Works

(from Baudelaire.)



The night Don Juan came to pay his fees
To Charon, by the caverned water's shore,
A beggar, proud-eyed as Antisthenes,
Stretched out his knotted fingers on the oar.
...

Come, let me kiss your wistful face
Where Sorrow curves her bow of pain,
And live sweet days and bitter days
With you, or wanting you again.

I dread your perishable gold:...

When all my gentle friends had gone
I wandered in the night alone:
Beneath the green electric glare
I saw men pass with hearts of stone.
Yet still I heard them everywhere,...

In those good days when we were young and wise,
You spake to music, you with the thoughtful eyes,
And God looked down from heaven, pleased to hear
A young man's song arise so firm and clear....

I rose from dreamless hours and sought the morn
That beat upon my window: from the sill
I watched sweet lands, where Autumn light newborn
Swayed through the trees and lingered on the hill....

I listened to the hunger-hearted clown,
Sadder than he: I heard a woman sing, -
A tall dark woman in a scarlet gown -
And saw those golden toys the jugglers fling.
I found a tawdry room and there sat I,...

A linnet who had lost her way
Sang on a blackened bough in Hell,
Till all the ghosts remembered well
The trees, the wind, the golden day.

At last they knew that they had died...

Aflatun and Aristu and King Iskander
Are Plato, Aristotle, Alexander.

Sultan Iskander sat him down
On his golden throne, in his golden crown,
And shouted, "Wine and flute-girls three,...

It was no sooner than this morn
That first I found you there,
Deep in a field of southern corn
As golden as your hair.

I had read books you had not read,
Yet I was put to shame...