FLOWERS OF EVIL.

BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.

[1821-1867.]

I.

I ADORE thee as much as the vaults of night,

O vase full of grief, taciturnity great,

And I love thee the more because of thy flight.

It seemeth, my night's beautifier, that you

Still heap up those leagues-yes! ironically heap!—
That divide from my arms the immensity blue.

I advance to attack, I climb to assault,

Like a choir of young worms at a corpse in the vault;
Thy coldness, oh cruel, implacable beast!

Yet heightens thy beauty, on which my eyes feast!

II.

Two warriors come running, to fight they begin,
With gleaming and blood they bespatter the air;
These games, and this clatter of arms, is the din
Of youth that's a prey to the surgings of love.

The rapiers are broken! and so is our youth,
But the dagger's avenged, dear! and so is the sword,
By the nail that is steeled and the hardened tooth.
Oh, the fury of hearts aged and ulcered by love!

In the ditch, where the ounce and the pard have their lair,

Our heroes have rolled in an angry embrace;

Their skin blooms on brambles that erewhile were bare.

That ravine is a fiend-inhabited hell!

Then let us roll in, oh woman inhuman,

To immortalize hatred that nothing can quell!

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL.

BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

[GABRIEL CHARLES DANTE ROSSETTI, English poet and artist, was the son of a refugee Italian patriot and poet, and was born in London, May 12, 1828. His early ambitions and efforts were all in the line of pictorial art, and in 1848 he took part in founding the Preraphaelite Brotherhood; and all his life his first thought of himself was as artist. But his larger side in capacity was the poetical and though not great in bulk, his poetry stands next to the very highest rank in English verse. His great ballads, "Sister Helen," "Rose Mary," "The King's Tragedy," and "The White Ship"; "The Blessed Damozel" (written at nineteen); "A Last Confession,' 'Jenny," etc., are imperishable. April 9, 1882.]

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He died

So high, that looking downward thence,
She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in Heaven, across the flood
Of ether, as a bridge.

Beneath, the tides of day and night
With flame and darkness ridge
The void, as low as where this earth
Spins like a fretful midge.

Around her, lovers, newly met

'Mid deathless love's acclaims, Spoke evermore among themselves Their heart-remembered names; And the souls mounting up to God. Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bowed herself and stooped
Out of the circling charm;

Until her bosom must have made

The bar she leaned on warm,

And the lilies lay as if asleep

Along her bended arm.

From the fixed place of Heaven she saw

Time like a pulse shake fierce

Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove

Within the gulf to pierce

Its path; and now she spoke as when
The stars sang in their spheres.

The sun was gone now; the curled moon
Was like a little feather

Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
She spoke through the still weather.
Her voice was like the voice the stars
Had when they sang together.

(Ah sweet! even now, in that bird's song,
Strove not her accents there,

Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
Possessed the mid-day air,

Strove not her steps to reach my side

Down all the echoing stair?)

The Blessed Damozel.

From the painting by Edward Burne-Jones.