choler stands upright; He twists his lips and quakes within his heart. Affright, Like an uncertain breath that stirs the darksome cloud. In murmurings subdued, circles among the crowd. THE RUNE-KING. Hunters of wolves and bears, up! Up, my warrior peers! Do me the child to death beneath your deadly spears! Into the marish cast, beneath th'envenomed flood, His head inanimate, his limbs yet warm with blood ! And you, Scalds, with your spells, strike ye th'accursed dead ! But the child, with strong voice, yet dulcet, to him said, "Last born am I of all the races of the Gods, "Their ruins' flower, the fruit and harvest of their clods, "The so long promised child unto the world grown old. LECONTE DE LISLE. 201 "Who slept two thousand years in the Gods' cradle-fold "And whom, when he awoke, yest'reven, in the byre, "The kings of Iran came to worship and admire. "O Runemaker, beneath a thousand winters bent, "That dreamest in thy tower, rocked of the sea's lament, "I am the Sacrifice, the fecundating pains, "I am the destined Lamb, laden with the world-all's stains : " 'Tis I that to mankind affrighted come to bring "Contempt of life and joy and every pleasant thing. "Yea, man, yet with the flowers crowned of his drunkenness, "Shall of a sudden raise a clamour of distress: "A lightning-flash, midmost his feasts, shall rend the skies "And nothingness and death shall pass before his eyes. "The happy of this world, athirst for suffering, "Shall with my blood drink in hope never-wearying "And from the age impure far, on the sand sun-burned, "Shall die with eyes toward a bloodstained gibbet turned. "The chains that bind the hearts I'll break from pole to pole; "Yea, and a burning wound I'll widen in man's soul, "The virgin shall her grace and beauty mortify; "Man shall himself in his virility deny ; "And sages, gnawed with deubt supreme, upon their knees "Bowing their pallid fronts, like tempest-shattered trees, "Ashamed of having lived, ashamed of having thought, "Shall purify with fire their labours good for nought. "The ages lapsed, that yet within men's view have lain, "Reenter shall the night, no more to rise again. "Upon the elder Gods oblivion will I pour "And will their fronts discrowned prostrate for evermore, "Among the scattered stones of the hot East to rust, "Lower than the grasses vile and than the arid dust: "And for eternity, within the rain-dewed clods, "The good grain shaU spring up from th'ashes of the Gods. "King of the Pole, art thou prepared to drain death's cup? "Hast thou the robe upon thy shoulder knotted up? "Hast thou thy death-song sung and said a last adieu "To yonder sun that shall a God's last moments view?" 202 LECONTE DE LISLE. THE RUNE-KING. O snows, that from the heav'ns fall, inexhaustible, Waves of the main, the sands that whiten with your swell, Winds, that around the capes, the woodlands, fall and rise. That multiply, afar, in lamentable cries, Beyond th'horizons of the deserts infinite, The sombre harmonies that Time and Space emit ! Mountains, from my breath sprung ! Torrents, from me that take Your life, whereat their thirst my wandering peoples slake ! Ye floods, that from the strands escaped are of the Pole, That, underneath the pines age-old, in thunder roll ! And Virgins, you that dance upon the circling skies, Daughters of the clear nights, so lovesome in mine eyes, Otawas, ' ye that pour, from out your gilded urns, Rainshowers and dews and life upon the earth that burns! And you, breezes of day, that in the birches roam. You, isles, that floating lie upon the waters' foam. You, stallions black, and you, bears of the mountain-side, Ye howling wolves and elks, that wander far and wide! And you, ye winter mists, and you, ye short-lived lights That crown with flame, an hour, the golden summer-nights ! Here, children all, to whom my thought austere gave birth ! Here, graces, splendours, powers of heav'n and sea and earth ! Tell me if my heart's blood be near to running dry 1 World that I have conceived, tell me if I must die ! THE CHILD. The snows, that by the storm upon the frozen shore In heavy sheets are cast, are mute for evermore; The clamour of the sea henceforth will tell thee nought. The night is without ear and on the headland haught, As 'twere an echo lost, upon the flying spray, ' Otawas., the stars of the Great Bear. LECONTE DE LISLE. 203 The raging wind thy speech insensate bears away. The hills and floods give ear no more unto thy voice; The universe, all blind and stupid, without choice, Rolls like a lifeless corpse upon the steppes of space. I've taken from the world its soul, its strength and grace: For man and thee, grown old and sad in thy tower stern, Lo, Nature the divine is dead without return. THE SCALDS. O King, why tarriest thou ? Our hands by doubts and fears Are bound with bonds more strong than is the load of years. Do thou th'enchantment break, that holdeth us in thrall, And we will crush the Child against the palace wall. Speak, King ! Or if some spell avail thy tongue to bind. Ponder at least the lore forgotten in thy mind; And to deliver us from these our doubts perverse, Grave thou the runes of gold that rule the universe ! THE CHILD. No longer shall you sing unto your harps of stone. Despairful priests, that serve a God about to die. As 'twere a pinch of dust, my breath away hath blown Science antique and songs inspired of days gone by. No longer shall you charm the ears of humankind. The folk more venerable and sweet my name shall think; And like the dying sounds of tempests on the wind. The olden days with you shall in oblivion sink. The folk of the new time will mock at your vain lore; Men with disdainful foot your outlawed bones will spurn And my avenging law to obey, your memory for A hating-stock will take, your names to mockery turn. Death calls for you ; the age rejects you : to your fate Silent submit, as fits the valiant heart and head; For glory yet with life behoveth expiate, Before to sleep you fall, beside your fathers dead. 204 LECONTE DE LISLE. THE HUNTSMEN. Let them die, if they must ! Upon the steppes and dunes, Shall we the less therefor pursue the bounding hart? Let come the destined day marked by the fatal runes ! What reck we? In the Gods' contention we've no part. So but the crafty bear our pitfalls do not shun, So but our bows break not, so but the mead well-brewed In the stone jugs ferment 'neath the quick Northern sun, Brothers, beneath the sky life yet to live is good. Live let us and our hearts to new delights lay bare! To hunt and drink in peace is all that's worth a thought. The blood within our veins is red, our women fair: To-morrow is not yet and yesterday is nought. THE CHILD. In my Gehenna's flames, yet living, shall ye roll, Ye yelping dogs, with flesh replete and hydromel! You with the agonies consumed yet of the soul Shall be and howling writhe within the seventh hell. Like unto blasted pines, bowed by some fretting ill, Sad from the cradle, joy-and-strength-less as in sleep. Your children shall grow up to manhood and live still, The dagger of desire in their hearts buried deep, And weary of the tales of the things disappeared. Without joy or regret, shall see, with sullen eye. Beneath the ploughshare's shock, by fire and hatchet seared. The majesty of their old forests fall and die. Hunger and cold shall they feel on the frozen plains: Groaning, they wander shall amid the Northern snow; And even pleasure's self, in their exhausted veins, Shall cause the cold of death, instead of new blood, flow. So, God, Scalds, huntsmen all, that haunt the Polar earth, You from my jealous fields will I cut oft' and I The harvest of my wrath will bring withal to birth Out of th'eternal mire wherein you all shall lie. LECONTE BE LISLE. 205 White underneath her robe of linen coarse and chaste, Lit by the halo's gold about her bowed head traced, The Virgin of the East against her tender breast, A shadow in her eyes, her son mysterious pressed. What while the Child, from out her pensive bosom, spoke And as the blast against the trembling turrets broke. Deeper and surelier far than falchion-blades or darts, His calm voice plunged into the palpitating hearts. Paler than are the dead, the sorceresses' slaves, That in the cold nights stray above the heath-clad graves, The Scalds, with heads down-bowed beneath the dour decree, Dreamed in their nervelessness and in their agony. Like a last ray, that flits and deviates, they sought In vain to seize again the reins of life and thought; But their souls, like the leaves by Autumn-tempests stirred. Straying beyond themselves, in sombre eddies erred. Tumultuous, afoot, with bristling beards, each one To the earth letting fall the goblet scarce begun, The huntsmen, overcome with giddy frenzy, brake The pitchers whence their hands uncertain drink did take And with eyes all inflamed with fear and drunkenness, On the old Northland king cried out in their distress. Whilst he, upon his brows, knit with the care of death. And forehead feeling pass a stronger God's hot breath, Mute, heedless of the cries and clamours, sat apart. The runes reserved for need evoking in his heart. But the Child, bending o'er the azure serpent-hide, Soft as a spray of gold, bowed by the breeze aside, And with a mystic sign the air twice having split. With rosy finger touched the necromantic writ. The runes straight melted on the knees of the God-man And in clear streams of fire along the pavement ran, In zigzags to and fro, bounding from side to side. Burning the naked feet within the sandals wide; Whilst the spears and the bows, from ofi" the pillars borne. The falchions, from the sheaths of steel by thousands torn. 2o6 LECONTE DE LISLE. Together, in the hands of the delirious crowd, Clashed, as, with shouts of rage and frenzied laughter loud, Huntsmen and Scalds, with flame encompassed round about. Each upon other rushed, like an insensate rout Of maddened bees, that on some rash intruder fall, And the blood spouted out and splashed on floor and wall. But lo! in the sheer midst and height of the pell-mell. The flaming tower in half broke and together fell; And like a mountain tall, that quakes and topples o'er. Filled all the sable night with long-resounding roar. Alone of his, athwart the ruins, to the sea Th'eternal Runemaker descended silently. Divested of a world, he launched upon the tide His bark with iron keel and brazen prow and side; And whilst the raging wind, that blustered round the rocks. Tossed wildly to and fro his royal beard's white locks, Upon his ruined tower fixing his glances stern. He cried into the night, "Die shalt thou in thy turn! "Th'immortal runes thereof thrice three times I attest, "Thou, too, like me, shalt die, God of the new behest! "Man shall survive. A score of centuries of dole "Shall make his flesh with blood, his eyes with tears o'erroll, "Till the day when thy yoke, two thousand years endured, "Outwearied have the necks of races ill-inured, "Whenas thy temples, built among the nations all,. "For scorn and mockery shall to generations fall; "And that shall be thine hour and thy dim heav'n of cloud "Thou shalt reenter, clad with the ascetic shroud, "Indifferent future man, grown old, upon his clods "Leaving to lie and sleep, blaspheming at the Gods." So, steering through the surge and rumours of the sea, He disappeared, his face toward Eternity. LECONTE BE LISLE. 207 THE NAZARENE. Whenas the Nazarene, upon the fatal tree, Felt his last hour at hand and drank the bitter wine, To the deaf cloud-rack, full of agony, cried he And from his flesh the sweat ran down like bloody brine. But, in the silent heav'n of that accursed hill, None having heard alas ! his lamentable cry. With a great sob, that stirred his breast with one last thrill, The man of sorrows ceased and bowed his head to die. O thou, that diedst thus in those relentless days, Trembling a thousandfold more and more terrified, O living Virtue thou, than the two castaways, Who groaned their lives away, unthinking, at thy side, What weptest thou, great soul, with such an anguished stress ? 'Twas not thy fair young life, upon the cross outworn; 'Twas not thy genius nor thy strength, love, youth, yet less. Nor th'empire of the age from thy hands, dying, torn. No: in thy dream a voice spoke from the coming time, A whole world's voice, that spoke in disavowal vast. That bade thee "Down from this thy gallows-tree sublime, "Pale Crucified, descend! A God thou never wast. "Wast nor the heavenly bread nor yet the water live ! "Shepherd unskilled, thy yoke hath rotted from its knot. "In our waste hearts, wherein no thoughts of him survive, "The God's grown man again and the man is forgot. "Dead corse, above our heads hung for two thousand years, "Back to thine empty tomb needs must thou fare at last ! "Mankind is satiate with grief and tired of tears; "Thy sadness and thy blood our festivals o'ercast." 2o8 LECONTE DE LISLE. This is what said to thee, in that thine hour supreme, The voices of the times to be and their disdain. But thou, thou know'st to day the vahie of thy dream : Son of the Carpenter, thou spokest not in vain ! Thou spokest not in vain ! Thy glory and thy creed May, o Redeemer, drown in Time's resurgent flow: Mankind may cast away thy memory without heed. As one dead ashes casts to all the winds that blow. Upon the ruined aisles of thy cathedrals tall, Unmoved, thou mayst behold the crew of satyr-swine, Brow-bound with poison-flowers, in frenzied revel fall, Insulting with their scoffs thy sufferance divine. For thou, thou sit'st to day among thy peers of old, Crowned with thy long red locks, in thy chaste heav'n of blue. What while the souls in flight, like doves of mystic gold. Soar, at thy lips divine to drink the heavenly dew. And in this age outworn, revolted, deaf and blind, As in the haughty^ days of Roman empery, Thou'lt not have lived in vain, so long as humankind Shall weep in time to come and in eternity. THE DAMNED FOLK. The earth lay waste and wide and sombre was the sky. And I was as the dead in my sepulchral cell; And I, I heard in space unbounded moan and sigh The folk whose hearts must bleed for having loved too well. Wives, adolescents, youths, men, women, virgins pale, Sons of the times antique, children of modern days. All, fretted with chagrins and hopes without avail. Before me from their tomb their phantoms did upraise. LECONTE DE LISLE. 209 More numerous than the waves upon the shores that rain, All, in a sombre whirl of hates and woes and fears, These martyrs all of dreams impossible and vain Rolled, like the rolling sea, their eyes burnt u]) with tears. And sombre, with bare brows and wide out-flaming wing, With furious desires yet scourging them for rods, Behind the woeful troops of spirits faltering, Flew Love, primeval Love, the first-born of the gods. Inciting to new plaints their weariful concent. Sick with the ills himself he causeth them aby, Still those he drove across the boundless firmament, Who, knowing how to love, knew not thereof to die. And I, I reared myself forth of my frozen tomb; A breath into their midst me bore, the earth above. And mingling so I went with their eternal doom, With the lament of these, that are the damn'd of Love. O ghosts unto the scourge given of the Furies slow, Titans condemned fore'er in Erebus to lie, O happy, happy ones, these frightful deeps of woe Ye never knew, for you had lost but earth and sky! SOUVENIR. The softened splendours of the sky Were crimsoning the thickset leaves. And one of May's cool, dulcet eves Its dews was pearling far and nigh. The livelong day, in lane and bower, You had, among the moss discreet, Gathered the violets pale and sweet And spoiled the eglantines in flower. II. '4 2IO LECONTE BE LISLE. Run had you, full of life and glee, In the full sun, about the wood; A flood of young and vermeil blood Purpled your face's ivory. The silver echoes of your voice Sounded beneath the yews, until The envious linnets trill for trill Gave back in answer, of one choice, And nought was sweeter than to see. As we twain went the woods along. Your blue eyes, 'neath their lashes long. Shine out, resplendent as the sea. Youth, innocence, celestial blue ! Adorable uprising beam Of dawn ! You were as the first dream Born in some pure heart's shade anew. The waftings of the evening mist, Seeing the roses shut, intent Themselves on other wise to scent. Your bright dishevelled tresses kissed. And on your loveliness to feast Its eye fraternal, as it were. The star of evening, white and fair, Awakened in the pallid East. Then, undecided, tired, 'twas that You for an instant down to rest, Rosy, with palpitating breast. Within an old oak's hollow sat. LECONTE DE LISLE. 211 A light-ray, softened by the tree, Tinted with many a hue divine Your snow-white neck, your tresses fine. How charming were you then to see! The branches did around you creep, With trellised greenery, in and out. And closed your folded arms about, As a bird shuts its wings to sleep Or as some youngling Dryad maid, Who, knowing nought of Passion's spell, Dreams of a God that loves her well. Behind the bark's defending shade. In silence each the other eyed; Your eyes you closed. Slept you, my child? Unto what joyous world and mild, Hope ever young, wast thou her guide? Toldest thou her that there's a day When, far from every earthly thing. The virgin, on ideal wing. To Love's blue heaven flits away? Who knows? The bird's not yet astir And hesitates as yet to flee; The nymph dreams yet within the tree; The God hath not yet wakened her. NIGHTFALL. The chill wind of the night shrills through the leafless trees, Breaking from time to time the shrivelled boughs. The Over the arid plain, whereas the dead repose, [snows Spread, like a silver pall, their ghostly panoplies. 2 1 2 LECONTE DE LISLE. In a black line, upon the strait horizon's edge, A long-drawn flight of crows goes skimming o'er the ground ; And sundry dogs, that delve a solitary mound. Rustle the upturned bones among the grass and sedge. I hear the dead folk moan beneath the scattered mould. Ye pale inhabitants of unawakening night, What bitter memories thus, troubling your slumbers light, In droning sobs escape from out your lips a-cold? ¥ Forget ! Forget ! Your hearts have rotted piece by piece ; Your arteries of heat and blood are void to-day. O dead, o happy dead, to greedy worms a prey, Remember rather you of life and sleep in peace ! Oh, when into your beds profound descend I must, Like an old galley-slave, who sees his fetters fall, How I shall love to feel, freed of my troubles all. That which was me return unto the common dust! Nay, 'tis a dream : the dead are dumb beneath their stones : 'Twas but the wind, the dogs' endeavour at their meat; Nature implacable, 'twas but thy sighs effete; My weary ulcered heart 'twas but that weeps and moans. Silence ! The heav'ns are deaf; earth hath of thee no heed. If thou mayst not be healed, what worth are tear and sigh ? Be as a wounded wolf, that holds his breath to die And on his slayer's knife bites with his jaws ableed. Another heart-beat yet, yet one more pang for thee; Then nought : the grave gapes wide ; a little flesh falls in ; And soon oblivion's grass, covering the tombstone thin, Life's vanities conceals to all eternity. LECONTE DE LISLE. 213 ANATHEMA. If in the times we lived when the Gods of a day, In concert with the world antique, lay down to die And loosening the links that joined the earth and sky, Reentered the august shade where the mothers * stay, Regrets, desires, as 'twere a wind infuriate. Would only bend and break the souls of baser sort: 'Twere well to be a man, to be such fortunes' sport And single battle wage against injurious Fate. But, our days, are they worth the ancient world's decline? Time hath thy wager held and won of thee, o Christ ! Two thousand years to wear a God out have sufficed And no breath throbs within that sterile dust of thine. Happy the dead ! Upon th'horizon of old lore Floated the sacred choirs' far echo without cease; Th'effulgences supreme of the fair suns of Greece Upon th'inspired fronts with night and gloom waged war. In the presentiment of forces yet unknown. Full of the God, himself who tarried to declare, Paul, on Damascus-way thou saw'st, as thou didst fare, Th'unlooked-for levin leap from out the cloud-rack lone. Our night is darker far; our day more distant is. How many a sob in vain beneath the desert sky ! What tides of holy blood the waste earth overlie And smoke, unheeded of th'Eternal Witnesses ! « «Les Meres," apparently "Die Mutter" of the Second Tart of Goethe's Faust, i. e. the Fates, the representatives of Necessity, the ultimate force behind all Gods. 214 LECONTE DE LISLE. Like the Essene, to end his miseries sustained, Despairing of mankind and doubting God to be, Tired for the tongues of fire of waiting and to see Th' Archangel's sight, the folk their cup of woes have drained. It is not that, with sword in hand and torch a-flare, The Gepid and the Hun devour them at their will, That th'empire dying lies and that one hearkens still The steeds of Alaric neigh in the Roman air. No; heavier is the load that bows them to its thrall; Rusting their sordid hearts, with avarice afire. The idol golden-mawed, the Moloch of Desire, Sits on th'abased earth, clad in the purple pall. An impure air chokes up the world, of woods despoiled, That sheltered it beneath their mantle aforetime; The hills beneath base feet have bowed their heads sublime ; The broad mysterious breast of ocean is grown soiled. Chagrin and longsome cares, like melancholic ghosts. Hover, with heavy wing, a world exhausted o'er; And the Ecclesiast yet one hears, as heretofore, Under the cedars moan, upon Judaea's coasts. No more ecstatic flights toward a heav'n unknown; No more pious regrets, no deathless yearnings more; Of all the cups of gold, whence Life we drank of yore, Our lips and hearts retain but bitterness alone. O mortal languors, youth in ruins and repine, No longer aught ye hold but vanity and dust! True pleasure's dead and nought is left of Love but lust; Alas, we have forsworn the passion all-divine ! LECONTE DE LISLE. 215 Henceforward for what God salt shall we burn and bran? With the symbolic wine what ruined altar wet? For whom henceforth shall we with lyres prophetic set A-beating one same heart in universal man? What flood shall lave the stains our sterile souls upon? What sun shall warm again the world already old And ripen once again the glorious sheaves of gold, Which in the virile hands of ancient nations shone? O justice, freedom, faith, o love of fair and true, Tell, tell us that your hour is yet our trials' goal And that the Lover-God, vowed to the widowed soul, Will yet, after three days, come forth the tomb anew! Shake off the thrall of sloth; awake your ancient fires; Cause ye the sap to run in these dry veins of ours; Let glitter in our eyes, beneath the myrtle-flowers, An unexpected sword, as in Athene's choirs. Or else, exhausted earth, wherein nought germeth more, That may avail to feed the hope of good to come, Die, then ! Prolong no more thine anguish grim and dumb ! Return to Being's flood and there sleep evermore. And ye, that yet upon the ages' dust-heap lie, Men, to man's heaped-up ills heirs, with the crumbling clods Of this dead globe of yours and your evanished Gods, Fly, at the wild winds' will, vile dust unvalued, fly ' THE BIRDS OF PREY. I sat alone on the virgin snow, In face of the Gods, on the old hill-head, And saw upmount, in the golden glow, The companies of the glorious dead. ■ I 2i6 LECONTE DE LISLE. The glad hymn rose from the earth below, Forgotten long of the world misbred; The chains of Jupiter, row on row Of gold, the earth to the heavens wed. But you, o passions, black birds of prey, You've driven my dreams and my joys away. I fall from heaven and cannot die: Your bloody claws, in my live flesh thrust. With wish and agony still me ply; And still you say to me, "Live thou must!" REQUIES. An exile sad, afar from those I loved of yore. The sweet days of my life behind me, with slow feet, I leave, th'enchanted land which I shall see no more. Upon the hill-top high, whereas the two ways meet, I stay my steps and watch, upon th'horizon steep, My last hopes disappear; and bitter tears I weep. Trust in thy mute distress, sad soul; it speaketh sooth; Nought shall reflower for thee, thy heart nor yet thy youth, At the remembrance dire of thy felicities. Toward the coming woes turn rather, turn thy sight And suffer sink again in their eternal night The happiness and love that have not brought thee ease. The time hath not fulfilled its promises divine; These ruins never green shall wax again of thine. Yield up their ashes dead unto oblivion's wind. To thy supreme repose submit without delay And (live one in the shade entombed) bear in mind That there's no living thing that loveth thee to day. LECONTE BE LISLE. 217 Life on this fashion is; need must thou it aby; The weak endure and weep; the foolish rail at fate; The wise man at it laughs, as knowing he must die. Back to the silent tomb, man's refuge soon or late, And there, without concern of heaven or earth or sea, Unhappy one, repose, for all eternity! THE RAVINE ST. GILLES. » The gorge is full of shade, which, 'neath the bamboos tall, The sun at zenith ne'er hath breached with burning ray ; The drip of filtering springs, that trickle from the wall. Alone the silence hot invades of middle day. From out the lava hard, with fissures full of moss. The water ripples through the lichens out of sight; Then, making for itself new issues, up across The bottom wells and winds among the gravel white. A tarn of sombre blue there lies, in stern repose, Sullen and sad, what while, along the massy rocks. The trailing creepers hang their bells of white and rose. Among the velvet swards that intersperse the blocks. Upon the jutting shelves, whereas the cactus blooms, Strayed from the vetivers ^ unto the aloe-crests, The cardinal-bird, proud of his resplendent plumes. Harries the humming-birds within their downy nests. From the high mountain-peaks the gold-billed kingfishers And parrots green look down upon the sleeping lake; And in a whorl of gold, a flight of bees one hears About the sombre hives unceasing wheel and shake. 1 A ravine in the Isle de Bouibon (or Reunion.) 2 Vetiver.^ih.e Indian aromatic cuscus grass (Andropogon muricatus.) 2i8 LECONTE DE LISLE. Blowing their steaming breath above the shrubs and bent, That overrun the paths suspended to the hills, Great Tamatava beeves, ^ robust and indolent, Snuff up the gullies' air, laved by the running rills. While the pink grasshoppers, in their familiar flight. And the great butterflies, with many-coloured wings. On their pacific loins and callous humps alight, By thousands, unaffrayed by the tails' flourishings. The supple lizard, drunk with drowsiness, one sees Lie yonder on the slope, whereas the lightnings run; And bytimes, with a thrill as overcome of ease. He wrinkles up his back of emerald in the sun. About the mossy dens, whereas the quails replete. Shunning the noonday blaze of the savannas, sleep. Gliding with velvet tread upon their furtive feet And eyes with greed half-shut, the prowling wildcats creep. And some black, seated on a block of lava there, (Keeper of the beeves that crop the bitter grass is he) A red rag round his loins, a Sakalava air ^ Hums and of the Great Isle ' dreams, looking on the sea. So, upon either marge of the ravine profound. At one same moment, ray and sing and dream and hum All things that in the world of vision are and sound : But there form, colour, noise, to ending brusquely come. ' Tamatava beeves.^ oxen from Madagascar. 2 A Sakalava air^ i. e. a native melody of the Malagasy tribe so called. " The Great Isle^ Madagascar. LECONTE BE LISLE. 219 Lower, all's mute and black, within th'abyss's gloom, Since erst the mountain vast emerged from ocean blue, Roaring and spouting jets of steam and sulphurous spume, And penetrating heaven, repose and quiet knew. Scarcely an opening space of blue and sparkling light Suffers one see, against a stretch of heaven clear, Tow'rd Rodrigue ' and Ceylon, the tropic-birds in flight, Like flakes of snow, dispersed in azure far and near. Beyond this luminous point, that trembles on the tide, The gully sleeps in night immoveable, profound; And when a loosened rock falls from the mountain-side. It cannot waken there an echo of its sound. Nature, for him who knows to penetrate thy soul, Thy surface falsehood is; illusions lap thee round; At bottom of thy rage, as of thy joy and dole, No passion in thy strength, nor love nor hate, is found. Happy who hath, like thee, mid sobs and laughs and hates, A heart impassive, deaf and blind to worldly stress, Full of indifference dumb to human hopes and fates, A gulf inviolate of mute forgetfulness. Life palpitates in vain this sombre heart around. Dumb as a hermit sunk in his divine desire; Nought in its shadow wakes an echo without bound. Where nought of heav'n there shines, except one shaft of fire. Yet this scant light, that's true to this nonentity, The distant reflex is of other worlds more fair; It is the lightning flash, Eternal Hope, of thee. That wakes him in his tomb and bids him otherwhere. 1 Rodrigue, i. e. the British Island of Rodriguez, to the North of Mauritius. 2 20 LECONTE DE LISLE. MOONRISE. Calm is the sea-scape, grey, immense; The eye in vain would it survey; Nothing commences, nothing ends; It neither night is neither day. No surge with foamy fringes breaks; No stars there be in heaven's height; Nought is extinguished, nought awakes And space is neither dark nor light. Ospreys, gulls, petrels, all are fled: Upon these tranquil solitudes. Wherein no porpoise shows his head, A vague deep weariness there broods. No sound of voice, no breath that blows : The keel, the lazy swell that rides, Forth of the water dull scarce shows • The copper of its shining sides ; And where the sea the hencoops laves. The men on watch, with dreaming eyes, Gaze, without seeing, on the waves. That rise and fall and fall and rise. But, in the East, a milky sheen, As of a shower of ashes fine, Upon th'horizon shed, is seen. Emerging from the far sky-line. It floats in shimmering silver skeins, Dispersed and spread, alow, aloft ; Eddies, falls back again and rains Its mist diaphanous and soft. LECONTE DE LISLE. 221 A pale fire shines, unfurled on high; The quivering ocean opens wide, And in the pearly-coloured sky, The moon mounts slowly o'er the tide. THE VIRGIN FOREST. Since the primaeval day, when first from seed it grew. The forest without end its surging waves of leaves, Like to a sombre sea, with some vast sigh that heaves, With puissant arm prolongs into th'horizon blue. Man was not yet upon the soil convulsive bred, When it, already, it, a thousand centuries old, With its repose, its shade, its anger, had in hold A vast tract of the globe, yet uninhabited. In the vertiginous course of the unresting days. From the wide waters' breast, under the radiant skies. It hath, one after one, seen continents arise And others sink afar, like dreams, beneath the haze. The flaming summer-days on it have shed their sheen; The raging winds have tossed and blown and battered it : The levin-stroke upon its ragged stems hath bit; In vain; the invincible hath still again grown green. It rolleth, bearing on its gorges and its caves, Its moss-clad rocks, its lakes with misted, bristling shores, Where, in the sombre nights, the alligator roars Mid the thick reeds, with eyes dull-shining through the waves; Its yelling monstrous-paunched gorillas and its broods Of elephants, with skin cracked like some age-old bark. That with their puissant gait break down the trellis dark. Intoxicated with the horror of the woods ; 22 2 LECONTE DE LISLE. Its surly buffaloes, flat-fronted, to the eyes Buried in the deep mud of the great water-holes; Its lions ruddy-maned, with eyes like blazing coals And tails that sweep away the strident swarms of flies; Its monstrous rivers full, wide-wandering, profound. Fallen from the distant peaks, without or name or shore. Their wild and foaming tides that brusquely turn and pour From gulf to farther gulf with one resistless bound: And from the rocks, the sands, from gorge and glade and dell, From bush and herb and tree, from gully, glen and shore. Incessantly there soars and swells the ancient roar, Which hath fore'er exhaled its breast imperishable. The ages pass and nought hath breached it any what; Nought its immortal strength exhausted hath a whit; Nay, needs, to make an end, must earth, from under it Crumbling, in pieces fall, as 'twere a broken pot. Wait not its term; but of to-morrow be afraid, O forest! This old globe to live hath many a day. O dam of lions, death for thee is on the way; The axe unto the root of this thy pride is laid. Upon this burning shore, where, bending o'er the sand Their green primaeval domes, thy thickset clumps of trees Vast blocks of shadow cast, light-circled, where one sees Thy pensive elephants in meditation stand, Like an irruptive swarm of ants a-wayfaring. That, crushed and burned, fare on their foreappointed ways, The waster of the woods, king of the latter days, Man of the pallid face, the waves to thee shall bring. LECONTE DE LISLE. 223 So long will he have gnawed and pillaged to the last The world wherein there swarms his never-sated race, That to thy swelling paps, whence life yet flows apace. He, in his hunger, will, and in his thirst, cleave fast. Thy baobabs will he uproot, to serve his needs; To thy subjected floods will he appoint a bed; And thy most puissant sons and daughters will in dread Flee from this worm of earth, more weakly than thy weeds. Surelier than lightning-bolts, a-wandering in thy tracks. His torch shall kindle plain and valley, hill and heath; Yea, thou shalt in the wind evanish of his breath And his work shall upon thy sacred ashes wax. No more sonorous sounds amid th'abysmal halls; Laughters and noises vile, cries of despair and crime ; No aisles of leafage more, with shadow-deeps sublime; Only a black ant-swarm 'twixt black and hideous walls. But thou, without regret, mayst slumber out thy term Within that pregnant night, where all must redescend: Thine ashes tears and blood shall water and at end Thou from our ashes shalt again, o forest, germ ! THE BERNICA. » Hidden in the mountain-side, between two clifi"-walls high. There is a wild, — to dreams a hospitable, — spot, Which but few guests hath seen, since made were earth and sky : There mounts not thereunto the ocean's murmurous sigh Nor hum of men ; and there the world may be forgot. ^ A ravine in the He de Bourbon (or Reunion), the well-known island in the Indian Ocean between Mauritius and Madagascar, where the poet was born and where he passed the first 28 or 29 years of his life. 2 24 LECONTE DE LISLE. Lianas in the air their bells of gold and green Hang, where the drones, full gorged with honey, squat and sleep ; The place against approach thick aloe-hedges screen; And there the waters live, that well the rocks between, Still, with their babbling tune, the echoes busy keep. When daybreak round the hills its rosy fillet binds. The cloistered Paradise with perfumed verdures filled, As 'twere a censer cast upon the morning winds. To greet the sun, the peaks with mists of violet winds. From out its deeps in whorls of fragrant coolth distilled. When noon from the clear skies pours down its lava white, Passage to nought thereof the thickset trees accord, Save some few scattered flecks, mere diamonds of light, That, by the twining boughs diverted left and right. Go with their flakes of fire to strew the sombre sward. Bytimes, with pricked-up ears, from out the neighbouring brake. Eyes on the watch, cocked head and flanks with dew bestrewn, Some wandering mountain-goat its errant way doth make And at the clefts, half-choked with fronds, its thirst to slake. Stands with all four feet poised upon some trembling stone. A world of birds abides and flutters from the trees Unto the mossgrown rocks and herbage flower-beseen ; Those in the brooks theirbreastsof emerald bathe and these Themselves, their plumage dried against the warmer breeze, Beside the chirping nests, with fragile bills do preen. All sudden choral bursts and ditties without end It is; long warblings mixed with greetings bird to bird; Now love-complaints it is, with laughters that contend: Yet all these harmonies so softly, natheless, blend, The quiet of the air thereby is never stirred. LECONTE DE LISLE. 225 But the soul therewithal possessed is utterly; Sunk in the lovesome peace of that world of delight, It feels itself, in turn, bird, flower, light, water, bee; It dons again thy robe, primaeval purity, And silently itself reposes on God's might. ULTRA COELOS. Erst, when the fiery swarm of my first dreams o'erflowed And soared in whirling clouds from the glad heart of mc, When on the beaches' sands long bedded I abode, My face to heav'n upturned, to hcav'n and liberty; When, laden with the scents of the high solitudes, The cool breath of the night passed in the drowsing air. Whilst slowly to and fro, in its serener moods, On melancholy wise, the calm sea murmured there; When the mute stars, in heav'n crossing their flaming glaives, Incessantly upthrust from Space's endless mine. Rained down, as 'twere a hail of gold, upon the waves. Or rose again to swim in th'azure sea divine; When, bent o'er Life's unknown abysses yawning-lipped. With fearful joyance thrilled and yearningful unease, The shadows, in desire unquenchable, I clipped Of all the goods which I have ne'er availed to seize ; t)^ Nights of my natal skies, breath of the hill-tops green. Dim woodland shades, with one long sighing murmur filled. And you, ye starry worlds, that burned in heav'n serene. And waves, that sang, anigh in slumber to be stilled; O raptures of the sense, magnetic vertigoes, Wherein one sinks, devoid of voice and fear and wit, Joys of the old ascetes, inert, in mute repose, Wide-eyed, in the wood-deeps an hundred years a-sit; II. '5 2 26 LECONTE DE LISLE. Nature ! Immensities so tranquil and so fair, August abyss, where sleeps oblivion divine, In your immortal peace vAiy did you not whilere Plunge me, or e'er I knew of suif 'ranee or repine ? Letting at hazard err this body of an hour, Tossed on the common stream of dull humanity, Why, Nature, bor'st thou not therefrom the soul in flower, In thine impassiv^e sea of beauty lost to be? I had not felt the load of the funereal years; Victor nor vanquished, sad nor glad, through joy and pine. Through light I had not passed and darkness, smiles and tears. Blind as a very God; I had not lived in fine. But 'tis not thou, alas ! O Nature, that love we ; It is not thou our hearts that makest weep and bleed; Our cries of love and hate unhearkened are of thee ; Nor yet, whilst dazzling us, dost thou from us recede. Thy chalice ever-filled too near is to our lips; Desire's embittered cup it is for which we sigh; Hope's fatal clarion 'tis our blood to fever whips, Still sounding in our ears, "Up ! On ! More far ! More high ! "Whirl on, for ever on, sad slaves of hopes and fears! "Halt not, ye wandering ghosts, stay not your bleeding feet ! "Th'unending stairs of gold scale ever of the spheres ! "O hearts, with sobs o'erfiUed, in other bosoms beat!" 'Twas not thy song sublime, eternal Solitude, To which I hearkened erst, in youth's enchanted land; The other voice it was, that, with its clangours rude. Goaded the dreaming boy, couched on the desert sand. LECONTR DE LISLE. 227 'Tis it that in my heart vibrates and echoes still, As 'twere a battle-call unto a conflict new. Ay, thou sonorous voice, thy hest obey we will, Whereby the soaring soul the black tomb breaketh through. Yea, unto suns afar our chains let us go show; Let us go fight again, think, suffer, love and sigh. And draining to the dregs the cup of human woe. Live let us, since forget we may not neither die. STAR-SET. Fall, o pearls loosened from their thread, Fall, pallid stars, into the sea ! A web of mistwreaths rosy-red Emerges from the horizon free. To Eastward, full of flakes of light. The glad wind's pinions skim and smite The tide, that glitters fitfully. Fall, o immortal pearls of night, Fall, pallid stars, into the sea! Sink, through the cool and sparkling foam. In ocean's dim mysterious deeps. The lances of the light strike home Upon the mountains' radiant steeps; A thousand cries, for morning new. Rise from the forests drenched with dew: A choral tide to heaven upleaps. Sink, tears distilled from heaven's blue. In ocean's dim mysterious deeps! Flee, melancholy stars, begone, O Paradises yet afar! The rosy-fingered laughing Dawn Comes glittering on her mounting car. 228 LECONTE DE LISLE. She decks herself with gentle glow And all the emerald deeps below With showers of golden flakes doth star. Flee, worlds of light where the souls go, O Paradises still afar! Go, stars, unto the dulcet nights. Unto the silent Western skies. Upon the valleys and the heights The fierce sun looks with flaming eyes. Stags, in the forest openings. Are bathing at the troubled springs: The human noises, waxing, rise. Begone, o white-faced wanderUngs, Unto the silent Western skies! Happy your traces who ensue, O lamps that pour oblivion down ! Sad tapers, happy who, like you, In dark illimitable drown ! These hasten unto peace amain, All that was man fordone, heart, brain. Hate, love, tears, anger, smile and frown. Eternal silence on us rain, O lamps that pour oblivion down! AFTER A THOUSAND YEARS. The hoarse resounding roar of the sea full of gloom Went muttering through the night, deep in the gorges dim. And with dishevelled hair, like phantasms of doom. Great mist-wreaths ran along the promontories' rim. The howling wind broke up the dark to writhing groups, Beating them 'gainst the peaks to pieces with its wings, And drunk, into the waves voracious swept the troops Of bulls, that filled the air with funeral bellowings. LECONTE DE LISLE. 229 As it some monster vast, grim, epileptic, were, With bristles up on end and slaver all a-fume, The mountain, highupreared in the delirious air, On frightful fashion groaned, its flanks all white with [spume. I hearkened with delight those voices of despair. O youth, o visions bright and sacred, o desires, Your melodies divine sang in the sonorous air. As 'twere a trumpet choir, that hailed the daybreak-fires. Forth of th'infernal gulf, nought leaving there of me, Those fevers and those cries, those agonies above, My panting soul fled up, with one wing-stroke, to thee, O glory, to thy smile, to thine aroma, Love! The formidable night cried with its voice of dread, "Life sweet is; its shut gate do open with thy stress!" And to me, with its fierce death-rattle, the wind said, "Adore ! Absorb thyself in Nature's loveliness !" Athwart the ages, lone, after a thousand years, To those glad hours, behold, o horror! I come back; And nothing now but sobs dehrious meets my ears And but the sombre rout I see of the cloud-rack. A LAST MEMORY. Lived have I and am dead. Inert and open-eyed, In th'incommensurable abyss, unseeing aught. Slow as an agony, heavy as a crowd, I glide. Adown a tunnel dark, pale and devoid of thought, Hour by hour, day by day, year by year, I descend. Athwart thTmmutable, the Dumb, the Black, the Nought. 230 LECONTE DE LISLE. I dream and feel no more. Th'approof is at an end. What, then, was Life? And was I young or old ? Joy, woe, Sun, love, hope, fear ! Nought, nought ! Hence, flesh forsaken, wend! The void is in thine eyes: sink lower and more low. Oblivions thick and yet more thick about thee cling. Can't be I dream? No, no, I'm dead, 'Tis better so. And yet this ghost, this cry, this gruesome suffering? To me it must have happed in far antiquity. O night of nothingness, take me! Sure is the thing; Some one my heart devoured hath: I remember me. IN EXCELSIS. Higher than th'eagle's self, familiar of the cloud, Man, upward strive and soar in the resplendent light. The grey old earth below grows smaller and less loud. Mount ! Mount ! The clear abyss opes to thy puissant flight The surges of the sky, that the sun scourgeth sore; The distant globe below recedes into the night. Mount ! The light trembles still and pales; the sky grows frore; A sullen twilight's floods the immensity embrace; Mount, mount and lose thyself in darkness evermore. A gulf, black, boundless, calm, devoid of time and place; Evanishment entire of matter out of sight In th'inenarrable blank cecity of Space. Soul! mount thou, in thy turn, toward the only Light; Beneath thee suffer all the ancient torches die; Mount where the Source ofFire still welleth whole and bright! LECONTE DE LISLE. 231 Up, up, from dream to dream, from higher to most high ! To scale its topmost stair, the ladder infinite. Spurn thou the Gods that in their sacred cerecloths lie. Th'Intelligible here ceaseth and after it Anguish and self-contempt, remorse, gloom, followeth And the submission wild of genius to unwit. And thou, o Light, where, then, art thou ? Belike, in death. THE SPECTRES. I. Three household spectres haunt my hours of gloom and For evermore, without surcease, continually, [strife: They pass athwart the shades of the dream of my life. With anguish at my heart and trembling, them I see; Mute, as behoveth souls, each other they ensue; My heart, to name them, bleeds and straitened is on me. Those deep, magnetic eyes, they pierce me through and [through, Keener than any sword, and all my flesh invade; The marrow of my bones is frozen thereunto. A bitter smile from their mute lips doth never fade; Far on a wintry way, with breres and ruins rife, They draw me, 'neath the dull and lowering heavens' shade. Three household spectres haunt my hours of gloom and strife. II. These spectres! One would deem them corpses, verily, So livid is their face, so pale their hands and cold: Natheless, they live; and they are my remorses three. 232 LECONTE DE LISLE. Why cannot I thought's tide turn back and backward hold And in the vengeful pit of black oblivion Drown the rememorance of ecstasies of old? The torch extinguished is the ruined altars on; The perfumes spent, wherewith ye filled me heretofore; All, smoke and dust, fore'er is buried deep and gone. Nought of so many flowers divine will blossom more ; For, without over-stress, alas ! the sap drained ye Of the celestial rose, its roots in sunder shore. These spectres! One would deem them corpses, verily. III. The three are there that fix on me their burning gaze. Of Paradises lost the sun again I see. And singing, sacred hope its wings for flight essays. And you, tow'rd whom, erewhen, my wild desires did flee, Speak to me, cherished souls, you that I loved so dear! Will you ne'er render back the blisses due to me? In that love's name, wherewith you charmed were whileare, Suffer me, as of yore, bask in your radiant eyes; Your perfumed locks let down upon my bosom sere. But, whilst the sombre night grips hold upon the skies, Erect and outlined clear against the earthly haze. Behold, before me, white, they stand on silent wise. The three are there, that fix on me their burning gaze. IV. Right, o my heart, alas! it is, the dogma dread. The golden dreams in vain their idle philtres pour; In the cup, where thou drink'st, a secret poison's shed. LECONTE DE LISLE. 333 Each man, since Time began, his viewless hairshirt wore; And in the golden midst of our felicity, Desire's fell wasp revives our suff 'ranee evermore. Beneath its irksome stress forever quake shall we? Shall we not from our flank pluck out this torturing dart, Nor in this world nor yet in our eternity? The old illusion preys upon our inmost part; Life's bondman never may his prison-sill o'ertread And Nature the immense the wasp hath at her heart. Right, o my heart, alas! it is, the dogma dread. THE LAST VISION. A silence without end hangs in the stirless air; The snow, in hills and knolls heaped by a bygone breeze. In its strait winding-sheet enwraps the frozen seas; The surface of the earth is absolutely bare. No cities: Time hath worn their fundaments away: In crumbling heaps they lie, by ivy-roots deformed; Of places, where of yore the human ant-heaps swarmed. No fragment that might speak and that "I was" might say. No murmurous forests more, no oceans wind-o'erblown ; The human race and all the beasts, in very deed. The cup drained to the dregs have of the curse decreed; Accomplished are the times and things are silent grown. Lamplike upon an old sepulchral altar wrought, Whose flickering radiance wanes and pales for age and dearth Of oil, the sun upon the desert of the earth, Weary and moribund, looks down and seeth nought. 234 LECONTE DE LISLE. A monster hath devoured all life, insatiable. Resplendent stars of heav'n above, bear witness, ye ! Your turn to tremble 'tis; for here, on earth and sea. At least, the abhorrent ghoul hath filled his hunger fell. Virtue and pain and thought, hope and remorse and dread, Love, at ore pinion-stroke that didst the world o'erflit. Where are ye? And the soul, what have they done with it? What with thee, silent flame, o spirit of the dead? All disappeared, without an echo or a trace ! Gone, with the memory fair of the young world in bloom! The centuries have sealed, within the selfsame tomb, Illusion the divine and din of race and race. O sun, the friend antique beloved of bards of old. Sire of the woods and dews, the blossoms and the corn, Do out incontinent, do out thy flames outworn, Like to some shepherd's fire upon the heights grown cold ! Why tarriest thou? The earth is all dried up and dead. Do thou as she; go, die! What booteth thee live on? The worlds, that once upon thy golden girdle shone, As dust in space dispersed, to all the winds are shed. You, too, from hour to hour, fallen from your heavenly place, You, too, bewildered swarms of stars, shall on like wise Drown in th'abysses black and silent of the skies, In the immeasurable astoniment of space. And it the blank blind Night, the sea without a shore Of Shadow, in its void and its sterility, Shall be, th 'abyss of peace, where lies the vanity Of that which Time and Space and Number was of yore. LECONTE DE LISLE. DEAD DREAMS. »35 Behold, yon sea so calm, like a vast battering ram. The promontories' flanks belaboured yesterday; Raging, by leaps and bounds, it scaled their smoking dam And poured upon the rocks, that yelled, but gave not way, Its hosts of surges black, with manes of clotted spray. A gentle breeze, to day, fares fluttering o'er the tide, Whose waters in the sun's upmounting beauty shine; And tow'rd th'horizon pure, whereas the vessels ride, A whirling cloud of birds, from the blue mountain-side Emerging^ overwings th'immensity divine. * But, by the pointed reefs, among the tangled weed, Those, whom the hurricane's mad onslaught smote and killed, Under the ponderous surge lie livid and a-bleed, Their open mouths with sobs of agony yet filled. And stare, with haggard eyes, athwart the tide sleep-stilled. O friend, thy heart profound is like unto yon sea, That on the smoothen sand its long volutes uncoils; Like the abyss, it raged and thundered hath in thee; An hundred times, against the rocks, unreckingly, A whole day long 't hath dashed itself of frenzied toils. Appeased, now, it ebbs, no longer at its height, Without wish or desire to see the storm come back, Beneath th'immortal sun, scarce throbbing in the light: But genius, hope and love and strength and youth, alack, Lie dead there in the foam and the blood of the fight. 236 LECONTE DE LISLE. THE DEATH OF ADAM. Cain over the world's face went wandering far and wide; Eve in the silent earth slumbered; and Seth, he who Her latest born one was, in Hebron waxed and grew. Adam, like a tree, by Time lopped of its leafy pride. Languished beneath the load of ages old and new. Alas! no more the Man, in his primseval sheen, As Jahveh made him erst for happiness, was he, Puissant and calm and strong, with beauty male beseen, New flesh, wherein the soul, in virgin light serene, Before the vision flowered of Immortality, Th'irreparable fall and misery and age Had sapped his sinewy arms, had bowed his back upright And on his bended head had streaked his hair with white ; Such was the Man, the sad and dolorous last stage Of Adam, that had been like angels of the Light. For many a winter sere, for many a summertide. Upon the cavern-sill he sat, as if asleep, Ensepulchred within oblivion's silent deep, What while the sun and snow his wrinkles multiphed And weariness its watch upon his brows did keep. Whiles, "Son of the Most High," Seth to his father said, "Lo, with our cattle's milk the cedar overflows; Thy couch of skins and grass waits in the cavern-close. Come ! E'en the lion's self hath gotten him to his bed." But Adam still abode plunged in his grim repose. One evening he arose. The sun and shadows strove Upon th'horizon, streaked with light-rays in the West; The giant forests sighed upon the breeze's breast And the beasts moaned and roared within the sombre grove. He scaled the desert rocks of Hebron's mighty crest. LECONTE DE LISLE. 237 High o'er the floating sounds of the wide night below, There, Eden's ancient guest, couched among stone and wliin, His eyes on the black East, felt his sad heart within The heavy burden wax of all the suffered woe, Abel and Eve and Cain and the eternal sin; Eve, th'inexpressible love of his youthful days. By whom, except that love, all changed was 'neath the sky, And the fierce boy, with blood fraternal warm. A cry The Man gave of despair, beneath the thick cloud-haze. And like to Eve and like to Abel, yearned to die. He lifted up his arms toward th'evanished place. Whereas his distant day of happiness first soared To light, when he as yet th'envenomed fruit ignored, And with a puissant voice lost in the eternal space, Mute for an hundred years, cried, "Mercy ! Mercy, Lord ! Mercy ! I suffered have so much ! So many tears I've shed. Lord, and so sore am wounded, foot and knee. Elohim ! Elohim ! Remember you of me ! Body and soul, I've bled so long beneath your spears That to your blows I soon insensible shall be. Garden of the Lord, Eden, place of delight, Where Eva loved to sit upon the sward divine, Thou, that to-her-ward didst, o censer live, incline Thy thousand cups of balm, exhaling for the night, When the sun swam in mists upon the red sky-line ! Fair lions innocent, that slept beneath the palm. Eagles and doves, that through the woods did sporting fleet, Ye sacred floods and you, angels with voices sweet, That did to us descend athwart the heavens calm, 1 greet you all ! You all, for one last time, I greet ! 238 LECONTE DE LISLE. Greeting, black rocks and caves, where slumbers, lapt about In night immutable, all that to me was dear! Hebron ! Mute witness thou of this mine exile drear, Grim spot, where, watching erst the dreadful vigil out, Eve wept her womb's best fruits, outstretched upon the bier ! And now, to Thee, o Lord, that life to me didst lend, Repenting of the crime of birth, I cry to Thee ! Mercy! I vanquished am. Lord, let me pardoned be! Thou hast so much from me ta'en back ! Lord, make an end ! Take back the light of day that Thou hast given me !" Scarce had he spoken thus, when from the clouds there leapt A mighty wind, that blew from all th'horizons four, Unto the very sward the haughty trees down bore And as they were but dust, off at a venture swept. The great rocks from the crests of the high mountains tore. And from the desert grim and from the sombre space, A multiple vast sob arose on every side, An endless choir immense, that "Greeting, father !" cried. "We are thy sin; we are thy punishment, thy race. Die! We shall live." And struck with terror, Adam died. VOX CLAMANTIUM. A mist of tears blots out the world from heaven's sight; A plaint at base of all the rumours is of night, A lamentation vast of sufferings unknown. That mounteth from the earth and in the clouds doth moan, Sigh of the globe that fares the eternal ways of space. Still by the sigh effaced that heaves the human race. Grim dolour of mankind, o voice of sombre dearth. Voice puissant over all the voices of the earth. Cry of the spirit, sob of souls in agony. Who can unthrilled with love and pity hearken thee? LECONTE DE LISLE. 239 Who but o'er thee must weep, weakness magnanimous? Soul, by a goad divine that's spurred and wounded thus, Thou that thyself ignor'st and never yet hast found, Ne'er setting to desire impossible a bound, That, in the human night, which hath no morning-time, Clippest the Infinite but in a dream sublime. Greedy of light, athirst for beauty and for grace, O dol'rous soul, offborne in everlasting space. That from the heights divine, where all that lives is fain Its origin to seek, still fallest back again. That groanest, with affright o'ercome and agony, O vanquished victor, who, who would not weep for thee? SONNETS. I. THE DEATH OF THE LION. A hunter old, athirst for th'open air and fain To drink the blood of beeves, it was his habitude To measure from on high the ocean and the plain And roar his fill in peace, free in his solitude. Now, like a soul condemned, a-stray in hell's domain. For the inept delight of the vile multitude, Within his cage he came and went and came again. Against the iron bars beating his forehead rude. Then, seeing that, in fine, no change there was to think In that his horrid lot, he ceased to eat and drink. Incontinent, and death bore off his spirit stern. O soul of mine, that art fore'er rebellion's prey, That, panting, in the cage of this vile world dost turn. Why dost thou not as did this lion, coward, say? 2. TO THE DEAr>. The apotheosis past and past the gemonies, Marked with the selfsame seal for blind oblivion's greed. 240 LECONTE DE LISLE. Dumb multitudes, vain names and ended pedigrees, Leaves of the noble oak or of the humble weed, Ye, of whom none hath known the sombre agonies, Ye, whom the sacred fire did from the cradle lead, Cowards, saints, heroes, brutes and noble geniuses, Ye that, in nameless heaps, the ages' dunghill feed. Grim squadrons of the dead, I envy you to-day, If, whilst the immensities of Space to life are prey. Leaving to wretched heirs your miseries to fall, For ever you enjoy, freed from the bonds of birth, Th'irrevocable peace, unknown of this our earth. And if th'eternal Night still hold you, all in all ! 3. FIAT NOX. Death, universal Death, is like the ocean-tide. That, without haste or truce, come tempest, come sun-gleam, Swelling and murmuring, floods the beaches far and wide And o'er the high-built rocks doth morn and even stream. If but brief time the joys of this vain world abide And if the day of woe an age unending seem. When our tired feet upon this gulf divine betide. Both happiness and woe the dreams are of a dream. And thou, o heart of man, thou martyr born to woe. Whom love and hate, in turn, devour, that wouldest fain Be free and yet art doomed fore'er to hug thy chain. Look ! The flood mounts and comes to whelm thee in its flow : Soon quenched will be thy hell : the black tide will, like wine, Th'oblivion pour for thee of that its shade divine. 4. TO A POET DEAD. Thou, whose unresting eyes, still thirsting for the light. From colour the divine to form immortal flew. And from the living flesh to heaven's resplendent blue. Sleep in peace in the tomb which seals thy lids with night ! But wind and smoke and dust are hearing, feeling, sight; LECONTE DE LISLE. 2^1 Love's golden cup contains but gall for old and new: Ev'n as a weary God to th 'altar bids adieu, To matter vast return and be dispersed outright ! Upon thy rotting bones and on thy silent bier Let others come or not to shed th'accustomed tear. Whether thy trivial age belaurel thee or not, I envy thee, within the calm black tomb, that thou, Enfranchised fore'er of life, ignorest now The horror and the shame of thought and being man. 5. TO THE MODERNS. Ye live on coward wise, without dream or design, Older, decrepiter than is th'infecund earth. By the assassin age castrated from your birth Of every passion deep and every thought divine. Void is your brain, as void as is your heart, in fine, And eke you have befouled this world of little worth With such corrupted blood and such a breath of dearth That death alone may germ from out its mud and brine. God-murderers, men, the times undistant are, when, rolled Together in some coign, upon a heap of gold, Having the fostering earth even to the granite pilled. Unknowing what to do with days, nights, life or dream. Drowned in the boundless blank of weariness supreme. You'll drop and die like brutes, with all your pockets filled. 6. THE DEATH OF THE SUN. The wind of autumn, like the sea's far sound, doth fare. Of solemn farewells full and plaints of unknown woe, Down the dim avenues, slow swaying to and fro The trees red with the blood of the sun dying there. The leaves, in whirling swarms, go fluttering through the air; And one sees oscillate upon the vermeil flow. To sleep, with nighing night, inclining soft and slow. Great nests, with purple tinct, among the branches bare. II. 16 242 LECONTE DE LISLE. Sink, glorious planet, source and flambeau of the day ! Thy glory from thy wounds in sheets of gold doth flow, As from some puissant breast a love supreme doth ray. Die ! Thou shalt live again. The hope is sure. But, oh ! Who shall the life and flame and voice and hope restore Unto the broken heart, that's dead for evermore? 7. THE ECCLESIAST. "More worth a living dog," quoth he, th'Ecclesiast hight, "Is than a lion dead. Certes, wealth, worship, gold, "Love, all is shade and smoke: the world is very old "And Life's blank nothingness fills up the tomb's black night." Thus, in the nights antique, upon his turret's height, Over the face of heaven, before his eyes unrolled. Letting his vision range, in silence far and cold. Sombre, he dreamt upon his chair of ivory white. Old lover of the sun, that thus bewail'dst thee, know, Irrevocable death a lie is evenso; Happy who might therein for ever sunken be ! But I, without surcease and always, tranced with fear. With hate and horror drunk of immortality. The never-ending roar of Life eternal hear. 8. THE SHOWFOLK. Like some sad wretched beast, neck girded with the chain. Dust-covered, weary, bruised, the summer sun that bays, Let hawk his bleeding heart about thy cynic ways Who will, o common folk, carnivorous, profane ! To light a sterile fire within thine eye inane, To buy thy pity gross, thy laughter and thy praise. Let whoso hath a mind thereto the robe of rays Of pudour the divine and pleasure rend in twain ! Though in my silent pride, in my inglorious tomb. Consigned and banned I were to everlasting gloom, LECONTE DE LISLE. 243 To thee I will not sell my transports or my woes; I will not dance for thee upon thy common floors Nor to thy scofifs and gibes my life will I expose, Like those that serve thy lusts, thy mummers and thy whores. THE APOTHEOSIS OF MOUSA EL KEBIR. 1 Royal Damascus, 'neath the heavens clear and calm. In the enbalsamed plain, yet held of sleep in hold, Mid groves of carob-wood, of jessamine and palm. Mounts like a lily vast, fulfilled with dews of gold. A rain of rosy rays the Orient overflows; The turrets scintillate, the domes reflect the light; The breeze's joyous wing the odour of the rose Bears to old Lebanon, wet with the tears of night. All wakes ; the sparkling air with songs and wings throbs high ; The Syrian stallion rears and whinnies shrill and loud; And from the flat-topped roofs the storks survey the sky. Where, with a mighty bound, the sun leaps forth the cloud. Above the sycamores and the green mulberry-trees. From out the fretted crown of every minaret. Hark, the muezzins call upon the shrilling breeze, "To prayer ! To prayer ! For prayer than sleep is better yet !" Assmen and cameleers lead through the narrow ways Camels and onagers, heaped high with heavy loads; Rumours and calls and cries, confused, amid the maze, Still waxing, circulate of lanes, bazaars and roads. 1 i.e. Mousa the Great, Mousa ibn Nousir (640 — 717), the con- queror of Northern Africa and Spain. 244 LECONTE DE LISLE. Hebrews, with inkhorn girt and balances at side, Sellers of fruit, flowers, stuffs and amber come and go; And horsemen from the waste, with tall spears armed, that Among the howling dogs careering to and fro. [ride, Beaters of tambourines, players on pipe and horn. Emirs and mendicants, captives from foreign skies, And women on the backs of negroes Utter-borne, Athwart the veils of gauze darting their sparkling eyes. The multitude comes, goes, mingles and stirs, aflit. In particoloured streams, between the long white walls, Like to a moving sea and murmuring as it. What while the day mounts high in heaven's glittering halls And the hot radiance all the cloudless sky invades. The sun-dust fills the air with fire; all rumours cease; The small birds sleep beneath the scarcely-fluttered shades And in the thickened air the noontide burns in peace. The hour 'tis when, before the noontide sleep supine. The Khalif, coming forth the harem's scented gloom. Hearkens and judges, slays or pardons with a sign. Having aU, life and death and honour, at his doom. Behold, the Divan-door opens. From space to space, The verses of the Book, upon the walls inset, In characters of gold and crystal, interlace And all the panels, floor to ceiling, overnet, 'Neath the mail-shirt, with cloak of wool about them rolled And helm whence soars the spike, square-headed like a The Emirs of the East their lofty heads uphold, [spade, Round Suleiman the Proud, the holy Ommeyade. LECONTE DE LfSLE. 245 Th'Imams of Mecca there, immovable and grave, The green scarf folded round the shaven forehead, stanil And the chiefs of the tribes that track and hunt the slave, With arms by Egypt's sun of burning splendour tanned. Behind, against the gate, steel-clad, with high-held head, Are Ethiopians swart, who stand on silent wise. Spectres of men of war seeming, whose souls are dead, Save for the fleeting light that kindles in their eyes. Crossing his feet, encased in leather vermcil-dycd, The Khalif, with his arm upon the cushions leant, Hand to his sabre-hilt of gold, pearl-decked, applied, Sits, pondering, his soul on sombre schemes intent: For 'tis the time no more of greatnesses austere : The Cameleer divine ' and Ali the Upright, The Lion of the Lord, have left this earthly sphere, They that an inward heav'n erst harboured in the spright. Clement to those of them in fight that vanquished were, Amidst the lowly knelt, they pondered on the ground; The hair their camels bore, plaited and spun with prayer, — No purple twine, — their mild and manly foreheads bound. Alas! Away, away beyond the stars they 've hied; Their puissance unto vile inheritors they've left. If in eternal bliss and glory they abide, Dead are they for the world, the orphaned and bereft. The Ommeyade is gnawed with envy and suspect; His treasury with gold and gems o'erflowing is; But Avho shall tell the thirst unsatcd and unchecked. That holds a heart consumed with sordid avarice? ' i. e. Mohammed. 246 LECONTE DE LISLE. Th'Imperial Chamberlain, usher of the sill august, Whose hand the seal, the sword, the sceptre holds, three times Prostrated, saith, "Most Great and Most Severe, Most Just, "Protector of the Faith and Punisher of crimes, "Eye of the Glorified, Vicar of God on earth, "That swayst from East to West the world-all at thy will, "By force invincible and equity most worth, "Delight of the true man and terror of the ill ! "For that, as in the Book of Books it may be read, "Needs must a man account and render what he owes, "The man is here and waits to live or die. I've said." Suleiman, in response, a lifted finger shows. The silken curtain-folds forthright an eunuch drags Apart. A tall old man, bareheaded and with hands In fetters bound, barefoot and clad in mourning rags. Lean as an eagle old, upon the threshold stands. His beard, in heavy flakes, falls, whiter than the bells Of foam, that o'er the seas go wandering far and nigh. Upon his ample breast. Disdain his nostrils swells And in its socket deep kindles his haughty eye. A scar, that yet shows red, his wrinkled forehead graves. Traversing, from the skull to the right brow, the front. Which, proudly reared aloft, accusing envy braves, Indignant 'gainst unright and haughty 'neath affront. The men of Araby, Syria and Afric, all. To give him passage-way, divide on either hand; And he, inclining not his hero-stature tall. Before the Master's seat comes slowly to a stand. LECONTE DE LISLE. 247 This, blasted, fallen from the zenith of his dreams; That, in a bitter smile causing his teeth to shine; Like to the double flash that from two sabres gleams, The two men interchange their hate with blazing eyne. Then, to ignore the man pretending for disdain, Quoth Suleiman, "Who is this slave and what hath he Done?" "This a traitor is. Lord," saith the chamberlain; "Mousa ben Nousir hight. Regent of Barbary. Not content Africa to have oppressed and cast Th'Emirs, his peers, beneath his yoke usurped, o Lord, Without thine ordinance and signal, he hath past The ocean into Spain and 'gainst the Goths hath warred. Like to the vulture black, that doth his prey pursue, He with the miscreants' gold hath gorged him and their Christian idolatrous and unbelieving Jew [blood, Spoiling and robbing thus thy treasure and thy good. Breaking with treasonous hand the empire's unity, Drunken with pride, with greed and envy all possest, In hate of Him by whom breathes Islam, fain would he The Orient divide from the revolted West. Forgetting that he is but dust before thy gate, That one breath of thy mouth might scatter everywhit, His paltry fortune thus dreamed hath he to inflate Unto that height sublime whereas we see thee sit. And who knows, — for the A ccurs'd ' along the sombre way Doth each ambitious wight and wayward still mislead, — If God with heart and tongue the wretch did not unsay For the Son of the Maid* and his insensate creed? 1 i. e. Satan. 2 i. e. Christ. 248 LECONTE DE LISLE. If, those upraising whom he cast down yesterday, Unto his ill designs using these shameful means, His warrior comrades he would not have given for prey Unto the dogs of Jews and wolves of Nazarenes? Indeed, betraying thus the secret of their strife, Their crimes t'assure and so their nets the better spread, His son, Abdulaziz, hath he not ta'en to wife The widow of the king of Goths, at Xeres dead? But thou, thy reason high, o Lord, that stumbleth ne'er, Can put to nought the plots the infidel hath laid: The fox, o Khalif high, is fallen in the snare: Here is he. — Judge, absolve or doom him. — I have said." Old Mousa, thereupon, his chains' resounding weight Uplifting with his arms his rugged forehead o'er. Cried, "Shame upon the lie and silence on the hate "That on the honour spews of these my years fourscore ! "Praise be to the Most High, the One! But idle ghosts "Are we. He only lives, Immutable, Alone! "He looks upon mankind's innumerable hosts "And by His breath, like smoke, to all the winds they're blown. "Glory to Him, alone Eternal, the Most High, "Who the revolving heavens rolls in His hand profound ! "The perishable world to th'hour supreme doth hie; "But He the clarion shall of the Last Judgment sound. "Hearts shall lie bare before that eye sublime of His; "And on Sirat, ' the bridge sharper than razor-blade, "The just shall fare nor fall into the far abyss, "Like to a lightning flash that cleaves the night-thick shade. ' The bridge over which souls pass into the Muslim Paradise. LECONTE DE LISLE. 249 "Perfumed with nard and musk and benzoin, than the sun "In the auroral skies his wounds shall brightlicr shine; "iVllah for his charmed lips in heaven shall cause t(j run "Four rivers of sweet milk and honey and pure wine. "The maids of heav'n, brow-bound with roses never sere, "Whose eyes are brighter than the suns of summertide "And so soft that one glance from out their eyeballs clear "Would Satan bring again, submiss and jnirified, "The houris of the skies, whom nought impure molests, "White as the lily, pure as incense, there on high, "In their soft arms' embrace, upon their crystal breasts, "Shall still, without decline, his ardours multiply. "Moreover, beyond days and years and Time and Space, "In that unending bliss reserved for the redeemed, "The One, the Most High God, see shall he, face to face, "And that shall know which none conceived hath nor dreamed. "But, for the jackal vile, that comes to bite and rend "The bleeding lion old, on the brink of his tomb, "Him with his slaver fouls and ere his life's at end, "Devours him bit by bit, within the sheltering gloom; "The dastard, be he prince, lord, Khalif, who he may, "That pales, another's sheen of glory bright to see, "Satan the Stoned shall seize upon the wretch for prey "And on him for disgust and horror spit shall he. "What have I now, save nought, to say? My task is done: "Long days I've lived and now (it is the law) I die: "My blood, my life, God's self and His Accepted One » "All loudlier far for me than thunder make reply." ' Mohammed. 250 LECONTE DE LISLE. "Traitor! Take thou not thus the Holy Name in vain!" Quoth Suleiman. "Reply; confess thy felonies: "The twenty crowns of gold of the Goth kings of Spain, "The royal cities' spoils, what hast thou done with these ? "Lay silence insolent aside and sleight, thou knave. "The Emirs of the West do all thy guilt proclaim. "These treasures render up, thy scurvy life to save, "And in the desert sands begone and hide thy shame !" "Rather make them disgorge, yon troop of sordid slaves, "Who fatten on the spoil of kings and peoples' price," Quoth Mousa. "I have said my say. Sages and braves, — "This lesson learn from me, o Khalif, — speak not twice." Suleiman, pale with rage, arises from his seat; "Bind him, the traitor, face to tail upon an ass "And let the folk with stones and mire and hooting greet "The rascal, as with him along the streets ye pass. "A cord about his neck, an eunuch hold the wight "And on his flesh, with blood from top to toe a-run, "Let, at each crossing-way, the whistling scourges bite "And afterward strike off his head at set of sun. "Go and know all that there no refuge is on earth "From my infallible and dreadful equity." "So be it," Mousa said. "The judge the judgment's worth. "Khalif, remember me in thine eternity !" Amidward blows and cries and hootings, through the town. Upon a foundered ass, some sorry nightman's hack. The ancient warrior, clad in some old tattered gown. Impassive, goes, his hands bound fast behind his back. LECONTE BE LISLE. 25' The multitude pursues his way with hoots and cries; The pebbles wound his arms and bruise his face distraught ; The scourge his bleeding loins goes rending; but his eyes Are closed; he seeth not; he heareth, feeleth nought. Back to the splendid years his dreaming spirit flees, Which never seemed to pass away or slacken, when. Already conscious grown of his high destinies. The man forsook his tent of leather and Yemen. When, drunk with youth and strength and dreams of deeds of mark. He to the heavenward cried, even as a lion's cub Essays his unused throat to roar and tears the bark Of the hard palms, whose shade shelters his cradle-shrub. His battle-fields again of Fars and Sham ' he sees, Egypt and Carthage-town, the desert's burning sand, And drives the tribes again, like dust before the breeze, From Atlas' gorges down unto the Western strand. Then, in the Berber barks, he sees the straits passed o'er, And his high-mettled steed, that, setting up his mane, To be the first to step upon th'Iberian shore. Leaps full into the foam and surges of the main ; The furious assaults on the high citadels, The mellay, where, upon his stirrups bolt upright. Sabre in hand, he clove the hordes of infidels And drank, in long-drawn draughts, the drunkenness of fight; The band of red-haired Goths, far-fleeing day and night, Before the Arab lance, along the mountain tracks, And the swart cavaliers of Maghreb, * like a flight Of demons, bounding still and yelling at their backs. Syria. 2 Morocco. 252 LECONTE BE LISLE. Allah ! The glorious days, the bright, triumphant hours, Lit by heroic pride, from sires ancestral heired, When, from Gibraltar's cape to Pyrenean towers. The standards of the Faith, victorious floating, fared, Whenas the Christian dogs, chased to th'Asturian rocks, Upon the snow-capped peaks and in the cavern-lairs, Far from the towns and plains, from fields and vines and flocks, Dwelt with the hungry wolves, the eagles and the bears! Mousa, despite his toils, strains up to his full height. And 'neath his eyebrows white, his eyes shine like a sword ; "On ! On ! Ye Faithful ! Sweep away, from fight to fight, "The miscreants that blaspheme the Prophet of the Lord! "Like torrents, from the crests snow-covered that descend, "Rush on the Frankish land, as lions on the spoil 1 "For you the golden fruits, which make the branches bend, "For you the lovely maids and the tilth of the soil ! "Teach ye the Holy Law to the foul infidel! "Nor truce nor rest vouchsafe to these bibbers of wine ! "Carry the name of God unto the bounds of hell "Nor rest, except it be in Paradise divine !" Thus spoke the hero old in his delirium, What while the tide of mud and stones and scoffs and blows. The flood of brutal jeers, that mock his martyrdom, As 'twere a thousand wolves assaulting, him o'erflows. But lo! on Lebanon afar the Western fires, In ruddy waves, from tract to tract of heaven spread. Kindling the flooded rocks, and like funereal pyres. Upon the cedars old and still their radiance shed. LECONTE DE LISLE. 253 The martyrdom's at end; it is the hour of death; The place funereal here is and the stone blood-grooved. A swarthy Moor, with hand assured, unscabbardeth The sabre strait and long, so many a time approved. The multitude, withal, with wonder-widened gaze, The bleeding hero sees transfigured, deified; His rags with scarlet, blue and silver burn and blaze; The shining mail-shirt clanks and glitters on his side. He's bound no more upon the sorry skeleton, That, by an eunuch dull and brutish lugged, doth fare. That groans for weariness and pants and stumbles on, Craning its meagre neck with a bewildered air. The eunuch and the Moor, the foundered ass he rides, All gone are; he alone rises with radiant head. Sabre in hand. His beard and hair shine; he bestrides The steed of heaven, the beast august, with lips of red. With eagle claws ; on ten white pairs of wings it flies ; El Borak, * she whose croup is as a block of gold And who, as if she were a peacock starred with eyes, The splendours of her tail doth in the sun unfold. Majestical and proud, she hovers in her flight, Whilst from her virgin eyes and her celestial breast There stream bedazzling rays, effulgences of light, That bathe and glorify her wings and plumy crest. Far from the din confused of earth, the twain on high Soar, with a magic stress, resistless, sure and true; Their streaming glory fills the solitary sky Till they th'extreme attain, the confines of the blue. 1 El Borak, the fabulous mule of Paradise, reported to have borne Mohammed to and fro on his famous journey to heaven. 2 54 LECONTE DE LISLE. Then, like a torch immense, shaken by a giant's hand, Even to the Orient black, the West its waves of light, Magnificent and grim, extends o'er sea and land, And Mousa disappears into the purple night. THE MORNING HOUR. In the clear heaven, by the busy swallow rayed. The morn, that blossoms out, as 'twere a rose divine, Perfumes the leafy bowers of green and glittering shade. Whereas the amorous birds, with wings for flight arrayed. Hail, in full choir, upon the crests of beech and pine, The morn, that blossoms out, as 'twere a rose divine, In the clear heaven, by the busy swallow rayed. In shrilling notes of gold, upon the gravel bright. The running waters, drop by drop that rain and run. Caress, with the soft kiss of their low-murmuring flight. The heather and the thyme, the flags and lilies white; And the fawns stand and hark, awakened by the sun, The running waters, drop by drop that rain and run, In shrilling notes of gold, upon the gravel bright. Beside the new-leaved brake, where shrills the laughing Along the path, toward the distance sweet that flees, [wind. Where the soft mists wax blue and melt the leaves behind, Under the humid light of dawn, with arms entwined. Two youngling lovers pass, slow-footed, 'midst the trees. Along the path, toward the distance sweet that flees. Beside the new-leaved brake, where shrills the laughing wind. The bliss of loving Aveighs upon their half-closed eyes; Nought of the hurrying flight of the brief hours they deem. The beauty and the charm of earth and of the skies Unto their sense the hour delicious eternize; LECONTE BE LISLE. 255 And in th'ensorcellement of this dream of a dream, Nought of the hurrying flight of the brief hours they deem : The bliss of loving weighs upon their half-closed eyes. In the clear heaven, by the busy swallow rayed, The morning blossoms still, as 'twere a rose divine: But they, beneath the bowers of green and glittering shade, Will, one day, hear no more the birds, for flight arrayed. Out of their inmost hearts hail, upon beech and pine. The morn that blossoms out, as 'twere a rose divine, In the clear heaven, by the busy swallow rayed. SAHIL. ' On the dead continents the surge lethargic smites; The waves, that felt a world's last tremor, rise and flee, Ebbing and flowing in the mute Immensity; What while Sahil the stern, from out the tragic nights, Lone flames and darts his eye blood-red upon the sea. Athwart the endless fields of Space the bare and black. That gulf, as nothingness inert, deaf, void and nude, Sahil, witness supreme, drear sun of solitude. That sadder makes the sea and swarter the cloud-rack. On th'universal sleep with blood-red eye doth brood. Love, hatred, envy, pain, hope, genius, despair. All that men dream, that men adore, heav'n, earth and sea, Nought is nor will again of th'antique moment be: O'er the forgotten dream of man and Life that were, The Red Eye of Sahil bleeds sempiternally. 1 Sahil^ a red star, which, according to the Talmudists, will, after the destruction of the world, take the place of all the other heavenly bodies and shine alone in the empty sky. 256 LECONTE BE LISLE. THE LAMP OF HEAVEN. Held by the stars' live glittering golden chain, The lamp of heav'n hangs in the sombre blue, Over the sea, the mountains and the plain: In the mild quiet of the evening new, Rocked by the murmur of the pensive main, The lamp of heav'n hangs in the sombre blue, Held by the stars' live glittering golden chain. It floods and fills the limitless sky-line With the enchantments of ite radiance calm ; It kindles all the shadows with its shine And silvering the nests upon the palm. Whereas they lightly sleep their sleep divine, With the enchantments of its radiance calm, It floods and fills the limitless sky-line. In the soft deeps, o moon, where sink thy beams. Art thou the sun, then, of the happy dead. The Paradise of white, where go their dreams? O silent world, effusing o'er their head Fair visions made of fairer lies, meseems, Art thou the sun, then, of the happy dead. In the soft deeps, o moon, where sink thy beams? Always, for evermore, eternal Night ! Silence! Oblivion of the bitter hours! Why, then, absorb ye not false appetite, Hate, love, thought, pain, these bubbles all of ours? Why not appease th'old torment of the spright ? Silence ! Oblivion of the bitter hours ! Always, for evermore, eternal Night! LECONTE BE LISLE. 257 Held by the live stars' golden glittering chain, O lamp of heav'n, that light'st the sombre blue, Fall, plunge into oblivion's shoreless main! A gulf of blackness make the air anew, Unto the sighing ocean's last refrain, O lamp of heav'n, that light'st the sombre blue, Held by the live stars' golden glittering chain ! MALAY PANTOUMS. The zigzag shafts of lightning shine, Whereas the ocean meets the skies. Upon thy mat of fibre fine. Thou dreamest, with half-opened eyes. Whereas the ocean meets the skies, The levins gild the billows' crest. Thou dreamest with half-opened eyes. Within the hut thou perfumest. The levins gild the billows' crest; Beneath the blast the shadows cower. Within the hut thou perfumest, Thou dream'st and smilest, o my flower! Beneath the blast the shadows cower; The wild wind shrills in gorge and chine. Thou dream'st and smilest, o my flower, The heart fulfilled with songs divine. The wild wind shrills in gorge and chine, Amid the roaring torrents' din. The heart fulfilled with songs divine. Mount, soar into the ether thin! II. '7 258 LECONTE DE LISLE. Amid the roaring torrents' din, The lopped tree surges on the stream. Mount, soar into the ether thin, Upon the wings of a love-dream ! The lopped tree surges on the stream, The rocks uprooted bound and dart. Upon the wings of a love-dream. Cradle thy love-illumined heart ! The rocks uprooted bound and dart Toward th'intoxicated brine. Cradle thy love-illumined heart! The zigzag shafts of lightning shine. II. Here pearls of Mascat are for thee. For, o my love, thy lovely neck! The red blood billows, like a sea. Upon the pale-faced Kafir's deck. For, o my love, thy lovely neck. For thy smooth firm brown skin to boon ! Upon the pale-faced Kafir's deck, Dead eyes upturned are to the moon. For thy smooth firm brown skin to boon. This charming treasure won have I. Dead eyes upturned are to the moon, Dim in the distance of the sky. This charming treasure won have I. But what is there with thee compares? Dim in the distance of the sky. The moon upon their faces glares. LECONTE DE LISLE. .59 But what is there with thee comijares? Two lightnings are thine eyes, my fair. The moon upon their faces glares; The scent of blood is in the air. Two lightnings are thine eyes, my fair. Star of my life, I love thee well. The scent of blood is in the air; Our rage is sated, sooth to tell. Star of my life, I love thee well. Ray of the morning, star of eve ! Our rage is sated, sooth to tell: The waves above the Kafir heave. Ray of the morning, star of eve ! Thy radiance lights the heart in me. The waves above the Kafir heave. Here pearls of Mascat are for thee. III. 'Neath boughs, with crimson mangoes hung. Sleep, with thy hands behind thy head! The mighty python darts his tongue Forth of the towering bamboo-bed. Sleep, with thy hands behind thy head. The muslin lapped thy loins around. Forth of the towering bamboo-bed. The sun-rays filter to the ground. The muslin lapped thy loins around, The shadow thou embellishest. The sun-rays filter to the ground. Whereas the humming-birdlets nest. 26o LECONTE DE LISLE. The shadow thou embellishest, Bedded upon the emerald grass. Whereas the humming-birdlets nest, The wasps in flitting legions pass. Bedded upon the emerald grass, None may forget that seeth thee. The wasps in flitting legions pass From sandal-wood to tulip-tree. None may forget that seeth thee; E'en to the tomb needs must he love. From sandal-wood to tulip tree The sparrow-hawk pursues the dove. E'en to the tomb needs must he love. Ah, love thou not but once, fair maid! The sparrow-hawk pursues the dove; She gives the ghost up in the shade. Ah, love thou not but once, fair maid! The dark prow rocks the waves among. She gives the ghost up in the shade, 'Neath boughs, with crimson mangoes hung. IV. Thy rosy nails with henna-flowers are dight; With bells of gold thine amber ankles ring. I hear him mewling in the sullen night. The Lord of Stripes, the tiger, Timor's king. With bells of gold thine amber ankles ring; Thy mouth of wilding honey hath the taste. The Lord of Stripes, the tiger, Timor's king, He prowls and lies in ambush in the waste. LECONTR DE LISLE. 261 Thy mouth of wilding honey hath the taste ; Thy joyous laugh is as the bulbul's songs; He prowls and lies in ambush in the waste; The hour 'tis when the deer to water throngs. Thy joyous laugh is as the bulbul's songs; Thou runst and boundest better than the doe. The hour 'tis when the deer to water throngs; He sees two eyeballs in the darkness glow. Thou runst and boundest better than the doe; But trait'rous is thy heart and thy mouth lies. He sees two eyeballs in the darkness glow; A deathly shiver takes him by surprise. But trait'rous is thy heart and thy mouth lies; My blade of copper in my hand doth ray. A deathly shiver takes him by surprise; The royal huntsman leaps upon his prey. My blade of copper in my hand doth ray; None else the love I hold so dear shall share. The royal huntsman leaps upon his prey; Its flesh ten ravening claws of iron tear. None else the love I hold so dear shall share. Die ! One long kiss upon thy lips death-white ! Its flesh ten ravening claws of iron tear; Thy rosy nails with henna-flowers are dight. V. O sightless eyes and lips death-set ! I have at heart a bitter pain. The bellying sail the breezes jet; The salt spray silvers all the main. 2 62 LECONTE DE LISLE. I have at heart a bitter pain; Yonder her fair dead head I see. The salt spray silvers all the main; Afar the swift bark beareth me. Yonder her fair dead head I see; My kriss it was that slit her throat, Afar the swift boat beareth me, A-bounding like the mountain goat. My kriss it was that slit her throat; Her head bleeds on the rocking mast. A-bounding like the mountain-goat, The prow goes pitching to the blast. Her head bleeds on the rocking mast; Her dying groan pursueth me. The prow goes pitching to the blast; The night is flecked with the pale sea. Her dying groan pursueth me; Was't thou indeed I slew, alack? The night is flecked with the pale sea; The levin cleaves the swart cloud-rack. Was't thou indeed I slew, alack? 'Twas Fate. And yet I loved thee well. The levin cleaves the swart cloud-rack; Open to me fore'er is hell. 'Twas Fate. And yet I loved thee well. Would I might die and so forget ! Open to me fore'er is hell. O sightless eyes! O Hps death-set! LECONTE BE LISLE. 263 THE SUPREME ILLUSION. Whenasamandrawsnearthesteeps,whenceLife,Timc-quailc(l, Slopes down into your shades inert, o sullen skies ! Standing upon the heights, which he hath blindly scaled, The pristine days return upon his dazzled eyes. What while the mounting night the beaches overstreams, He sees again, beyond th'horizon far withdrawn, The wild capricious flight of his desires and dreams Whirl in the rosy light of his uncareful dawn. Lugubrious world, where none to redescend were fain. By the same lonely way, slow, rugged and apart! You, sterile suns, that now but dust and ashes rain, And you, o silent tears, fall'n from a bleeding heart! He, — who's about the sleep, which knows no dawn, to taste, Whose seal nor man nor God hath e'er availed to break, Flesh that shall disappear and soul exhaled to waste, — Is with the visions filled that to his cradle spake. Nought of the past again but sudden lives, in sooth. His native mountain-tops, the ancient tamarind-trees, The dear-beloved dead, that cherished him in youth And yonder in the sands that slumber by the seas; Beneath the lilacs huge, wherein the bees did brood. The quiet homestead on the hill-side green, the sprays Clustered with Lychee-drupes and mangoes vermeil-hued And the blue birds that swarm among the flowering maize ; On the hill-sides, among the ripening sugar-canes. Whose amber skin is like to loose its juices sweet, The locusts' strident flight along the yellow lanes, Intoxicated with the noontide light and heat 264 LECONTE DE LISLE. The cataracts, in a mist of jewels, pouring out, Down from the highpeaked rocks, their silver in fan-form ; The balsam-scented breeze, the sugar works about. And all the Indians there, at work like ants a-swarm. The piles of coffee red upon the drying-floors; The pestles' sound that in the massy mortars fall; The old folk in the cool seated before the doors And children's laughter heard among the bamboos tall. The vast sky, whereagainst the jagged mountains' fangs Stand clear, when all the heav'ns with evening's purple The melancholy song of the returning gangs, [glow; As from the heights they come and to their quarters go. The cool transparent pools between the lava-blocks; In the savannah paths, as to the byre they throng, The bellowing of the bulls from Tamatava's ^ flocks Blends in the air serene with the waves' murmurous song &• And on the coast, beneath the sandhills of St. Gilles, ^ Along the glittering banks of coral bright, there roam, Like to a swarm of birds, piraguas ^ swift of keel. Dipping their pointed sails into the argent foam. Then all grows still and sleeps. The moon in heaven's peace Floats up, a glittering pearl, upon the star-filled space; The sea seems with its sighs the silence to increase. As the reflected worlds rock on its murmuring face. A thousand perfumes swell from out the woodland deeps, Whereas the fireflies hum and flicker in their flight; The hunters' bivouac fires, upon the rugged steeps, 'Gainst the resplendent blue go glittering of the night. ' A province of Madagascar, celebrated for its cattle. 2 In the Island of Reunion. 3 Piraguas., native canoes. LECONTE DE LISLE. 265 And thou relivest, thou, pellucid phantom, too, Thou that his heart of yore mad'st for the first time beat And blossom culled, whilst yet wet on thee was the dew, The calm shade of the woods but for a day mad'st sweet. O cherished vision, thou, that, from the days bygone And the far shores whereas thou sleep'st for evermore, A melancholy sweet reflection of the dawn Cast'st on a world-worn heart, that now is dark and frore ! The years upon thy grace immortal have not weighed; The happy tomb hath saved thy beauty from decay; He sees thee with thine eyes divine and such, sweet shade, As when thou smil'dst on him in an enchanted day. But to the mystery mute when he in turn shall go, Where all that once hath lived is buried from the sun, Who shall know that thy soul hath flowered here below, O gentle vision, doomed to stern oblivion? And you, ye gladsome suns of the sweet years of ease, And you, resplendent nights of th'Infinite star-fraught. That rained your radiance down upon th'illuniined seas, The spirit, you that dreamed, draws you again to nought. Ah, all this, passions, dreams, youth, joyance, thought and love. Songs of the seas and woods and meadows, heaven's brealli, That scatter senseless hope to all the winds that rove, What worth is it, all this, that is not safe from death? So be it ! Human dust, a prey to Age's curse. Its pleasures and its pains, strife, hope, remorse and dread, The gods it hath conceived, its stupid universe. All are not worth the peace impassive of the dead. 266 LECONTE DE LISLE. THE BLUE BUTTERFLY. 'Neath the thick sycamore, fair maid, where thou dost doze, Within the garden cool, that flow'rs on silent wise, To taste the honey-dews of these thy lips of rose, A butterfly of blue descendeth from the skies. The hour 'tis when the sun whitens the spreading skies And cleaves the golden bark of the pomegranates rose. The vagabond divine of th'air, on silent wise, Lights on thy lips, fair maid; and thou, thou still dost doze. Soft as the flowered silk, where thou, a flower, dost doze, Thy visage with his kiss he sweeps on silent wise. Fear the blue butterfly, the lover of the rose. Who drinks her whole soul up and goes back to the skies. Thou smil'st! A lovesome dream is fallen from the skies, Which, in the soothing sweep of those its wings of rose, Waking desire that sleeps in thee on silent wise, Turns to a Paradise the shade where thou dost doze. The butterfly of Love, what while thou thus dost doze. Warm with the sultry day, that burns on silent wise. Will dazzle thee, alas ! with visions hued with rose, That in the desert will evanish of the skies. Awake, fair maid, awake ! The ardour of the skies Will tarnish less thy cheek, blush-tinted as the rose. Than desire thy chaste heart, that sleeps on silent wise, 'Neath the thick sycamore, fair maid, where thou dost doze. LECONTE DE LISLE. 367 SUNDOWN. The gold orb of the sun, fall'n from the boundless skies, Sinks slowly down and down into the stirless deeps And for supreme farewell, in rosy radiance steeps The snow that sparkling on the mountain-summits lies. Adown the shadowy glens, the breeze from the high crests, Breathing in one long sigh, soft, melancholy, low, The sombre tamarind-trees rocks gently to and fro. Cradling the whistling birds that slumber in their nests. The soil, among the lush ripe canes and coffee-trees. Its incense rich exhales, as from a thurifer. The sugar-works' perfume with the woods' breath of myrrh Commingling in one waft, upon the evening breeze. A first star flashes out from the blue gloom of night And in its whiteness throbs, an incandescent pearl; And then the seas of suns and worlds themselves unfurl And flood the dazzled waves with their resplendent light. The contemplative soul, self and the things that seem In that mute peace divine forgetting, joy and pain. Without regret or wish, knowing that all is vain, Abandoneth itself to an eternal dream. EPIPHANY. Tranquil, encompassed round as with a dream divine, Beside thy cool lake-shores, Norroway, she goes: The red and subtle blood, that in her cheek doth shine, Soft-hued is as the ray of dawn upon the snows. 2 68 LECONTE DE LISLE. Lulled by the larches' sighs, beneath the birches' wail, Midmost the glitterance and sorcery of the hour, She passes, mirrored in the water's azure pale, Skimmed by a silent flight of butterflies in flower. When through her tresses blond the furtive breezes flee, Her shoulders flooded are with soft and mystic lights; Silvering her lashes long with their transparency, Her eyes the colour have of the clear Polar nights. Pure of desire and gloom, ne'er having hoped nor sought The perishable world, where nothing winged remains, Her eyes have never wept, have never smiled for aught, Her calm eyes, opened wide on the celestial plains. The pensive spright, that guards the mystic orange-tree. Leans from the balcony of the Eternal Day And sees this phantom light fare over earth, stain-free, And in her wede of white immortal pass away. THE WOLF'S INCANTATION. Unbroken silence holds the glittering winter sky; The snow from the bent boughs of larch and alder drips ; The monarch of the Hartz, crouched on his iron hips, Watches the yellow moon in heaven full and high. The valleys, the ravines, the forests and the rocks, Inertly sleep beneath their winding-sheet aghast; The surface of the earth is like a charnel vast, Now hollow and now plane and studded now with blocks. And while, a glazed gold eye, set in the heavens dun. The moon's irradiance rends th'horizon's glooms apart. The anguish of th'old wolf straitens his darkling heart; Along his rugged spine the horrent shudders run. LECONTE DE LISLE. 269 His white mate, flaming-eyed, and all her fosterlings, Beneath her hairy breast anights that sheltered were, All, slaughtered by man's hand, lie lifeless in the lair: Gone, gone are these he loved above all living things. Upon the livid snow, henceforth, he is alone: Thirst, hunger, patient watch and ambush in the ])rake, Seeking the bleating lamb or hart amort to take, What recks he of all this, now void the world is grown ? All have forsaken him, that shared his royal lot; Giant and Goat and Dwarf, Nightjar and Owl and Witch, Erst squatted by the fire of heath and peat, on which The broth sinister boils, within the brazen pot. His smoking tongue hangs down from his portentous jaws: The black blood left unlicked, that from his flanks is shed. Muttering, toward the heav'ns he heaves his pointed head And at his entrails hate relentless burns and gnaws; The hate and thought of man, the antique massacrer. His sires, his whelps and her, his royal female, who Poured out for them the milk of her hot paps, that slew, Still in his frenzied dreams unceasingly's astir. The hairs upon his back stand up like wires; his deep Set eyeballs from his head burn out like blazing coals; And howling, to his aid he summons up the souls Of th'ancient wolves, that in the magic moon-glare sleep. SACRA FAMES. The mighty ocean sleeps; in gently-swelling hills Goes pulsing up and down its heaven-reflecting face: A night of golden stars with magic silence fills The marvel and the awe of ocean and of space. 2 70 LECONTE DE LISLE. The two gulfs form but one abyss illimitable Of sadness and of peace, of dazzling sky and sea; A stern and splendid waste, sanctuary and tomb as well, Whereout a thousand eyes regard one fixedly. Thus the resplendent heav'n and venerable waves, In majesty and light, beneath the stellar gleam, Sleep on, as if the noise of Life's unhappy slaves Had never broken in upon their boundless dream. Meantime, with hunger filled, in his skin lax and rude, The sinister Dacoit * of the steppes of the sea Comes, goes, and scenting, far and near, but solitude, Opens his iron jaws and yawns for sheer ennui. Certes, he hath no heed of yon immenseness pale, Of the Triangle or the Kings or Scorpion high. That trails through endless space his long flamboyant tail, Nor of the Bear, that sets far in the Northward sky. He knows of nought but flesh, that is to crunch and shear. And without cease absorbed in his desire of blood. Explores, with his dead eye, impassive, dull and blear. The thickness-darkened ways of the unbottomed flood. All mute and empty! Nought afloat is or aswim; Nothing alive or dead, his sight or hearing in. Inert and blind he bides, what while his pilot slim Settles itself to sleep upon his ebon fin. Go, monster, go ! Thou art none other than we men. More hideous nor more fierce nor crueller than we. Content thee! Thou shalt eat of men to morrow; then Another morrow thou of men shalt eaten be. 1 The shark. LECONTE BE LISLE. 271 Curst hunger murder is legitimate and long, From earth's abysmal deeps to the resplendent skies; And butcher, victim, shark and man and weak and strong Are innocent alike in Death's eternal eyes. A LAST GREETING. If with their silver pearls the waving fields of maize, The tulip-trees, the canes, the dawnings still bedew; If the sea-breeze, that soars up to the summits blue. In the rose-tinted air, the giant bamboos sways; If from the cool fresh nests, hidden in the vetivers, The scarlet plumes still light the leafage with their sheen ; If, midst the purple bells and chalices of green, Still, as of heretofore, the wild bee's hum one hears ; If the complaining notes of the blond turtle-doves And the high-sounding trills of the shrill cardinal-bird Upon the flowered slopes in unison be heard. Set to the water's sound, among the herbs that moves; If, with its shingles red, with mosses streaked of gold. And its verandahs low, beneath the spreading limes And giant mangoes' shade, where the vanilla climbs, The ancient homestead dear still standeth, as of old; O sweet birds, rocking, perched upon the tufted canes, O light, o youth, o wafts that in our woodlands run, O dark ravines whose deeps exhale unto the sun Your brumes diaphanous from out your rugged lanes ! Greeting! I greet you all, ye mountains and ye skies! Ye Paradises lost, ye visions infinite ! Day-dreams and setting suns, stars of the blessed night! Ye that will nevermore grow glorious in mine eyes ! 272 LECONTE DE LISLE. I greet you from the brink of the eternal tomb, Blind hopes and sterile dreams and vain desires of mine, Resplendent mirages ye of the Lie Divine, That the stern hour ofifbears upon its wings of down. Since but beyond our dreams, our moments past, find we Oblivion infinite of our chimaeras all, What booteth it to reck of things ephemeral. Why seek of how or why, to be or not to be ? Scant joy I've known: my soul is satiate with strife: Sick of the modern days, as of the times gone by, Now, in the sterile sands when all my loved ones lie. Why cannot I to end the dream bring of my life? Why, couched fore'er beneath the bitter succory. May I not, flesh inert, vowed to devouring Time, Engulph me in the night which hath no morning-prime. Beside the sullen roar unending of the sea? THE ABOMA. At foot of yon blue hills, beneath the canopy Of heav'n clear-spread above the lakes and plains and woods. The mighty river, swoln with hundred lesser floods. Itself toward the East betaketh and the sea. The fluid gold of day jets out in sheaves of light. Soars, flowers and falls again in many a glittering stream, Which, like a rose of fire, on the flood show'ring, seem Beyond its proper shores to swell it for the sight. Under the mangrove-aisles, with long and viscous sprays, In the entangled web of the fat water-weed, Eddy, in whirling swarms, mosquitoes full of greed And flies, whose flitting wings the river's surface graze. LECONTE DR LTSLE. 273 The purple Ara wakes the reptiles: in affright, Startled by his harsh cries, coral- and rattle-snake The humming-birds' frail nests upon the branches shake With the commotion of their undulating flight. O'er the vast pasture-lands, upon the far sky-line. Whereas the brume floats up in flakes from vale and lawn, Pass, driven to and fro by th'arrows of the dawn. Squadrons of stallions wild and herds of wandering kine. These at full speed, proud-eyed and glad, by thousands roam. With nostrils to the wind of that auroral hour. And mane and tail outstretched, their native deserts scour : Those go with muzzles laid to ground and bossed with foam. The alligators, 'neath the sloping bank attent. Wait, heaving with their backs the black mud of the brink, The jaguar, that comes down to the flood to drink And that, athwart the air, sniffs at their musky scent. But on the mossy ait, with dew besprinkled, see. By the vague rumours now awakened from his sleep, Stirs, heaving up his coils in the full sun to steep. The ancient Python-King, th'Aboma Caribbee. His steely muscles move and work from side to side, As they his massy neck upheave and scaly head; His tail's long spirals scourge the foaming river-bed; He rises to the height of his imperial pride. With emerald helmed and mailed in topaz panoply. Like to an idol old, upon his coils upright. There, dreaming, he abides, all bathed in morning light, Disdainful and superb, with glazed and wandering eye. 11. ■« 2 74 LECONTE DE LISLE. Then, when, on every side, the heaven's ardours steep The torrid waterflakes and earth with middle day. He plunges in and goes to seek his wonted prey, Panther or bull or man, far in the forests deep. MAYA. J Maya, thou torrent-stream, flood of chimseras vain. From the dull heart of man 'tis thou that mak'st arise Brief pleasures, bitter hates, fear, joyance, hope and pain. The world obscure of sense and the resplendent skies. But what is this same heart of man, ephemeral grain Of dust, but, Maya, thou, mirage that never dies? The centuries bygone, the moment now that nears, At one same breath engulphed and lost are in thy shade, With the blood in our veins, our cries, our sobs, our tears. Eternity of fraud, sinister masquerade. Grim dream, old life, with all its past and future years. Of th'endless whirl of vain appearances is made. SOLVET S^CLUM. Thou shalt wax mute, o voice sinister of mankind ! Delirious blasphemies, that rave on every wind, Cries of affright and cries of hate and rage and strife, Clamours adread from out th'eternal wrecks of life. Pains, crimes, remorses, sobs, despair and martyrdom. Spirit and flesh of man, some day you shall fall dumb! A 11 shall be silent, Gods, kings, convicts, sordid crowd, C ities' and prisons' dull hoarse murmur, low or loud, ' Maya^ the World-Illusion of the Vedantists. LECONTE DE LISLE. 275 Beasts of the forest, beasts of sea and field and fell, All that which flies and leaps and crawls in this our hell, All things that quake and flee, all things that slay and eat, Up from the earthworm crushed beneath our tramplinf^ feel Even to the levin-flames through the thick night ihal flit Its noises all at once shall Nature intermit. Nor shall it be, beneath the freshly-flowered skies. The new reconquered bliss of ancient Paradise, Nor Adam's talk with Eve on beds of lys and rose. Nor the divine sweet sleep, after so many woes: It shall be when, with all that is therein, our world, Forth of its orbit vast, a sterile fragment hurled. Senseless and sightless, full of one last frenzied shriek, Heavier and duller grown each moment and more weak, Against some universe, immoveable and blind. Hurtling, shall burst in twain its old and worthless rind And belching forth in space, by many a gaping hole, Its inward fires, with all its oceans, pole to pole, Shall go, with its obscene remains to fructify The fallow fields of space, where worlds fermenting lie. ■^;^ r/5 ^Q ■■smr University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 . Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowPri ■M;^ r US, '>i- ^ r/ i^- r-y^ ^ - o (^ I'll I K =» Vi** * ""I I I ^ ^ UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY [ACILITY II >|li ||i|i ||l|i ||i|i |H|' |"|' |i 'I I'l" ll'l' |"|' l"i '11' AA 000 555 605 5 \ \M |l!|i|llil|l< "^nw. w s ■:» ^Fr.MirnPi urv AVT'in ^ i. ^ )i ■<':jj,\li" •^^