Part 4

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

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

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

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

EVIL LOVE.

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

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

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

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

THE OWL.

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

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

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

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

OF SAD JOY.

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

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

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

SOME SONG OR OTHER.

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

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

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

OF AUTUMN.

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

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

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

ON THE SEA.

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

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

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

IWAN GILKIN.

1858--.

PSYCHOLOGY.

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

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

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

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

THE CAPITAL.

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

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

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

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

THE PENITENT.

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

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

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

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

"ET ERITIS SICUT DII."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VENGEANCE.

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

THE SONG OF THE FORGES.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HERMAPHRODITE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE DAYS OF YORE.

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

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

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

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

VALERE GILLE.

1867--.

ART.

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

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

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

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

THERMOPYLAE.

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

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

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

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

A NAVAL BATTLE.

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

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

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

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

ALBERT GIRAUD.

1860--.

THE TRIBUNES.

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

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

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

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

CORDOVANS.

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

FLORISE.

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

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

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

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

HECATE.

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

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

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

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

IN THE REIGN OF THE BORGIAS.

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

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

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

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

ABSORPTION.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE YOUTH AMONG THE LILIES.

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

RESIGNATION.

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

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

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

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

VOICES.

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

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

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

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

VICTOR KINON.

1873--.

THE RESURRECTION OF DREAMS.

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

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