shroud. Naught save mine image on a gibbet thrust Found I on Venus island desolate.... Ah, God! the courage and strength to contemplate My body and my heart without disgust. THE CRACKED BELL 'Tis bitter-sweet, when winter nights are long, To watch, beside the flames which smoke and twist, The distant memories which slowly throng, Brought by the chime soft-singing through the mist. Happy the sturdy, vigorous-throated bell Who, spite of age alert and confident, Cries hourly, like some strong old sentinel Flinging the ready challenge from his tent. For me, my soul is cracked; when sick with care, She strives with songs to people the cold air It happens often that her feeble cries Mock the harsh rattle of a man who lies Wounded, forgotten, 'neath a mound of slain And dies, pinned fast, writhing his limbs in pain. THE OFFENDED MOON O moon, O lamp of hill and secret dale! Thou whom our fathers, ages out of mind, Worshipped in thy blue heaven, whilst behind Thy stars streamed after thee a glittering trail, Dost see the poet, weary-eyed and pale, Or lovers on their happy beds reclined, Showing white teeth in sleep, or vipers twined, 'Neath the dry sward; or in a golden veil Stealest thou with faint footfall o'er the grass As of old, to kiss from twilight unto dawn The faded charms of thine Endymion?... "O child of this sick century, I see Thy grey-haired mother leering in her glass And plastering the breast that suckled thee!" TO THEODORE DE BANVILLE, 1842 So proud your port, your arm so powerful, With such a grip you grip the goddess' hair, That one might take you, from your casual air, For a young ruffian flinging down his trull. Your clear eye flashing with precocity, You have displayed yourself proud architect Of fabrics so audaciously correct That we may guess what your ripe prime will be. Poet, our blood ebbs out through every pore; Is it, perchance, the robe the Centaur bore, Which made a sullen streamlet of each vein, Was three times dipped within the venom fell Of those old reptiles fierce and terrible Whom, in his cradle, Hercules had slain? MUSIC Oft Music, as it were some moving mighty sea, Bears me towards my pale Star: in clear space, or 'neath a vaporous canopy On-floating, I set sail. With heaving chest which strains forward, and lungs outblown, I climb the ridgèd steeps Of those high-pilèd clouds which 'thwart the night are thrown, Veiling its starry deeps. I suffer all the throes, within my quivering form, Of a great ship in pain, Now a soft wind, and now the writhings of a storm Upon the vasty main Rock me: at other times a death-like calm, the bare Mirror of my despair. THE CATS The lover and the stern philosopher Both love, in their ripe time, the confident Soft cats, the house's chiefest
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