“Lichen, mistletoe, aloft
In the dying croft,
Leaf the winter trees.… ”
“O Muse, where loiterest thou? In any land
Of Saturn, lit with moons and nenuphars?
Or in what high metropolis of Mars—… ”
“The force of suns had waned beyond recall.
Chaos was re-established over all,
Where lifeless atoms through forgetful deeps… ”
“Sweet Lesbia,when our love is done,
Leave no reproachful shade or blot,
No least reproof, on all or aught… ”
“Let us leave the hateful town
With its stale, forgotten lies;
Far beneath renewing skies,… ”
“God walks lightly in the gardens of a cold, dark star,
Knowing not the dust that gathers in His garments' fold;
God signs Him with the clay, marks Him with the mould,… ”
“Monotonously rolled
On the hills the broom
Spreads its many-acred gold.… ”
“There is a silence in the world
Since we have said farewell;
And beauty with an alien speech… ”
“One with his fervor shall inform
The world, and one with all his sorrow:
One sees a glad, unsetting morrow,… ”
“Knowing the weariness of dreams, and days, and nights,
The great and grievous vanity of joy and pain;
Frail loves that pass, where languors infinite remain,… ”
“Sachant l'ennui du jour, de la nuit, et des rêves,
La lourdé vanite des joies et des douleurs;
Le frêle amour, laissant ses immenses langueurs,… ”
“Dear one, what do we here ?
Petal by petal falls the alien spring
In gardens where we pass ungarlanded,… ”
"All is Dross that is not Helena"
“What wistful lover has not mused upon
The waste of years that never knew his love!
And, wanting her once more, the seasons prove… ”
“Superlatively sonorous
Like a saxophone full of brass tacks and coffin-nails;
Reverberantly rhythmical and rhythmically reverberant… ”
“Amo los campos huertos, los vergeles
que las selvas han invadido
y las hierbas han recogido… ”
“Who turns him from his earthly love
Must other lovers meet and prove:
Through plunging lands careened from light… ”
“Who has seen the towers of Amithaine
Swan-throated rising from the main
Whose tides to some remoter moon
… ”
“This is the fire of Hestia's careful hearth;
The flame that fed on many-towered Troy;
Selene's light about the Latmian boy;… ”
“O Love, thou Judas of the martyred soul!
Thou pandar to the painted harlot, Life !
The rankest lies wherewith thy heart is rife… ”
“My love is the flame of an unfading autumn,
It is the flare of unconsuming leaves
In an ecstasy of halcyonian space and light;… ”
“Our blood is swayed by sunken moons
And lulled by midnights long foredone;
We waken to a foundered sun… ”
“O giant stars, born of eternal light,
O winged flames wherewith the void is sown,
As dreadful prophets of a God unknown,… ”
“Full-ripened on the bough,
Pends the bright apple now,
And the lees fall from out the unclouded wine.… ”
“The thought of death to me
Is like a well in some oasis dim—
Cool-gleaming, hushed, and hidden gratefully… ”
“Long since, I lived in lordly porches fronting
With thronged, enormous pillars to the tide,
Where day as in basaltic caverns died… ”
“What voice, O vengeful Anteros,
Has called thee from the seedless weald ?—
Dark sower of the tares of loss… ”
“O gentlest love, I have not played
For you upon the lute of jade;
Nor on that fabulous bassoon… ”
“O world, thou art the form, the name, the symbol of my weariness:
But, older than thy drooling god, mine ennui had its prime abode
Potential in the fathomless, foreshaping yawn of night and flame.… ”
“Like arabesques of ebony,
The cypresses, in silhouette,
Fantastically cleave and fret… ”
“In the green and flowerless garden I have dreamt,
Lying beneath perennial moons apart,
Whose cypress-builded bowers… ”
“Who fares to find the sunset ere it fly,
Turning to light and fire the further west,
Shall have the veils of twilight for his guest,… ”
“The moon declines in lonely gold
Among the stars of ashen-grey—
Veiling the pallors of decay… ”
“Above its domes the gulfs accumulate.
Far up, the sea-gales blare their bitter screed:
But here the buried waters take no heed—… ”
“Though the roses
Wreathe no more the garden
And the garden-dial,… ”
“Les pétales des vieux pavots,
Et les boutons des lys perdus,
Au bord du Léthé sont déchus
… ”
“In silence now the purpling summer passes,
The swallows fly;
The failing river scantly glasses,… ”
“O sapphire lake amid autumnal mountains,
With fire of aspens round about you burning,
I would my love and I were now returning,… ”
“Walled with far azures of the wintering year,
Late autumn on a windless altar burns;
Splendid as rubies from Sabean urns,… ”
“In all the pleasances where Love was lord,
Blossom the mournful immortelles alone;
The fallen roses crumble, and are blown,… ”
“But yesterday 'twas Autumn, and the leaves,
All aureate and vermeil, strewed the ground
And lay in drifted banks the trees around —… ”
“Black dreams; the pale and sorrowful desire
Whose eyes have looked on Lethe and have seen,
Deep in the sliding ebon tide serene,… ”
“In Averoigne the enchantress weaves
Weird spells that call a changeling sun,
Or hale the moon of Hecate… ”
“In Averiogne the enchantress weaves
Weird spells that cast a changeling sun,
From the sepulchral regions dark,… ”
“Where mandrakes, crying from the moonless fen,
Told how a witch, with eyes of owl or bat,
Found, and each root maleficently fat… ”
“Whatever alien fruits and changeling faces
And pleasances of mutable perfume
The flambeaux of the senses shall illume… ”
“Men say the gods have flown;
The Golden Age is but a fading story,
And Greece was transitory:… ”
“The world upheld their pillars for awhile:
Now, where imperial On and Carthage stood,
The hot wind sifts across the solitude… ”
“In the desire of welded lips,
Of heart on prone tumultuous heart,
Abides no stronger thing than this… ”
“In the boulder's top
The time-hollowed basin
Fills with rain, drop by drop.… ”
“In a burnt land of ashes, verdureless and bare,
Loudly I made complaint to sun and soil and air,
And in my thoughts, as randomly I wandered on,… ”
“White Beauty, bending from a throne sublime,
Hath claimed my lips with kisses keen as snow:
Now through my harp the tremors come and go… ”
“Fragrant were the embraces
That I shared with you
Where the wild mint grew.… ”
“Across the hot sands, towards fertile lands
On our swinging camels we forward fly
On a heaven of lead, on the sands of red… ”
“Bleak is the night and long
While slumber waits apart,
Refusing this lone heart,… ”
“I rose in that hushed hour before the dawn
Unveils its wonder old yet ever-new,
When still the night lies languidly upon… ”
“Ah, woe is me, for Love hath lain asleep,
Hath lain too long in some Circean close—
Till on his dreaming wings the ruined rose… ”
“I stood by the Ganges and watch’d the pilgrim’s come and go
Forth from the city’s streets and lanes, and all of India’s land
Stood in the ghats and saw them coming, going, fast and slow.… ”
Berries of the Deadly Nightshade
“Black are the berries
Laden with slumber
Of nights that have no number.… ”
“Alas! the evanescence of a dream,
That, like a rose, shall never blossom more!
A glimpse of unguessed things, and then the door… ”
“Beyond the far Cathayan wall,
A thousand leagues athwart the sky,
The scarlet stars and mornings die,… ”
“All that I remember
From a dim and verdant spring
Long dead… ”
“So blind Orion, groping for the morn
With eyes uplift whereon forever hung
Infinite burden and suspense of night,… ”
“By the red seal redoubled of that kiss
When thy lips parted softly to my own
Ere the sun sank from doomed Poseidonis;
… ”
“One cactus-column rears alone
Before the forest
Where the trees are stone.… ”
Boys Rob A Yellow-Hammer's Nest
“Porcelain-white, the flicker's eggs
Lined the bottom of the hole
In the pine's dead bole.… ”
“Half-ignorant ribaldries,
Outrageous drolleries
Of infant Rabelais.… ”
“Life is a tale half told,
Love is a broken song;
Beauty, besought so long… ”
“In what winter shrewd, morose,
Did he cower close
To the manzanita-blaze?… ”
“Wherefore thy burden and thy toil, O Sun?
Borne up the steep and hollow heavens afar
Thy worlds retard thee, who wert else a star,… ”
“Dark loom the ghauts against the stream and sky;
The smoke doth rise and wind in columns grey;
Red flare the flames of fagots, leaping high,… ”
“Though love had dreamt of soft eternities
For never-flagging pulses still to mete,
Those minutes of our bliss were few and fleet.… ”
“O wonderful and wingèd flower,
That hoverest in the garden-close,
Finding, in mazes of the rose,… ”
“I deemed the golden nymphs were gone,
And pausing by the river, mused
On naiads and the forest-faun,… ”
“To find with you the earliest
Willow-buds before their silver turns to gold,
And the first previous buttercup and cyclamen that blossom… ”
“Rathe summer had sered the grass in which he lay
Under the little shade
The live-oak made,
… ”
“I hear the west wind's call through the window open flung:
"Oh, come ye forth the budding woods and fields among.
Your cares and worries fling like a worn-out cloak aside;… ”
“I am that spawn of witch and demon
By time's mad prophets long foretold:
The unnamed fear of king and freeman,
… ”
“In my heart a wizard book,
Only love shall ever look:
Darling, when thou readest there,… ”
“It lies beyond the farthest sea,
This castle whereonto I flee
When life and time hang wearily.… ”
“O mouth by many kissed,
O heart that all might capture!
How art thou fain and mournful… ”
“In the slanted ray,
Huddling closely, my three cats
Slept the winter day.… ”
“Penned beside the abatoir,
Stridently they moo and bellow
To the night-bringing star.… ”
“I belong to those manifold Existences
Once known, or once suspected,
That exist no more for man.… ”
“Beauty is the prisoner
None can hold,
Though all have captured her.… ”
“Bow down before the daemon of the world—
This monstrous god, half-idiot and half-ape,
With fumbling hands omnipotent to shape… ”
“For pity, not for love
(Because you loved me so)
With undesirous lips… ”
“Little of worth my heart has found
Beyond thine arms' enchanted bound:
Between the feet and hair of thee… ”
“Like the voice of a golden star,
Heard from afar,
Perishing beauty calls… ”
“What nights retard thee, O Sirius !
Thy light is as a spear,
And thou penetratest them… ”
“The cherry-snows are falling now;
Down from the blossom-clouded sky
Of zephyr-troubled twig and bough,… ”
“O, who will slay the last chimera, Time?
Though Love and Death have many a cunning dart—
In spite of these, and close-wrought webs of Art,… ”
“In a lost land, that only dreams have known,
Where flaming suns walk naked and alone;
Among horizons bright as molten brass,… ”
“The incognizable kings of Night, within their unrevealed abyss,
Have built them a metropolis against the kingdoms of the light.
… ”
“I saw a city in a lonely land:
Foursquare, it fronted upon gulfs of fire;
Behind, the night of Erebus hung entire;… ”
“Sweet Lesbia, when our love is done,
Leave no reproachful shade or blot,
No least reproof, on all or aught… ”
“The herd of goats for us
Turns the hillside to a scene
From Theocritus.… ”
“Thy beauty is the warmth and languor of an orient autumn,
Caressing all the senses—
With light from skies of heavy azure,… ”
“What islands marvellous are these,
That gem the sunset's tides of light-—
Opals aglow in saffron seas?… ”
“A faery land is this that far and high
And all suffused with tints of pearl and rose,
Above the crimson sunset hangs and glows,… ”
“Thy heart will not believe in love:
Therefore is love become to me
A dream resolved to mockery,
… ”
“As the fierce faun, on the cypress-bearded cape,
Desires the sea-girl, seen with billow-drifted
Hair the color of kelp and shadowy-rifted… ”
“Only through the senses have I known you,
But you are nearer than the things of sense—
Nearer than is the daylight in mine eyes,… ”
“Forget, forget, and be not sorrowful at all!
Ah, tend no more, in gardens of the terrene years,
This wormwood flowering tall with thy mellifluous tears.… ”
“I have calmed me with the thought of nothingness—
who know that none shall evermore escape
From the world's dream and stand illusionless.… ”
“Around its walls the forests of the west
Gloom, as about some mystery's final pale
Might lie its multifold exterior veil.… ”
“I write the poems down
Line by line from old anthologies
Printed on the air and ether,… ”
“The sunset-gonfalons are furled
On plains of evening, broad and pale,
And woven athwart the waning world… ”
“In a palace of silk and gold, in Ecbatana,
Beautiful demons, adolescent Satans brave,
Mid the sound of dulcimers of Arabia,… ”
“Glossy-backed, the crows
Ward the garden-rows:
One turns to watch the farmer.… ”
“Because of thee immortal Love hath died:
Because thy wilful heart will not believe,
Thy hands and mine a thorny crown must weave,… ”
“They seem the enfolding mountains of some fairer land
That lies beyond the world,
With vales of purpling rose in hills eburnean furled… ”
“The sorcerer departs . . . and his high tower is drowned
Slowly by low flat communal seas that level all . . .
While crowding centuries retreat, return and fall… ”
“If passing sometime
beside my grave
thy love would awaken… ”
“O dancer with the dove-swift feet and hands,
So palely swaying
Against the moon's replenished rondure,… ”
“The mysteries of your former dust,
Your lives declined from solar light—
These would you know, or these surmise?… ”
“Twilight ascends the abandoned ramps of noon
Within an ancient land, whose after-time
Unfathomably shadows its ruined prime.… ”
“Is it a dream, is it a memory -
That, underneath some warmer moon of yore,
We dreamt of love, we dreamt forevermore… ”
“Not as a tyrant cruel, hard and cold,
A monarch unrelenting and severe,
Think I of Death, whom all the many fear… ”
“On couches filled with odors faint and failing,
Divans profound as tombs, we shall recline;
Around us, with strange languid petals paling,… ”
“By some strange antepast I have consumed
In a former star foregone the fruits of this;
And frost and dust commingle in the kiss… ”
“From the sad leaves withdrawn,
Remote, estranged and cold,
Forgetful autumn's gold… ”
“Close above the snow-scene,
Blue, purple, yellow-green
Clouds ring the moon.… ”
“From this my heart, a haunted Elsinore,
I send the phantoms packing for thy sake:
Sea-wind and sin walk now the halls; I take… ”
“I stood ’mid the ruins of a city great,
And mused on the vagaries of destiny and fate.
Here, where I stand a city once stood,… ”
“Departing autumn trails
Her scarf of mist adown the morning vales;
Enmeshed like faery sequins in its fold,
… ”
“There is no room in any town (he said)
To house the towering hugeness of my dream.
It straitens me to sleep in any bed… ”
“Supreme with night, what high mysteriarch—
The undreamt-of god beyond the trinal noon
Of elder suns empyreal—past the moon… ”
“It seems to me that I have lived alone—
Alone, as one that liveth in a dream:
As light on coldest marble, or the gleam… ”
“One said: "I have seen, from cliffs of doom,
The seven hells flame up in flower
Like a million upas trees that tower,
… ”
“Absurd, magnificent, and huger
than swan or turkey-cock, this flightless antique pigeon
once roamed at his anachronistic leisure… ”
“I used to dream, long, long ago,
That the clouds were marvelous white elephants
Journeying in droves to a far-off sacred city… ”
“Within your voice the palms of Eden sigh
In scented winds blown from the summer foam;
But in your gaze the lulling hills of home… ”
“The harsh, brief sob of broken horns; the sound
Of hammers, on some clanging sepulcher;
Lutes in a thunder-storm; a dulcimer… ”
“The Muses all are silent for your sake:
While night and distance take
The hamadryad's hill, the naiad's vale,… ”
“The shadow of a sorrow haunts the light,
And sense of dreamt, forgotten tragedy—
Surviving phantom of a memory… ”
“Empress of all my life, it is not known to thee
What hidden world thou holdest evermore in fee;
What muffled levies rise, from mist and Lethe drawn,… ”
“Exalt thyself: be more than man,
Be saint or be magician,
And where the burning Sword awaits
… ”
“Lightly kiss and lightly pass
Ere the sleeping Love shall wake;
Nimble-footed, lean and take… ”
“Riding on Rosinante where the cars
With dismal unremitting clangors pass,
And people move like curbless energumens
… ”
“Vida mía, en tu alteza
Nunca olvides nuestro amor;
… ”
“¿A dónde vais, guerreros orgullosos,
con cotas fúlgidas como la luna?
—Salimos a matar eI basilisco… ”
“Thine eyes are opals through some veiling vapor seen:
Mysterious changeful, are they blue or grey or green?
Dream they of death or love? or are they but the glass… ”
“By the clear green river,
One afternoon in early autumn,
A dragon-fly with crimson wings alit… ”
“(For Samuel Loveman 17-5-1915)
O'er dreamland gardens lulled and white… ”
“I dreamed that each most lovely, perfect thing
That nature hath, of sound and form and hue—
The winds, the grass, the light-concentering dew,… ”
“The day of time was darkening to its end:
The sun hung chill within the blackened noon,
Its splendors one with night. Form planetrs doomed… ”
“I seemed at the sheer end:
Albeit mine eyes, in mystery and night
Shrouded as with the close deep caul of death,… ”
“All drear and barren seemed the hours,
That passed rain-swept and tempest-blown.
The dead leaves fell like brownish notes… ”
“I wandered down Sleep's vast and sunless vale,
Where silence and Cimmerian darkness lay
That never moon nor stars disturb, nor Day… ”
“Thy soul is like a secret garden-close,
Where roots of cleft rnandragoras enwreathe;
Where bergamot and fumitory breathe,… ”
“Better a living dog (the Preacher said)
Than a dead lion. All things are shadow, save
To eat and drink. And the everlasting grave… ”
“I wandered ere the dream was done
Where over Nilus' nenuphars,
With all its ears of quivering stars,… ”
“Blind with your softly fallen hair,
I turn me from the twilight air;
And, ah, the wordless tale of love… ”
“Chryselephantine, clear as carven name,
Before my gaze thy soul's eidolon stands,
As on the threshold of the frozen lands… ”
El Cantar Del Los Seres Libres
“El Cantar Del Los Seres Libres
Gato montés, hermano de mi alma,
indómito sé tú, y sin cadena;… ”
“Now as the twilight's doubtful interval
Closes with night's accomplished certainty,
A wizard wind goes crying eerily,
… ”
“Eternal autumn gilds the trees whereon
an ardent twilight lengthens endlessly.
In a warm strong wind the leaves whirl on and on… ”
“Calm within the twilight woven
By the lofty boughs above,
Let us with the deep unproven… ”
“These are enchanted mirrors that I bring,
By demons wrought from metals of the moon
To burnished forms of lune or plenilune:
… ”
“Spent autumn wanes; the leaf
Forsakes the vine, as from her coronal
The gems might fall,… ”
“Across thy face a glimmer passes—
Wrought by what far and hidden flame?
Say, is it loveliness, or love,… ”
“Thou art immured in some sad garden sown with dust
Of fruit of Sodom that bedims the summer ground,
And burdenously bows the lilies many-crowned,… ”
“My days are as a garden, where the dust
Of acrid fruits of Sodom sows the ground,
And bows vermillion lillies lofty-crowned,
… ”
“None other saw them when they came
Across the many-clangored mart,
But in mine eyes and in my heart… ”
“Shall he find
Novae in the darkness blind?
Or phantom of a farther sun?… ”
“Somewhere in Space the disunited dust
That formed a visible comparted world,
Floats in unnoticed formlessness, nor mars… ”
“Ah, suffer that my song
To thee alone belong:
No dearer happiness my heart would choose… ”
“Sculptor of demons and of goddesses,
I chisel also an eidolon of love
in ebony, adorning him with black roses… ”
“I have forgot, who once had part
In autumn and in autumn's grief;
Still the red year illumes the leaf,… ”
“Above the rugged realm of fir and pine,
Aggressive pinnacles, supreme and high,
In snow eternal keenly pierce the sky,… ”
“This separation cleaveth to the core. . . .
Even in slumber I am fated
To seek thee in vast throngs and dreamlands desolated—… ”
“Now, see! the time is come when solemnly and slow
The flowers on their stem like shaken censers fume;
When sounds and odors, trembling, turn upon the gloom:… ”
“The pendulum, with brazen din,
Proclaims the midnight; we begin
To call to mind, ironically,… ”
“Against my heart your heart is closed; you bid me go:
What ways are left in all the world for love to know ?
Desolate oceans, and the light of lonely plains,… ”
“Like ghosts returning stealthily
From those grey lands
Palled with funereal ashes falling… ”
“Thy body bright as wine-washed ivory,
Thy fervid charms, bare as the moon is bare,
I knew them all (I know not when nor where)… ”
Exotic Perfume (Parfum Exotique)
“At autumn eve, with pillowed lips and closing eyes,
I breathe the perfumes of thy sultry bosom bare,
And find again the forfeit, warm, Lethean air… ”
“Thy mouth is like a crimson orchid-flower
Whence perfume and whence poison rise unseen
To moons aswim in iris or in green,… ”
“O lords and gods that are! the assigning tide, upon
Some prowless beach where a forgotten fisher dwells,
At last will leave the sea-flung jars of Solomon;… ”
“'Tis said these blossom-lanterns light
The elves upon their midnight-way;
That fairy toil and elfin play… ”
“From the fallen leaf
And from my deciduous heart
Fades the scarlet.… ”
“In opal mist involved, and silver snows,
The mountains front the slow-unfolding morn,
While half the west lies darkling, and forlorn… ”
“Lost and alien lie the leas,
Purfled all with euphrasies,
Where the lunar unicorn
… ”
“Lord of the many pangs, the single ecstasy!
From all my rose-red temple builded in thy name,
Pass dawnward with no blasphemies of praise or blame,
… ”
“An old clay faun eternally
Laughs from the center of the green,
Foretelling some ill end to be… ”
“White lilies frail and cold,
With hearts of elfin gold;
Briefer than all brief things your hidden bloom,… ”
“Birds of fable,
Phoenix, roc and simorg-anka,
Pecked my phantom-fruited table.… ”
“Gossamer-frail, the moon
Goes down the skies of days;
Vague winds are on the noon,
… ”
“Dead and leafless too
Clings the clustered mistletoe
On the oak it slew.… ”
“Old, with scattered blocks,
Low-fallen beside the wire fence
Lies the wall of rocks.… ”
“Where the mantled bones lie low,
Monstrous weeds and grasses lush
Thicklier grow.… ”
“It seemed that from the west
The live red flame of sunset,
Eating the dead blue sky… ”
“Pale fire of snow had lit the dusk for me:
Astray with mind half-consciously intent
I had not thought the wood so imminent—… ”
“On skies of tropic evening, broad and beryl-green,
Above a tranquil sea of molten malachite,
With flare of scarlet wings, in long and level flight,… ”
“Scene: an immense and darkling plain, remotely lit by the sunset of the last day. Two demons, passing from the interstellar deep, have paused on an isolated hill-top.
… ”
“A flame of orange ashen-flecked
In a wavering line
Takes wing from pine to pine.… ”
“Spring came down the mountain-side,
Gentian-eyed,
From the snow-rimmed fountains.… ”
“Hastening I strode
Past the drunkard lying
Beside the moonless road.… ”
“Still wanting you, perchance
How vainly love had waited,
An autumn faun belated… ”
“In the stirless brake
Click the faint castanets
Of the rattlesnake.… ”
“My life is less than any broken glass . . . .
My long and weary love, thy lips unwon—
All, all is turned to mere oblivion… ”
“A stranger grief than any grief by music told
Is mine: regret for unremembered loves, and faces
Veiled by the night of some unknown farewell, or places… ”
“A Benjamin DeCasseres
Loin du tumulte, et loin du braîment de la foule,… ”
“It seems my blood is a sealed but ever-rippling fount:
Deep in a sunless court the rhythmic sobbings mount.
Full well I hear it always, murmurously flowing;… ”
“Autumn far off in memory,
That saw the crisping myrtles fade ! . . .
Eons agone, my tomb was made… ”
“This I remember clearly: from stone to stepping-stone
I bore you in my arms across the quiet stream. . . .
And yet I know not where nor when; nor whether in dream… ”
“To you, that went from Arcady
To follow after worldly shows,
My songs shall bring unfailingly… ”
“O fugitive fragrances
That tremble heavenward
Unceasing, or if ye linger,… ”
“My heart is like some onyx urn
Upon whose cold and carven side
Antique symbolic serpents glide… ”
“By what digit of the moon
Shall I question, late or soon,
Your shoal-green eyes?… ”
“Dearest, today I found
A lonely spot, such as we two have loved,
Where two might lie upon Favonian ground… ”
“One day, when summer suns were kind,
I walked within my soul's domain,
Where inner summer held its reign,… ”
“With lowered lids, you nod:
Somewhere in the garden
Lurks the garden-god.… ”
“My lone heart afar
Trails the geese no longer heard
Below the northern star.… ”
“Where nights are one with days
I roam the empty stony maze
That stalled the Minotaur.… ”
“Scene: a cemetery, by moonlight. The Ghoul emerges from the shade of a cypress, and sings.
… ”
“In times when Nature, filled with fervor limitless,
Conceived and brought to birth many a monstrous child,
I fain had dwelt anigh to some young giantess,… ”
“You cuddled me and kissed me,
Mussed my hair, and smiled:
The woman in the child.… ”
“Give me your lips:
Like to some scarlet fruit of Paradise
That grew before the gates were barred,… ”
“To the gathered boughs we hold
Flock the goats
From the close-eaten wold.… ”
“Again, from the gopher-hole
I plugged with straw and stones,
Bubbling, the water runs.… ”
“I went homeward by the willowed
Stream-bed, knowing
That she waited on the road.… ”
“To the loved days we shared alone,
Leda, beyond the moons and miles
The swan of my desire has flown.… ”
“Over the rock the lichen
Stars the way whereon
Ten thousand suns have gone.… ”
“Outside the time-dimension, and outside
The ever-changing spheres and shifting spaces -
Though the mad planet and its wrangling races
… ”
“Watched over by insuperable peaks,
Beneath a leaden sky and copper sun,
Surrounded by a desert treeless, dun,… ”
“O Life, thou harlot who beguilest all!
Beautiful in thy house, the golden world.
Abidest thou, where Powers pinion-furled… ”
“Black pines above an opal tarn
And the grey cliff above the pines
And the clouds above the cliff,… ”
“Barnward come the cows
In the squash-hued sunset
Raddled by the buckeye boughs.… ”
The Hashish Eater -or- the Apocalypse of Evil
“Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take… ”
“There is no peace amid the moonlight and the pines;
Deep in the windless gloom the lamplike thought of you
Abides; and ah, what burning memories pursue… ”
“In the ruined fire-place
Grows the summer-brown fern,
And a few poppies burn.… ”
“He, the supreme idealist of Sin,
Through scarlet days a white perfection sought—
To make of lyric deed and lyric thought… ”
“… ”
“Entranced, unstirring,
Stands the heron
By the river's rippled gleam:… ”
“The season brings but little gold,
And only rusty gules and sanguines dull
To these rude hills with darkling lava cored… ”
“Our passion is a secret paradise—
Eden of lotos and the fruitful date,
With silence walled and held undesecrate… ”
“Far above pine and fir,
Mortised in granite aeons,
Stands the juniper.… ”
“Loud as the Trump that made the mortised walls
Of Jericho to tremble and lean and sway,
The voice of ocean sweeps this granite verge.… ”
“Like fins of numberless white sharks, the foam
Cleaves the blue, wrinkled surface of the bay,
And on the cliffs the massive combers build… ”
“This is enchanted ground
Whereto the nymphs are bound;
Where the hoar oaks maintain,… ”
“Alone upon my hill-top,
After the ravelled rains,
I see the cloudy mountains,… ”
“My hope is in the unharvestable deep
That shows with eve the treasure of the stars
To mournful kings behind their palace-bars,… ”
“Thou art the place our eager, hastening feet
May never reach, though far the quest is sped,
Though over land and sea our search is led.… ”
“O clock, thy long and solemn tones,
That now resound the knell of time,
Are like some hammer's iron chime… ”
“Our love has grown a thing too deep and grave
For touch and speech of trivial gallantries:
For we have wrought consummate sorceries… ”
A Hunter Meets the Martichoras
“Through his three rows of teeth
The martichoras roared
Against my broken sword.… ”
“Fallest thou from the heavens, or soarest from the abyss,
O Beauty? Thy regard infernal and divine
Pours out, in vast confusion, crime and benefice,… ”
“No, not among the meager beauties of vignettes,
The autumn-tainted fruit of a century's decline,
The buskined feet, the fingers hung with castanets,… ”
“Hateful, and most abhorred,
about us the season
of sleet, of snow and of frost… ”
“Las bóvedas del tiempo y del abismo
no tienen ejemplar de tu beldad;
y ningún escultor cincela el mismo… ”
“Musing upon the mysteries of the flesh,
I am as some hierophant of old
For whom the temple's hidden valves unfold.… ”
“Oft have I seen the sunset-fires
Illume the slumbering fen's extreme,
With splendour like a seraph's dream,… ”
“Calm as a long-forgotten marble god who smiles,
Colossal, in the grim serenity of stone,
Upon the broken pillars lying all alone… ”
“Imagination, to thine occult sight,
All things are crystal—earth, and sea, and sky,
The seen and the unseen, but limpid light;… ”
“Her love is like an autumn flow'r,
An immortelle with petals wide,
Risen beside the vine-wrought bow'r,… ”
“The silver silence of the moon
Upon the sleeping garden lies;
The wind of evening dies… ”
“In my dream a nun,
Proudly bosomed, lunar-pale,
Danced naked in the sun.… ”
“Your body was an altar of delight,
With almond petals strewn,
Whereat we worshipped in the shrine of night.… ”
“Rememberest thou? Enormous gongs of stone
Were stricken, and the storming trumpeteers
Acclaimed my deed to answering tides of spears,… ”
“With autumn and the flaring leaves our love must end-—
Ere flauntful spring shall mock thy tears and my despair
With blossoms red or pale, some April bride may wear:… ”
“Upon the seas of Saturn I have sailed
To isles of high primeval amarant,
Where the flame-tongued, sonorous flowers enchant… ”
“The stench of stagnant waters broke my dream,
Wherethrough had run, with living murmur and gleam,
The Rivers four of the Earthly Paradise:… ”
“I met the night in unfamiliar lands,
In realmless desolations, drear and far,
Where no life was, nor any shard remained… ”
“In ultimate lone valleys evermore,
Immutable large purple blossoms bloom;
Munificent unfading suns illume,… ”
“Lo, in the wind what legions pass,
Phantom, innumerable, fleet;
Watching, I dream their pauseless feet… ”
“When I lay dead in Thessaly,
The land was rife with sorcery:
Fair witches howled to Hecate,… ”
“Haply I shall not know, as others know,
The face you have given to the fumbling sun,
That sculptor of chaotic night; and none… ”
“Ill days and dolorous nights and years accurst—
The increase of evil, that is twin to life;
Weariness of re-animated strife,
… ”
“In the granite pits
Crumbling oak-leaves nestle;
Lichens asterick the pestle.… ”
“Surely these muted days are one with days remembered,
This necromantic sun is an evocation
Of suns whereunder we have walked before:… ”
“Thy deepest dolor shalt thou tell,
But nevermore thy happiness:
Unworded still and utterless,… ”
“Grey hells, or hells aglow with hot and scarlet flowers;
White hells of light and clamor; hells the abomination
Of breathless, deep, sepulchral desolation… ”
“In years no vision shall aver,
In lands no dream may name,
Toward alien things what longings were,
… ”
“Of all the sovereignty thine eyes obtain,
Thy grant of vision from the royal sun,
And all thine appanage of lordly dream,… ”
“Darling, how near we lay
To Lethe on that day
When, wandering far amid the wreathèd fog… ”
“Love, will you look with me
Upon the phosphor-litten labor of the worm—
Time's minister, who toils for his appointed term,… ”
“An Entity, an Eidolon,
Fallen from out some azure clime
Into a Styx of lead and slime… ”
“Huérfano de naufragio
estoy en un terreno sin jardín,
sin campo cultivado,… ”
“In one of these (islands) the barbarians
feign that Saturn is held prisoner by Zeus.
-Plutarch… ”
“The tree-reflections in the misty river die
Like a vapor on the sky,
While in the very boughs, 'neath the true firmament,… ”
“Far-separate, a few
Leaves illumed with perished autumn
Space the boughs against the blue.… ”
“From teak and tamarind and palm
The heavy sun goes down unseen;
The jungle drowns in duskier green;… ”
“A crownless king who reigns alone,
I live within this ashen land,
Where winds rebuild from wandering sand
… ”
“All rimmed around with halcyon skies,
Filled with blue air and butterflies,
Mightily arched and intervalled,… ”
“Thy name, an invocation, calls to light
Dead moons, and draws from overdated night
The rosy-bosomed spectre of delight.… ”
“One tone is mute within the starry singing,
The unison fulfilled, complete before;
One chord within the music sounds no more,… ”
“Out of her desert lair the lamia came,
A lovely serpent shaped as women are.
Meeting me there, she hailed me by the name
… ”
“Among the great ennuis, and great longings laid in ashes,
One only loves flames evermore in me.
Such an old volcano, with ever-mounting fire,… ”
“'Neath blue days, and gold, and green,
Blooms the glorious land serene,
Flaming shields of dawns between;… ”
“When I came to pluck it,
Fallen, splashed in rot
Was the last apricot.… ”
“To laud the loves of old,
I sought for splendors fabulous and far:
The curls of one were black Circean petals… ”
“I dreamed a dream: I stood upon a height,
A mountain's utmost eminence of snow.
Beholding ashen plains outflung below… ”
“Not while the woods are redolent with spring,
Or scentless immortelles of autumn blow,
Shall I evade your loveliness, or know… ”
“Startled, I heard the clack and clatter
Of the stiff plane-leaves, blown abroad
Upon the paven road:… ”
“When I pruned the pear-trees,
Buds and blossoms falling
Strewed the path of spring.… ”
“The imperishable phantoms, Love and Fame,
Nor Beauty, burning on the mist and mire
A fugitive uncapturable fire,… ”
“The grass too we truncate
Into flat uniform monotonous lawns.
… ”
“From dawn to dawn your eyes of graven spar
For ever change, with chill, forgotten runes:
But all the while your spirit lies afar,… ”
“La douceur du dernier anéantissement!
O! l'hydromel des morts nous boirons lentement,
Comme des énivrés qui buvotent leurs vins!
… ”
“Cruel and deaf, come to my heart again,
O indolent sphinx, tigress that I adore!
Long, long my trembling fingers would explore… ”
“From the nameless dark distilled,
Lethe flows
Through the night that no man knows.… ”
“I flow beneath the columns that upbear
The world, and all of heaven and limbo and hell;
Foamless I glide, where sounds nor glimmers tell… ”
“Pale-green and black and bronze and grey,
In broken arabesque and foliate star,
They cling, so closely grown… ”
“The pool's green lymph
Whitens with the floating nymph
Who rises algae-fleeced.… ”
“O face upturned to alien splendors!
Sybil, what visions have you seen
In haunted worlds? what music hearkened… ”
“Ah, can we stifle the old, the long remorse,
Who lives and moves full tortuously,
Who feeds upon us like the worm upon the corpse,
… ”
“How marvellous this bit of green
I hold, and soon shall throw away!
Its subtle veins, its vivid sheen,… ”
“Once, I could find you in my dreams;
Your swaying breasts were apples bright
In somber sinful crofts of night;… ”
“Lying on the tiger-skin
In the secret, safe boudoir,
Lovers eat… ”
“I saw you not nor heard,
Knowing your presence as one knows
The night-found rose.… ”
Love Is Not Yours, Love Is Not Mine
“Love is not yours, love is not mine:
It is the tranquil twilight heaven
Through which our pauseless feet are driven… ”
“I fain would love thee, but thy lips are fed
With poison-honey, hivéd in a skull;
They seem like scarlet poppies, beautiful… ”
“Sluggish drops of sullen balm;
Blood-red wine from fruits of bane,
Subtly mixed with polar snows… ”
“By an alien dream despatched and driven
In a land to strange stars given,
Stars that summoned forth the moon,… ”
“O'er gardens lulled with ghostly light
In music leaned the languorous moon,
The burden of the murmured night.… ”
“What hast thou seen, O wind,
Of beauty or of terror,
Surpassing, denied to us,… ”
“Low-lidded eyes thou hast,
But all too beautiful for love to bear:
Fain would I kiss them fast… ”
“My dreams are belated orioles
That flee the mournful mists
To find, in the heaven of thy soul,… ”
“Dear, can we endure to know
How these jasmine-girdled hours
Shall become the long ago?… ”
“To my remote abandonment
Your deep and lustrous hair has lent
How many an autumn-colored dream;… ”
“While the black perennial snows
Piled about the pole of night
Swell the fount whence Lethe flows;… ”
“La lune décroissante
Se couche en noir dédale
D'une aunaie automnale… ”
“Mon coeur se desemplit d'une immense rancune
Qui retire sa mer sous quelque occulte lune.
Sous quelque lune noire, au lointain de l'esprit:
… ”
“Scene: A moonlit glade on a summer midnight.
… ”
“Fools of the world, who dream that dreams are true—
Believing still that life is what it seems,
And trustful that the world is more than dreams—… ”
“Sleep is a pathless labyrinth,
Dark to the gaze of moons and suns,
Through which the exile clue of dreams,… ”
“Alas, that we are deaf and blind
To meanings all about us hid !
What secrets lurk the woods amid ?… ”
“As drear and barren as the glooms of Death,
It lies, a windless land of livid dawns,
Nude to a desolate firmament, with hills… ”
“I may not mask for ever with the grace
Of woven flowers thine eyes of staring stone:
Ere the lithe adders and the garlands blown,… ”
“Like a worm-fretted visage from the tomb,
The moon unswathes her hollow, shrunken head,
Launching such light as foulders on the dead… ”
“When all the splendour wanes
Like a slow sunset from the changeful leaves,
And the grey time of rains… ”
“Marked by the priesthood of the Night's misrule,
The shadow-cowled, imprecatory trees—
Cypress that guarded woodland secrecies
… ”
“Methought upon the tomb-encumbered shore
I stood of Egypt's lone monarchal stream,
And saw immortal Memnon, throned supreme… ”
“Esta memoria vuelve todavía
de un jardín de amaranto más retinto:
los lagos del ocaso, colorando… ”
“Thy mouth, whereof the worm was amorous,
Thy brows, whereon some waning moon had power,
Thy breasts, corruptible as any flower,… ”
“Catching a little wind’s unrest,
The dandelion-crests dissolve,
Where swooping wings of air involve… ”
The Metamorphoses of the Vampire
“Turning and twisting like a serpent among embers, and kneading breasts against her iron stays, the woman in the meanwhile poured from her strawberry mouth a soliloquy that was pregnant with musk: "My lips are moist, and I know the art of losing in a deep bed the antiquated conscience. All tears are dried upon my triumphant breasts, and I cause the old to laugh with the laughter of children. For those who see naked and without veils, I replace the sun, the moon, the stars and the heavens. I display so profound a knowledge of pleasure, such subtle erudition, when I stifle men in my velvet arms, or abandon to bites and kisses my shy, lascivious, frail and robust bosom, that even the impotent angels would damn themselves for me on my swooning mattresses"
When she had sucked all the marrow from my bones, and I turned languishingly to give her an amorous kiss, I beheld only a leathern bottle with slimy sides, filled full of pus! I closed my eyes in a cold terror and when I re-opened them to the living light, beside me, in lieu of the lusty mannequin that had seemed so well furnished with blood, there quivered the confused debris of a skeleton, creaking like a rusty weather-cock, or a sign-board that swings from an iron rod, swaying in the wind of winter nights.… ”
“You are the stately sunset,
Departing with a hundred flames of amber
Beyond the pinnacles of autumn pine… ”
“In starlight, by the ghostly sea,
We ran, we loitered, hand in hand,
Along the lone, unending strand;… ”
“My dreams are turned to some disordered mime:
A plot that pandemonian shadows feign
Ravels half told; and dead loves live again… ”
“Scorners of the Muse, beware !
She that you deny is queen
Of a thunder-girt demesne… ”
“The glories and the perils of thy day
Are one, O Man ! Thou goest to thine end
With Powers, and for a little thou dost wend… ”
“Deem ye the veiling vision will abide—
The marvel, and the glamor, and the dream
Which lies in light upon the barren world ? . . .… ”
“Rappelelez-vous l'étang dont l'eau nous attirait
Dans des hereux matins,
Voyez-vous noire étang, ceint des buissons alpins,… ”
“Mirrors of steel or silver, gold or glass antique!
Whether in melancholy marble palaces
In some long trance you drew the dreamy loveliness… ”
“Beauty has many mirrors to ensphere
Her presence or her passing: orbs of dew;
Far-flooding Amazons with margents new;… ”
“Long ends of autumn, winters, springtimes drowned in mud,
Seasons of drowsiness! I love and laud you, fain
To fold your vaporous palls like Lethe round my brain… ”
“Life the toxicologist
Proffers all the magistrals
Of death:… ”
“Agatha, say is thy heart not often fain to go,
Far from the somber city's black and impure sea,
To another ocean where the splendors fall and flow… ”
“Who are ye that always wander
Up and down and here and yonder?
… ”
“From all the moments of our love,
What moment would I most recall?
That first mad kiss, that made you swoon… ”
“He has one foot, one leg,
To bear him here and yonder
In lands of wonder.… ”
“The hills, a-throng with swarthy pine,
Press up the pale and hollow sky,
And the squat cypresses on high… ”
“Ambitious of their solitary reign,
Whose many-pointed brilliance fills the sky,
The silver moon doth rise in majesty,… ”
“Your soul, it is a garden set apart,
Where masques and bergamasques go mummer-wise
And dance and strum the cithern, though at heart… ”
“Above the desert’s dark-obscured expanse
The rounded moon uplooms; at once laid clear
The waste leaps on the sight, the far and near… ”
“A silken sea, a sea of damassin,
With figured foam as flowers wove therein,
Where all the winds walk lightly. From afar —… ”
“All night the pool held mysteries,
Vague depths of night that lay in dream,
Where phantoms of the pale-white stars… ”
“Sweeter the thought of death to me
Than love's own sleep or any dream;
Than starlight on some ebon stream… ”
“One bullet, dark and hard,
Stilled the coupling cats that yowled
In the yard.… ”
“I saw a universe today:
Through a disclosing bar of light
The motes were whirled in gleaming flight… ”
“In the steepest mile,
Climbing the mountain path,
You held my hand awhile.… ”
“From out the light of many a mightier day,
From Pharaonic splendour, Memphian gloom,
And from the night aeonian of the tomb… ”
“Stiff and brown and dusty—
Coffined in the drawer,
I found the oleander-flower:… ”
“When our pails were brimmed,
Mushrooms white and brown
Clustered where the slope went down.… ”
“Music full often lifts me like a swelling sea!
After my star long-flown,
Through vaulted brume or ethers of immensity… ”
“To me, who have but known
The senses' doubtful lore,
Thy soul is evermore… ”
“This wakeful death affords not any rift
where root of weed or blossom cleaves the tomb.
Ungrown as yet, no yewen bowers lift,… ”
“As one who seeks the silver moth of night
Where moonless gardens lose the afterglow,
My soul went forth ineffably, to know… ”
“My heart is made a necromancer's glass,
Where homeless forms and exile phantoms teem,
Where faces of forgotten sorrows gleam… ”
“Lo, what are these, the gyres of sun and world,
Fulfilled with daylight by each toiling sun-
Lo, what are these but webs of radiance spun… ”
“Her face the sinking stars desire:
Unto her place the slow deeps bring
Shadow of errant winds that wing… ”
“This Rome, that was the toil of many men,
The consummation of laborious years—
Fulfilment's crown to visions of the dead… ”
“Ah, let me not remember
The leaves of brown November
'Neath boughs renewed with May;… ”
“Lady, be the chatelaine
Of my vagrant dreams and vain:
Knowing naught is true and fair… ”
“The fires of sunset die reluctantly
As goes the kingly Day to seek his rest,
And Night, the sable queen, comes sombrely,… ”
“Twilight dim and gray,
The last, red rays of the sun;
And slowly dieth the day,… ”
“Incumbent seemingly
On the serrate points of peaks
That end the visible west,… ”
“When I saw you dance,
Milesian roses swayed in the wind
Of a lost romance.… ”
“Low on the lilac breast of eve
The yellow rose of sunset lies...
Beneath my cheek, with little sighs,… ”
“As though a thousand vampires, from the day
Fleeing unseen, oppressed that nightly deep,
The straitening and darkened skies of sleep… ”
“I was a midge
With broken wing,
Crawling some colossal ridge… ”
“I sat beside the moonless tarn alone,
In darkness where a mumbling air was blown—
A moulded air, insufferably fraught… ”
“Poised as a god whose lone, detachèd post,
A eyrie, pends between the boundary-marks
Of finite years and those unvaried darks… ”
“No more the pine shall tower high,
A spire of green, against the sky,
But here, on many a winter night,
… ”
“One rapid gesture of a supple arm
Has made your beauty strange and fabulous:
Mystery folds you and reveals you, thus… ”
“From my door the pines,
To Polaris pointing,
Spoke the turning Signs.… ”
“A silver sleep is on the vale;
The breathless pines are pale,
Where quiet shadows dream… ”
“The city's towers were limned in fire
When, down the long, the hill-descending street,
We rode as down some cataract of stars:… ”
“Now comes the Seasons' high and ardent noon,
Fulfillment of Spring's youthful prophecy,
Full-flow red and fruited. Hesitatingly… ”
“Blithe love, what dubious ponderings bemuse
Thy lover's mind! . . . In me thy memories are
As attar in some alabaster jar . . .… ”
“Dream not the dead will wait,
Slow-crumbling in the allotted ground,
Nor rise except to some sonorous trump… ”
“Unshaken still, through wind and rain,
Red autumn rears her blazonry.
But, ah! the barren grief and pain… ”
“November's winy sunset leaves,
Deep in the silver heavens far,
One ruby-hearted star… ”
“Sable-robed, at noon,
They passed beneath red cherries
Ripening with June.… ”
“Ye that see in darkness
When the moon is drowned
In the coiling fen-mist… ”
“Last night I was a vagrant faun:
I followed through the woods of dream
Where singing dryads led me on… ”
“We found, we knew it dimly
Within a dead life grimly
By guarding time inurned—… ”
“The temple's ruin crowns the promontory.
Close-shrouded with the root-enwoven sod,
The marble goddess, the bronze demigod,… ”
“Great woods, you frighten me like some cathedral's gloom!
You howl as howls an organ; through the undying dole
And long death-rattles in my heart's accursed room,… ”
“The blood of wounded love is on your leaves, October,
And in your seaward wind the sigh of love foredone:
Though I should fold them round me, cerement-like and sober,… ”
“O young and dear and tender sorceress!
Your delicate, slim hands
Reweave the glamors of Hellenic lands… ”
“Your name is like the opening of a flow'r,
The forest's brief and pensive-petalled rose,
Unfolding in a land of larch and pine,… ”
“Imagination's eyes
Outreach and distance far
The vision of the greatest star… ”
“What sky beheld thy primal birth,
When ageless night's dimensionless extent
First knew division, and the girth… ”
“O tissued fabric of the frame of things,
Thou art an alternating tide,
And Life a moment's foam… ”
“O woven fabric and bright web of sound,
Whose threads are magical,
And with swift weaving thrall… ”
“O many-gulfed, unalterable one,
Whose deep sustains
Far-drifting world and sun,… ”
“Oblivion
Swells our sails and bears us on
To the seas beyond the sun.… ”
“From the bedrock bottom
Dolomites upbear
Pines with roots that reach in air.… ”
“In the crumbling topless kiln
Pines have taken root,
Oaks drop their fruit.… ”
“Harder is this to bear than love's own pain—
That love and even pain alike shall pass
Nor haply come again.… ”
“Often, on homeward ways, I come
To a deserted orchard, old and lone,
Unplowed, untrod, with wilding grasses grown… ”
“I am the master of strange spells
Whereby the past is made tomorrow,
And April blows in fields long fallow,… ”
“Lovely as on the boughs of spring
Beneath the fallen suns of Ming,
There bloom the flowers of the plum… ”
“Forgetting still what holier lilies bloom
Secure within the garden of lost years,
We water with the fitfulness of tears… ”
“Forgotten lies the world we knew,
One mile behind the looming hill;
And here, beside a laurel-darkened rill,… ”
“In rock-bound Arabia
Grows the myrrh and cassia
Lost altars burned to Alilat,… ”
“We lay at twilight on the hill
And saw the citron gold of sunset drain,
Delicate as the sunsets of Cocaigne,… ”
“Often, before the mortal mouth has known
What fruit the vagrant phoenixes devour
In Melusina's or Armida's bower,… ”
“Beauty, thou orchid of immortal bloom,
Sprung from the fire and dust of perished spheres,
How art thou tall in these autumnal years… ”
“In billow-lost Poseidonis
I was the god Ougabalys:
My three horns were of similor… ”
“From the close valleys of thy love,
Where flowers of white and coral are
And the soft gloom of cave and grove,… ”
“By desert-deepened wells and chasmed ways,
And noon-high passes of the crumbling nome
Where the fell sphinx and martichoras roam;… ”
“In shelter of the vaulted yews,
Like alien gods who shun the world,
The flown owls wait with feathers furled,… ”
“You are the golden guerdon
Of all the iron days:
Hereafter song shall praise… ”
“In amaranthine days ere time was born
My home was in some ocean-fronting land
Where idle sirens on the pearl-white sand… ”
“Last night I roamed within the dream-confine
That, as a word of magic, strange, unsaid,
Is barrier to the thoughts of day. My tread… ”
“Fronting the sea's blue chambers fluctuant —
Those floors of azure, marble veined with foam —
It rears, a golden palace culminant… ”
“Palms in the sunset of a languid summer land !
Sculpture of living green, on dreamy scarlet light
Dividing as a wall the twilight from the night !… ”
“From my Stylitean throne,
The crag turned to cloud,
The cloud returned to stone.… ”
“To pleasure me, in this dark dawn,
A far and terrible paradise,
Fading, has left within mine eyes… ”
“Erato and Melpomene stumble in the stews
Through purblind alleys where a soused Apollo falls;
And bards pour out upon the altars of the Muse
… ”
“In some Titan city, bells
Gigantically clangorous,
Endless, monotonous,… ”
“Je songe à cette terre ancienne
Où des couchants longtemps déchus
Dorent des grands cygnes perdus
… ”
“I met her mirrored stare:
The cycles of stone glories
Locked in the Gorgon's glare.… ”
“Through the rotting leaves,
Autumn fungi thrust:
Pale similitudes of lust.… ”
“Ere yet the soaring after-fire was flown,
I found a city in the twilight lone -
Asleep in lapse of some forgotten land… ”
“Like an ill angel tawny-eyed,
I will return, and stilly glide
With shadows of the lunar dusk… ”
“Drunken with a thirsty spell,
Pygmies and giants warred
For the desert well.… ”
“I, I alone have seen the Phoenix fail,
His regal wings their vibrant glories vail
In gyres of baffled crimson, flagging gold… ”
“On the pagan down
Blithesome, naked, brown
Satyrs loot the bee-tree.… ”
“O little lances, dipt in grey,
And set in order straight and clean,
How exquisitely clear and keen… ”
“On the window-sill
Fall the blow-flies that I kill:
Dozens buzz and blunder still.… ”
“On boughs a-tremble with the rain,
The blown white flowers of the plum
Their fragile hold awhile retain.… ”
“Faces of the four seasons
Throng the bar:
One peers from a time-lost star.… ”
The Poet Talks with the Biographers
“O ghouls of fetid and funereal midnights,
Say, what do you uncover in your sad labors?
—We have disinterred the Empusa of thy fears… ”
“Sómos los dueños
De todos los sueños
De la noche o del día.… ”
“At an inn called the Sign
Of the Acherontic Pump,
Two poets drank their ebon wine… ”
“Wine can invest the must sordid hovel with a miraculous luxury, and can build many a fabulous portico in its red and golden vapors, like a sun setting in a cloudy heaven.
Opium can aggrandize the things that have no bourn, can lengthen illimitable, deepen time and voluptuousness, and fill the soul with dark and mournful pleasures beyond its capacity.… ”
“Anemones yawn,
Shells walk, peaked and whorled,
In a still crystal world.… ”
“Against the pale autumnal air,
The golden poplars burn and flare.
… ”
“Hearkening now the voices of the crowd,
Have you forgot the faint Parnassian music
We heard between the bracken and the cloud?… ”
“What occult Circe of the hours of sleep
Mixeth the Cup of Dreams with potent art?
How doth the sorceress cunningly impart… ”
“Call up the lordly daemon that in Cimmeria dwells
Amid the vaults untrodden, long-sealed with lethal spells,
Amid the untouched waters of Lemur-warded wells.… ”
“Beneath my dome of sleep, secure-immersed
And filled of peace, such blinded power of scath
As Samson once employed, was loosed in wrath,… ”
“O vermeil mouth that I have kissed in vain,
O hair that was a golden web of pain,
Woven to hold my heart! -… ”
“With words of ivory,
Of bronze, of ebony,.
Of alabaster, marble, steel and gold,… ”
“Behind each thing a shadow lies;
Beauty hath ever its cost:
Within the moonlight-flooded skies… ”
“About your wrists I bound
Fetters of water-grass
Where the streamlet wound.… ”
“Too long, alas, too long
My patient heart endures
This deep and desperate wrong—… ”
“City forbanned by seer and god and devil!
In glory less than Tyre or fabled Ys,
But more than they in mere, surpassing evil!… ”
“I have sealed my desire upon thee
With the red seal of kisses,
Of innumerable kisses red as flame:… ”
Psalm (From - Ebony And Crystal)
“My beloved is a well of clear waters,
To which I have come at noontide,
From the land of the Abomination of Desolation,… ”
“Thou comfortest me with the manna of thy love,
And the kisses of thy mouth are wine and sustenance;
They are grateful as fruit… ”
“1. The years have set thee apart, O Desert;
Silence and solitude are upon thee
For the twiform sigil of the last oblivion.… ”
“Climbing from out what nadir-fountained sea,
From nether incarnations none may sound—
Sealed with the night of suns, forever bound… ”
“This doubtful love has slumbered long—
At most, a shadow-mobled flame,
The murmur of a muted song;… ”
“All beneath a wintering sky,
Follow the wastrel butterfly;
With vermilion leaf or bronze—… ”
“When we harbored in the stone,
With its stillness being one,
All its essence was our own:… ”
“Forevermore the Earth reclaims her own;
Desire and vision, that have ventured far
In prospect of the empyrean star,… ”
“Ah, more to me than many days and many dreams,
And more than every hope, or any memory,
This moment, when thy lips are laid immortally… ”
“Though winter come with cleaving rain with bonds of rime,
It shall not sever us, the dreamers calm and wise,
Prom succor and solace of our pagan paradise:… ”
“From regions of the sun's half-dreamt decay,
All day the cruel rain strikes darkly down;
And from the night thy fatal stars shall frown—… ”
“From thy beauty
And thy lovers' ardent wars
Time shall make his metaphors… ”
“The years are a falling of snow,
Slow but without cessation,
On hills and mountains and towers and worlds that were;… ”
“Memory has in fee
A land where fallen suns
Illume the light and fragile bronze… ”
The Remorse of the Dead (Remords Posthume)
“My sable love, when you at last are lain
Unsought upon the lone, sepulchral bed,
And darkly keep your brothel with the dead,—… ”
“What was Love's worth,
Who lived with the roses ?—
Love that is earth,… ”
“White iris on thy bier,
With the white rose, we strew,
And lotus pale or blue… ”
“Sorceress and sorcerer,
Risen from the sepulcher,
From the deep, unhallowed ground,… ”
“Old Egypt's gods, Osiris, Ammon, Thoth,
Came on my dream in thunder, and their feet
Revealed were as the levin's fire and heat.… ”
“Turn round, O Life, and know with eyes aghast
The Breast that fed thee-Death, disguiseless, stern:
Even now, within my mouth, from tomb and urn,… ”
“The dungeon-clefts of Tartarus
Are close beyond the mountains
That are bound like a giant's girdle… ”
“The memory of this dread demesne
Unknown, unsought by mortal eyes,
That morning, like some glad surprise,… ”
“I am the spectre who returns
Unto some desolate world in min borne afar
On the black flowing of Lethean skies:… ”
“The heat is like some drowsy drug
Laden with honey-foundered dreams. . . .
Again the pagan forest seems… ”
“Under the spreading mulberry tree
When the purple fruit was falling free,
I got horny and had some nooky… ”
“Winding—winding to the sea,
Ever on, goeth the river free.
Here he bends, and there he goes,… ”
“Moss-cup oaks, broadly sprawled,
Clench the path, with sapling laurels
Intervalled.… ”
“The secret rose we vainly dream to find
Was blown in grey Atlantis long ago,
Or in old summers of the realms of snow… ”
“I stood in the forsaken market-place
Of an old and long-forgotten ancient race;
Before the palace of some great Sultan… ”
“My dreams were nests of horror, whimsey-wrought
With orts and shreds from old abysses brought;
Were eyries built by condor-wingèd awe,… ”
“Upon thy separate road
(Thou, who hast chosen the world’s appointed way)
My songs shall be as the perfume of sandalwood… ”
“Lost from those archangelic thrones that star,
Fadeless and fixed, heaven's light of azure bliss;
Forbanned of all His splendor and depressed… ”
“A weary Juan, smothered in boudoirs,
To sea-salt moors and air unwalled would turn,
And clasp, beneath the paneless moon or stars,… ”
“Dear you were as is the tree of Being
To the happy dead in heaven's bowers....
Whence and what, this evil spell that flings me… ”
“Now were the Titans gathered round their king
In a waste region slipping toward the verge
Of drear extremities that clasp the world—… ”
“How many a new and strange neurosis
The film-producer vexes
When love requires a symbiosis… ”
“Beneath the skies of Saturn, pale and many-mooned,
Her palace is;
Her wyvern-warded spires of celadon, enruned… ”
“With pencils on scratch-paper
We drew grotesques
And passed them underneath our desks.… ”
“Shaded by his palmy feet,
The sciapod
Roots his tresses in the sod.… ”
“Below the duff, before the granite stair,
The foam-crests curl and feather in blue air,
Numberless as the helmet-plumes of hosts… ”
“Beneath the sunset and the sea
Their coral-builded cities be;
They keep an old forgotten reign,… ”
“Since I have seen the refluent glory of the sea,
My dreams are made of azure, emerald and gold:
Tumultuous topaz, flowing sapphire manifold,… ”
“Like a word
Of an archetypal tongue,
Never told,… ”
“Hung round with heavy silence fold on fold,
Thy love, within my veiled and votive heart,
Is like a darkling Venus, shrined apart… ”
“Strange goddess, with the hues that darkness gave to thee,
And the perfume of musk immingled with havana—
Black magic, made by some black Faust of the savannah—… ”
“In valleys where the lotos falls
And rots by lily-stifled streams,
A sleeper, dreaming of the sea,… ”
“I am that saint uncanonized,who saw
the copulation of the toad-like stones
and spawning of the seer, sun-mumbled bones… ”
“Perfect, marmoreal, curved and carven statue-wise,
Your hard immaculate beauty dulls the sharpness of desire,
And chills it to a changeless passion—… ”
“Love was the flight of a crimson bird
Across the forest of your soul,
Where cypress-leaf and cypress-bole,… ”
“"Ah, tell me, whence has risen thy strange melancholy,
Mounting as ocean mounts upon a bare, black reef ?"
—When time has trampled out the vintage of our folly,… ”
“Slumberously burns the sun
Over slopes adust and dun,
Leaning southward through September. . . .… ”
“Deep in my heart, as in the hollow stone
And silence of some olden sepulcher,
Thy silver beauty lies, and shall not stir—… ”
“I have no heart to give you: long ago
Exceeding love has found and left me blind
To lesser loves. You are no more to me… ”
“What gulf-ascended hand is this, that grips
My spirit as with chains, and from the sound
And light of dreamland, draws me to the bound… ”
“Thy shadow falls on the fount,
On the fount with the marble wall. . . .
And in alien time and space… ”
“Ye who have dwelt in palaces
Opulent and decayed and lone
Upon oblivion's closer shore,… ”
“Daylong was my slumber. At the sunset,
Wakening, I beheld the clouds, a hundred
Shapes of antic gods and beasts of wonder… ”
“Alas for thee, poor Muse! Thy caverned eyes at dawn
With visions from the baleful night are peopled still,
And I by turns behold, across thy pallor drawn,… ”
“Look yonder, where the whitened orient skies
Grow splendid with the radiance of the dawn,
O'er regal mountains that majestic rise… ”
“In this drear interim
Of days disconsolate, remote from thee,
Surely it were enough of happiness… ”
Sinbad, It Was Not Well to Brag
“Sinbad, the Barnacle Bill of Araby,
Carried upon his back the Old Man of the Sea,
Over crag, down ravine,… ”
“Burning hair, flesh, bones,
Taint the south wind blowing
Over flowers and mossy stones.… ”
“Horned skulls and boned hooves
Litter the field
Together with the fallen leaves.… ”
“Above the stairs of the steep Cordilleras,
Above the clouds that the black eagles haunt,
Higher than the summits hollowed Out in craters… ”
“Who
Will heed the downy nestlings
Of the dove the hunter slew?… ”
“But yestereve the winter trees
Reared leafless, blackly bare,
Their twigs and branches poignant-marked… ”
“Drooping low,
Acacia-branches bear their double
Burden of flowers and snow.… ”
“The poet speaks, addressing a framed picture of
Baudelaire upon a bookcase:
… ”
“The ghostly Ere that walks the fen,
Tonight thine only light shall be;
On lethal ways thy soul shall pass,… ”
“Longer ago than Eden's oldest morn,
Ere beast or man was born,
I chose for mine… ”
“An orphaned baby
Fallen from its crib
On the floor… ”
“The bottom-lands of Lethe and of Night:
Beyond the fiery troubling of the stars,
The peaceful heavens hold in plenitude… ”
“I bring my weariness to thee,
My bitter dreams I bring;
Love with a wounded wing,… ”
“Vagrant from the realms of rose,
Love has flown where no man knows:
Though your fleetest witch should bind… ”
“I have no silver gifts for thee,
No scented words nor frankincense:
Only this love, that burns in me… ”
“This song I got me from the nether pits,
Where, as a witches' cauldron-brew, that blends
Envenomed roots and herbs malingly foul,… ”
“Soon shall the night enfold us like a frozen pall. . . .
The summer sinks from us, too radiant and short:
Even now, with harsh, funereal shock, I hear the fall… ”
“Past the flown horizon's wall
And the fight of any wind—
Where the sunken sunsets fall,… ”
“Queen, whose perilous bosom bare
Was the field of love's emprise,
I would hush my weary sighs… ”
“Pale plummet of the stark immensities,
From perished heavens cast, I fall and flare
Through gulfs by stellar orbits girdled round;… ”
“A voice came to me from the night, and said,
What profit hast thou in thy dreaming
Of the years that are set… ”
Song of Sappho's Arabian Daughter
“Dreaming, I said, "When she is come,
This desert garden that is me
For her shall offer mellowly… ”
“I will repeat a subtle rune—
And thronging suns of Otherwhere
Shall blaze upon the blinded air,… ”
“From the final reach of the upper night
To the nether darks where the comets die,
From the outmost bourn of the reigns of light… ”
“Along our sun-appointed ways
Gulf into gulf expires;
We know the length of peaceless gyres,… ”
“Art thou more fair
For all the beauty gathered up in thee,
As gold and gems within some lightless sea?… ”
“Empress with eyes more sad and aureate
Than sunset ebbing on a summer coast,
What gold chimera lovest thou the most—… ”
“Green suns and suns of garnet I have known--
Turning,with suns that mock the sapphire-gem,
The constellated moons that mirror them… ”
“How shall our hearts, those fragile shrines of thee,
Forefend the siege of wrackful circumstance?
Or this thy brittle, earth-wrought beauty be… ”
“When sleep dissolved that super-Freudian dream
where featherless harpies mated while they fed,
I could not find my body: but a thread… ”
“Within your arms I will forget
The horror that Zimimar brings
Between his vast and vampire wings
… ”
“O winds that pass uncomforted
Through all the peaceful meads of spring,
And tell the trees your sorrowing,… ”
“A wind comes in from the sea,
And rolls through the hollow dark
Like loud, tempestuous waters.… ”
“Jasper, amber, opal, jet,
Planets low in summer skies,
Pool of noon and sunset mere,… ”
“I found the sparrow's nest
Where the thorned blackberries reach
Boughs of unpruned peach.… ”
“I was a long-while an ancient phantom,
Floating light as an aroma
Around mine ancient tombs… ”
“The old constraint of an essential bond
Hath linkt them in my mind: opposed they stare,
Twin silences, that through Time's Otherwhere,… ”
“The mystery beyond all mysteries,
Of which involves the lesser in itself,
At night the shadows: Many a flaming sun,… ”
“When breaks upon the debauchee the sworded morn,
Leagued with the Ideal that gnaws as gnaws a mordant worm,
Some dark and vengeful mystery fulfills its term,… ”
“When the low sky weighs oppressive like a coffin-cover
Upon the groaning spirit, prey to long ennuis;
When all the horizons, and the charnel clouds that hover… ”
“Before the nunnery's cold
Walls the poplar-leaves unfold,
Plums are flowering.… ”
“A voice cried to me in a dawn of dreams,
Saying, "Make haste: the webs of death and birth
Are brushed away, and all the threads of earth… ”
“At the storm's decline,
A vulture seeks its nest
In the bolt-cloven pine.… ”
“In the east at sunfall
Lightning tore the clouds' tall
Rose and violet scarps.… ”
“What bond was this, of life or doom,
That swiftly drew your eyes to mine
Beyond the drinkers and the wine,… ”
“O love, thy lips are bright and cold,
Like jewels carven curiously
To symbols of a mystery,… ”
“Upon his pillar stands upright
The rigid anchoret: his pose,
Over the desert, toward the sky,… ”
“To house our happy love
We long for an alcove
Curtained against the dawn in Ispahan,… ”
“Upon woven clouds, as on thy glowing hair,
The sunset dreams and dies in sombre, sullen gold -
In unforgotten flame that makes my soul despair:… ”
“How is it, O moon, that melting
Unstintedly, prodigally,
On the peaks' hard majesty,… ”
“Upon the stark, blue blankness of the sky,
The assailing armies of the stars have swept,
And all the night is splendid with their spears.… ”
“As blood from some enormous hurt
The sanguine sunset leapt;
Across it, like a dabbled skirt,… ”
“Far-falling from a wounded heaven,
The sunset, on the pool of jet,
Is shed like faded blood.… ”
“Over fields newly ploughed,
Pools of golden leaf-green
Broaden in the mallow cloud.… ”
“Be clement still, and steep
Thy breasts in mandragore,
And let thy hands a poppied vintage pour… ”
“The lyrebird giblets in the frying-pan
cheep crisply to the sibilant blue gas.
A Congo mouth gulps a blonde demitasse,… ”
“No more of gold and marble, nor of snow
And sunlight and vemilion, would I make
My vision and my symbols, nor would take… ”
“"From this bizarre and livid sky,
Tormented like your doom and mine,
On your void spirit passing by,… ”
“Beyond the orbit of the farthest sun,
A desert darkness lies — immeasured night
That knows nor eve nor dawn, where only drift… ”
“O lovely demon, half-divine!
Hemlock and hydromel and gall,
Honey and aconite and wine… ”
“Minutes and hours and days and months and years
As life-blood flowing from a lethal wound!
Let knee to knee and breast to breast be bound,… ”
“In the close and clinging night,
When the rosy-bellied moon
Like a vestal in a swoon… ”
“O lethal Acheron gliding ever
In stealth between her mouth and mine,
Between our avid limbs, however… ”
“Fame is the passing of a fitful wind—
A shouting of the tempest, and the sigh
That lingers in the sunset-ending sky,… ”
“O meaningless and sterile wars!
O senseless virtue! stupid sin!
Our puerile drama will not win… ”
“Here is the solitude
Unknown to Stylites or Anthony;
A place of bleak illumination… ”
The Thralls of Circe Climb Parnassus
“Between the mountain meadow and the pines
In one still wave the flowered azaleas clomb—
A billow laced and crested with pale foam… ”
“Yon heaven-aspiring peaks, imperial, lone,
That form the West's stupendous coronet,
With many a titanic jewel set,… ”
“Tomato-can, of thee I sing:
bright beacon of liberty and civilization,
harbinger of progress… ”
“Cherish them not,
the ostentatious roses grown with care
extravagant, the Tyrian fuchsias drooping… ”
“Low in the far-flung shadow of the world,
Under the moveless stretch of glooms great-wing'd
That brood the abyss, vague Tartarus lapsed remote… ”
“Antares, star of memory,
Her name I whisper unto thee;
Be thou tonight my messenger… ”
“Beauty, whose all-potential hand
Forever holds the fertile stars in fee,
What aeons serve thine empery,… ”
“Deep are the chasmal years and lustrums long
Since, following that dark Venus of thy dream,
Thou camest to the lulling foams's extreme. . . .… ”
“High priest of this our latter Song,
Whose voice sustains her empery
Far-fled beside the western sea,… ”
“His song shall waken the dull-sleeping throng
That dreams of sullen and of earth-bound things;
He soars with Beauty where the Eternal sings,… ”
“What questioners have met the gaze of Time,
Whose searchless eyes unyielding theirs denied,
Till sank the casual monarch's baseless pride,… ”
To George Sterling: A Valediction
“Farewell, a late farewell! Tearless and unforgetting,
Alone, aloof, I twine
Cypress and golden rose, plucked at the chill sunsetting,… ”
“Lover of hills and fields and towns antique,
How hast thou wandered hence
On ways not found before,… ”
“Thou art the chalice of the sun;
Filled from the fountains of his light,
Thy rimming petals overrun… ”
“Importunate, the lion-throated sea,
Blind with the mounting foam of winter, mourns
To cliffs where cling the wrenched and laboured roots… ”
“Importunate, the lion-throated sea,
Blind with the mounting foam of winter, mourns
To cliffs where cling the wrenched and labored roots… ”
“Omar, within thy scented garden-close,
When passed with eventide
The starward incense of the waning rose—… ”
“Return, to save me still from her,
The false and barren comforter,
Who wears in vain thy spectral mien… ”
“Green suns, and suns of garnet I have known—
Turning, with suns that mock the sapphire-gem,
The constellated moons that mirror them… ”
“Unknown chimera, take us, for we tire
Amid the known monotony of things !
Descend, and bearing sunward with bright wings… ”
“I wane and weary: come, thou swifter One,
With vans of ether-sundering instancy,
Zoned with essential night and sovereignty… ”
“Thou hast taken the light of many suns,
And they are sealed in the prison-house of gloom.
Even as candle-flames… ”
“Triumphant rise, O star, on pinions fleet,
Before the east with budding dawn grows white,
And shine with steady, darkness-piercing light.… ”
“Sullen and sinister, darkly dull of leaf,
Thou rearest amid the brighter flowers,
Like a presage of evil in dreams of joyance—… ”
“Thy light is an eminence unto thee
And thou art upheld by the pillars of thy strength.
Thy power is a foundation for the worlds:… ”
“Your soul is a dead chicken lying on a city dump,
Inert and limp and sprawling,
Amid a rotten chaos of inassortable remnants,… ”
“In billow-lost Posedonis
I was the black god of the abyss:
My three horns were of similor… ”
“In touching you
My hands have known the savor of delight
As the mouth knows the savor of sweet fruit;… ”
“For him who wanders up and down
Its long-familiar streets in autumn nights,
With melancholy meaning shine the lights… ”
“To look on love with disenamored eyes;
To see with gaze relentless, rendered clear
Of hope or hatred, of desire and fear,… ”
“Lo, for Earth's manifest monotony
Of ordered aspect unto sun and star,
And single moon, I turn to years afar… ”
“My thirst is as the thirst of light
On gardens long foredrained of dew:
A longing goes from me to you… ”
“Deem me not dull or cold
For love not always told,
… ”
“I would meet you where
Summer vaults of cypress
Keep the balsams of the past.… ”
“All the satyrs have been dehorned,
And wappened are Mohammed's houris;
Pluto lies supremely corned… ”
“Before the hill's high altar bowed,
The trees are Druids, weird and white,
Facing the vision of the light… ”
“O heart, be sad, be still!
She that we love is far,
Veiling her face with folded plain and hill… ”
“As eve to purple turns the afterglow
That lately with a rich and fervent red
Illumed the sunset skies, my feet are led… ”
“Death and Debauch are two lovable girls, prodigal with kisses and rich in health, whose wombs, always virgin and clothed in rags, have never given birth amid all the eternal labor.
To the poet, that ill-paid courtier, that sinister enemy of families, the tombs and lupanars display beneath their bowers a bed that Remorse never frequented.… ”
“Whither go ye, haughty warriors,
with coats of mail effulgent like the moon?
—We sally forth to slay the basilisk… ”
“In years no vision shall aver,
In lands no dream may name,
Tow'rd alien things what longings were,… ”
“Over fern, over thorn,
Rose the banded moonbow horn
Of the unicorn.… ”
“As the fumes of myrrh that mix with the odour of sandalwood
In a temple sacred to the goddess Lakme;
As moonlight mingled with starlight… ”
“Austerest Beauty, terrible, sublime,
Has claimed my lips with solemn kiss of snow;
Now through my harp the tremors come and go… ”
“What stern prenatal palls occlude from us
Once-dominant Signs, once-rampant arms! How strait
The sunless road, suspended, separate,… ”
“Balkis feeds
Topaz grain and ruby seeds
To an uncouth fledgeling roc.… ”
“Though the blown leaves arise and go,
The pines remain;
Though love and all his raptures pass,… ”
“I heard the leaves of the willow whisper
As they fell at morn on the gusty mere:
"You shall he torn and blown as we are,… ”
The Venal Muse (La Muse Vénale)
“Muse of my heart, who lovest well the palace hall,
Wilt have, when boreal winds through January blow,
During the black ennui of evenings drowned with snow,… ”
“Since I have seen her luster low and near
And warm and intimate within thine eyes,
Far Venus in her skies… ”
“Je fus longtemps un vieux fantôme,
Flottant léger comme un arome
Autour de mes tombeaux détruits,… ”
“I saw a shape with human form and face,
If such should in apotheosis stand:
Deep in the shadows of a desolate land… ”
“My cradle backed itself against the library, a somber Babel where myth and science and romance, the Latin cinders and Greek dust, were all commingled. I was tall as an infolio. Two voices spoke to me. One was insidious and emphatic, saying: "The Earth is a honeycomb full of sweetness, and I am able (thy pleasure in that case will be endless) to make for thee an appetite of sufficient capacity." And the other said to me: "Come, oh, come, to voyage into dreams, beyond all that is possible, beyond all that is known!" I answered: "Yes, sweet voice!" From that moment there dates the thing one might well call my curse and my fatality. Behind the decors of illimitable life, in the darkest gulfs of the abyss, I behold distinctly what singular worlds; and becoming the ecstatic victim of my own clairvoyance, I trail henceforward the hissing serpents that sting my heels. It is since that time that I, like the olden prophets, love so tenderly the desert and the sea; that I laugh at funerals and weep at feasts, and find a smooth savor in the bitterest wine; that I take often the most patent verities for lies, and with eyes upraised to heaven, stumble into pitfalls. But the Voice consoles me, saying: "Cherish thy dreams, for those of the sages are less beautiful than those of the fools and madmen."… ”
“Beauty, what mournest thou within the pines?
Surely thy voice is theirs,
Reverberant through caverns of the soul,… ”
“Hath Sound alone a voice? Nay, 'tis not so:
Silence can speak unto the inner ear,
If it be finely tuned and keyed to hear--… ”
Vultures Come to the Ambarvalia
“Funereal and austere,
Their downward spiral narrows
On the fallen deer.… ”
“As pale and wan as vapours that at eve
Steal ghostly-like across the darkling plain,
Low in the twilight West the Moon doth wane.… ”
“Hast heard the voices of the fen,
That softly sing a lethal rune
Where reeds have caught the fallen moon—… ”
“Heaving rocks into the stream,
Each rival team
Splashed the other with glad cries.… ”
“To the south wind's breath
Lean the stately stalks and umbels
Rooted with death.… ”
“We shall meet
Once again
In the strange and latter summers,… ”
“We shall meet
Once again,
In the strange and latter summers,… ”
“Cast to the world, and lost forever,
And over the heavens drawn again--
Lightly woven and broken ever--… ”
“It stands in the atrium, the fine spinning-wheel of ivory.
The nimble wheel is white, and the distaff is black,
The distaff is ebony encrusted all with lapis.… ”
“Our sighs return to the air above,
Our tears return to the seas below.
Then tell me, beloved, when love is forgotten,… ”
“How long, O soul, hast parleyed with the worm—
Hearing how long the whisper subtle-sweet
From out the dust thy Sisyphean feet… ”
“Methought the world was bound with final frost:
The sun, made hueless as with fear and awe,
Illumined still the lands it could not thaw.… ”
“When I felled the willow,
From it flew a thousand
Slender wings of yellow.… ”
“Oh, list to the wind of the night, oh, hark,
How it shrieks as it goes on its hurrying quest!
Forever its voice is a voice of the dark,… ”
“Did Beauty's unseen spirit pass
With tread unstayable and fleet?
Surely I saw the crested grass… ”
“As from the western mountains fade
The glories of the afterglow,
A zephyr cometh, soft and low… ”
“Black houses set
With little squares of golden dawn
Lift where the sunset darkens.… ”
“To me the winds that die and start,
And strive in wars that never cease,
Are dearer than the level peace… ”
“(Translated "from the French of Charles Pierre Baudelaire")
Space dawns today resplendently!… ”
“From the deep azure chalice of the sky,
Inverted on the vale
And hot horizons pale,… ”
“Beyond the bourn of dreams, their fortunate sphere,
Golden and large in some rich galaxy,
Rolls upon ways prolonged of harmony;… ”
“Unnamed, incognizable,
Save of inarticulate memory,
A quiver of scent from Earth's familiar night,… ”
“After our fond, reiterate farewells
In the shadow of the wall, between the lamplight and the moon,
I left you, and returned, and, torn from you once more,… ”
“After our fond, reiterate farewells
In the shadow of the wall, between the lamplight and the moon,
I left you, and returned, and, torn from you once more,… ”
“The silence of the silver night
Lies visibly upon the pines;
In marble tame the moon declines… ”
“Between the windy, swirling fire
And all the stillness of the moon,
Sweet witch, you danced at my desire,… ”
“Scene: A forsaken graveyard, by moonlight. Enter two witches.
… ”
“I met a witch with amber eyes
Who slowly sang a scarlet rune,
Shifting to an icy laughter… ”
“O perfect love, unhoped-for, past despair!
I had not thought to find
Your face betwixt the terrene earth and air:… ”
Wizard's Love (Latter manuscript version)
“O perfect love, unhoped-for, past despair!
I had not thought to find
Your face betwixt the terrene earth and air:… ”
“The world is world of ups and downs,
A world of smiles and frowns.
The sunshine followed the rain,… ”
“I said: Their thunders are forever dumb:
Time and the sun find not that former might,
Kings have not thrones and kingdoms in the Night -… ”
“The fragrant leaf and small white flower!
The fragile wreath my fingers twined
Amid your fleece in some lost hour… ”
“You are not beautiful; but, ah, too long
I sought, and found a slowly growing grace;
Till fairer now than beauty is your face,… ”
“He who has trod the shadows of Zothique
And looked upon the coal-red sun oblique,
Henceforth returns to no anterior land,… ”
“The last red rays of the sun are glowing
On minaret and wall,
Slowly they sink, so slowly going,… ”
Graphic Classics: H P Lovecraft (Revised Edition - with 75 New Pages!)
The master of gothic horror presented in comics and illustration. Boyd's review: "Contains the most inspired illustration of Lovecrafts work I have ever seen". "Eureka Productions