For him who sees me naked in my tresses, I
replace the sun, the moon, and all the stars of the sky!
Believe me, learned sir, I am so deeply skilled
that when I wind a lover in my soft arms, and yield
my breasts like two ripe fruits for his devouring—both
shy and voluptuous, insatiable and loath—
upon this bed that groans and sighs luxuriously
even the impotent angels would be damned for me!”
When she had drained me of my very marrow, and cold
and weak, I turned to give her one more kiss—behold,
there at my side was nothing but a hideous
putrescent thing, all faceless and exuding pus.
I closed my eyes and mercifully swooned till day:
and when I looked at morning for that beast of prey
who seemed to have replenished her arteries
from my own,
the wan, disjointed fragments of a skeleton
wagged up and down
in a lewd posture where she had lain,
rattling with each convulsion like a weathervane
or an old sign that creaks upon its bracket, right
mournfully in the wind upon a winter’s night.
Spleen1
Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks
November, angry at the capital,
whelms in a death-chill from her gloomy urn
the pallid dead beneath the graveyard wall,
the death-doomed who in dripping houses yearn.
Grimalkin prowls, a gaunt and scurvy ghoul,
seeking a softer spot for her sojourn;
under the eaves an ancient poet’s soul
shivers and flees and wails at each return.
The grieving church-bell and the sputtering log
repeat the rusty clock’s harsh epilogue;
while in a pack of cards, scent-filled and vile,
grim relic of a spinster dropsical,
the knave of hearts and queen of spades recall
their loves, defunct, and sinistrously smile.
The Flask1
Translated by James Huneker
There are some powerful odors that can pass
out of the stoppered flagon; even glass
to them is porous. Oft when some old box
brought from the East is opened and the locks
and hinges creak and cry; or in a press
in some deserted house, where the sharp stress
of odors old and dusty fills the brain;
an ancient flask is brought to light again,
and forth the ghosts of long-dead odors creep.
There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep
a thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides,
phantoms of old the folding darkness hides,
who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold,
rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold.
A memory that brings languor flutters here:
the fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear
thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit
where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet,
arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost
of an old passion, long since loved and lost.
So I, when vanished from man’s memory
deep in some dark and somber chest I lie,
an empty flagon they have cast aside,
broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride,
will be your shroud, beloved pestilence!
The witness of your might and virulence,
sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cup
of life and death my heart has drunken up!
The Ghostly Visitant1
Translated by Sir John SQuire
Like the mild-eyed angels sweet
I will come to thy retreat,
stealing in without a sound
when the shades of night close round.
I will give thee manifold
kisses soft and moony-cold,
gliding, sliding o’er thee like
a serpent crawling round a dike.
When the livid morn creeps on
you will wake and find me gone
till the evening come again.
As by tenderness and truth
others rule thy life and youth,
I by terror choose to reign.
The Murderer’s Wine2
Translated by Sir John SQuire
My wife is dead and I am free,
now I may drink to my content;
when I came back without a cent
her piteous outcries tortured me.
Now I am happy as a king,
the air is pure, the sky is clear;
just such a summer as that year,
when first I went a-sweethearting.
A horrible thirst is tearing me,
to quench it I should have to swill
just as much cool wine as would fill
her tomb—that’s no small quantity.
I threw her down and then began
to pile upon her where she fell
all the great stones around the well—
I shall forget it if I can.
By all the soft vows of our prime,
by those eternal oaths we swore,
and that our love might be once more
as ‘twas in our old passionate time,
I begged her in a lonely spot
to come and meet me at nightfall;
she came, mad creature—we are all
more or less crazy, are we not?
She was quite pretty still, my wife,
though she was very tired, and I,
I loved her too much, that is why
I said to her, ‘Come, quit this life.’
No one can grasp my thoughts aright;
did any of these sodden swine
ever conceive a shroud of wine
on his most strangely morbid night?
Dull and insensible above
iron machines, that stupid crew,
summer or winter, never knew
the agonies of real love.
So now I am without a care!
Dead-drunk this evening I shall be,
then fearlessly, remorselessly
shall lie out in the open air
And sleep there like a homeless cur;
some cart may rumble with a load
of stones or mud along the road
and crush my head—I shall not stir.
Some heavy dray incontinent
may come and cut me clean in two;
I laugh at thought o’t as I do
at Devil, God, and Sacrament.
The Pit1
Translated by Wilfrid Thorley
Great Pascal had his pit always in sight.
All is abysmal—deed, desire, or dream
or speech! Full often over me doth scream
the wind of Fear and blows my hair upright.
By the lone strand, thro’ silence, depth and height,
and shoreless space that doth with terrors teem …
on my black nights God’s finger like a beam
traces his swarming torments infinite.
Sleep is a monstrous hole that I do dread,
full of vague horror, leading none knows where;
all windows open on infinity,
so that my dizzy spirit in despair
longs for the torpor of the unfeeling dead.
Ah! from Time’s menace never to win free!
The Vampire1
Translated by George Dillon
Thou who abruptly as a knife
didst come into my heart; thou who,
a demon horde into my life,
didst enter, wildly dancing, through
the doorways of my sense unlatched
to make my spirit thy domain—
harlot to whom I am attached
as convicts to the
ball and chain,
as gamblers to the wheel’s bright spell,
as drunkards to their raging thirst,
as corpses to their worms—accurst
be thou! Oh, be thou damned to hell!
I have entreated the swift sword
to strike, that I at once be freed;
the poisoned phial I have implored
to plot with me a ruthless deed.
Alas! the phial and the blade
do cry aloud and laugh at me:
“Thou art not worthy of our aid;
thou art not worthy to be free.
“Though one of us should be the tool
to save thee from thy wretched fate,
thy kisses would resuscitate
the body of thy vampire, fool!”
Coventry Patmore (1823 – 1896)
The Toys1
My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes
and moved and spoke in Quiet grown-up wise,
having my law the seventh time disobey’d,
I struck him, and dismiss’d
with hard words and unkiss’d,
—his Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
but found him slumbering deep,
with darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet
from his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
for, on a table drawn beside his head,
he had put, within his reach,
a box of counters and a red-vein’d stone,
a piece of glass abraded by the beach,
and six or seven shells,
a bottle with bluebells,
and two French copper coins,
ranged there with careful art,
to comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray’d
to God, I wept, and said:
ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,
not vexing Thee in death,
and Thou rememberest of what toys
we made our joys,
how weakly understood
thy great commanded good,
then, fatherly not less
than I whom Thou hast molded from the clay,
thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
‘I will be sorry for their childishness.’
Richard Henry Stoddard (1805 – 1923)
The Jar1
Day and night my thoughts incline
to the blandishments of wine:
jars were made to drain, I think,
wine, I know, was made to drink.
When I die, (the day be far!)
should the potters make a jar
out of this poor clay of mine,
let the jar be filled with wine!
Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)
A deed knocks first at thought2
A deed knocks first at thought,
and then it knocks at will.
That is the manufacturing spot,
and will at home and well.
It then goes out an act,
or is entombed so still
that only to the ear of God
its doom is audible.
A narrow fellow in the grass1
A narrow fellow in the grass
occasionally rides;
you may have met him,—did you not,
his notice sudden is.
The grass divides as with a comb,
a spotted shaft is seen;
and then it closes at your feet
and opens further on.
He likes a boggy acre,
a floor too cool for corn.
yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,
have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
unbraiding in the sun,—
when, stooping to secure it,
it wrinkled, and was gone.
Several of nature’s people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
of cordiality;
but never met this fellow,
attended or alone,
without a tighter breathing,
and zero at the bone.
A word is dead1
A word is dead
when it is said,
some say.
I say it just
begins to live
that day.
After great pain a formal feeling comes2
After great pain, a formal feeling comes—
the Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—
the stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
and Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round—
of Ground, or Air, or Ought—
a Wooden way
regardless grown,
a Quartz contentment, like a stone—
This is the Hour of Lead—
remembered, if outlived,
as Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
first—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—
Apparently with no surprise3
Apparently with no surprise
to any happy Flower
the Frost beheads it at its play—
in accidental power—
The blonde Assassin passes on—
The Sun proceeds unmoved
to measure off another Day
for an Approving God.
Because I could not stop for death1
Because I could not stop for Death—
he kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
and Immortality.
We slowly drove—He knew no haste
and I had put away
my labor and my leisure too,
for His Civility—
We passed the School, where Children played
Their lessons scarcely done
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—
Or rather—He passed us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
for only Gossamer, my Gown—
my Tippet—only Tulle—
We paused before a House that seemed
a Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
the Cornice—but a mound—
Since then—’tis Centuries—but each
feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
were toward Eternity—
Hope is the thing with feathers1
“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
that perches in the soul—
and sings the tune without the words—
and never stops—at all—
and sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
and sore must be the storm—
that could abash the little Bird
that kept so many warm—
I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
and on the strangest Sea—
yet, never, in Extremity,
it asked a crumb—of Me.
I felt a funeral in my brain1
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
and Mourners to and fro
kept treading—treading—till it seemed
that Sense was breaking through—
And when they all were seated,
a Service, like a Drum—
kept beating—beating—till I thought
my Mind was going numb—
And then I heard them lift a Box
and creak across my Soul
with those same Boots of Lead, again,
then Space—began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
and Being, but an Ear,
and I, and Silence, some strange Race
<
br /> wrecked, solitary, here—
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
and I dropped down, and down—
and hit a World, at every plunge,
and Finished knowing—then—
I had been hungry all the years2
I had been hungry, all the Years—
my Noon had Come—to dine—
I trembling drew the Table near—
and touched the Curious Wine—
‘Twas this on Tables I had seen—
when turning, hungry, Home
I looked in Windows, for the Wealth
I could not hope—for Mine—
I did not know the ample Bread—
‘Twas so unlike the Crumb
the Birds and I, had often shared
in Nature’s—Dining Room—
The Plenty hurt me—’twas so new—
myself felt ill—and odd—
as Berry—of a Mountain Bush—
transplanted—to a Road—
Nor was I hungry—so I found
that Hunger—was a way
of Persons outside Windows—
the Entering—takes away—
I heard a fly buzz when I died1
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
the Stillness in the Room
was like the Stillness in the Air—
between the Heaves of Storm—
The Eyes around—had wrung them dry—
and Breaths were gathering firm
for that last Onset—when the King
be witnessed—in the Room—
I willed my Keepsakes—Signed away
what portions of me be
assignable—and then it was
there interposed a Fly—
with Blue—uncertain stumbling Buzz—
between the light—and me—
and then the Windows failed—and then
I could not see to see—
I like to see it lap the miles1
I like to see it lap the miles,
and lick the valleys up,
and stop to feed itself at tank;
and then, prodigious, step
around a pile of mountains,
and, supercilious, peer
in shanties by the sides of roads;
and then a quarry pare
to fit its sides, and crawl between,
The Giant Book of Poetry (2006) Page 18