• Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/Spleen

    When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
    Upon the spirit aching for the light

    And all the wide horizon’s line is hid
    By a black day sadder than...

  • Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Chastisement of Pride

    In those old times wherein Theology

    Flourished with greater sap and energy,

    A celebrated doctor—so they say—

    Having stirred many careless hearts one day

    Down to their dullest depths, and having shown

    Strange pathways leading to the heavenly throne—

    Tracks he...

  • Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Ransom

    To pay his ransom man must toil
    With Reason's implement alone
    To plough and rake and free from stone

    Two plots of hard volcanic soil....

  • Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/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,
    ...

  • The Veins of other Flowers

    The Veins of other Flowers

    The Scarlet Flowers are

    Till Nature leisure has for Terms

    As "Branch," and "Jugular."


    We pass, and she abides.

    We conjugate Her Skill

    While She creates and federates

    Without a syllable.

  • Thought I, the fallen flowers

    "Thought I, the fallen flowers

    Are returning to their branch;

    But lo! they were butterflies."

  • To ----, with flowers

                Go, ye sweet messengers,

                    To that dim-lighted room,

            Where lettered wisdom from the walls

                    Sheds a delightful gloom;

     

                Where sits in thought profound,

                    One in the noon of life,

            Whose flashing eye and fevered...