| |
[See full text.] In memory of Charles Baudelaire
O SLEEPLESS heart and sombre soul unsleeping, | |
| That were athirst for sleep and no more life | |
| And no more love, for peace and no more strife! | |
| Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping | |
| Spirit and body and all the springs of song, | 5 |
| Is it well now where love can do no wrong, | |
| Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang | |
| Behind the unopening closure of her lips? | |
| Is it not well where soul from body slips | |
| And flesh from bone divides without a pang | 10 |
| As dew from flower-bell drips? | |
| |
| It is enough; the end and the beginning | |
| Are one thing to thee, who art past the end. | |
| O hand unclasp’d of unbeholden friend, | |
| For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning, | 15 |
| No triumph and no labour and no lust, | |
| Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust. | |
| O quiet eyes wherein the light saith naught, | |
| Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night | |
| With obscure finger silences your sight, | 20 |
| Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought, | |
| Sleep, and have sleep for light…. | |
| |
| Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow, | |
| Far too far off for thought or any prayer. | |
| What ails us with thee, who art wind and air? | 25 |
| What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow? | |
| Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire, | |
| Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire, | |
| Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find. | |
| Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies, | 30 |
| The low light fails us in elusive skies, | |
| Still the foil’d earnest ear is deaf, and blind | |
| Are still the eluded eyes…. | |
| |
| Therefore he too now at thy soul’s sunsetting, | |
| God of all suns and songs, he too bends down | 35 |
| To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown, | |
| And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting. | |
| Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art, | |
| Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart, | |
| Mourns thee of many his children the last dead, | 40 |
| And hallows with strange tears and alien sighs | |
| Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes, | |
| And over thine irrevocable head | |
| Sheds light from the under skies…. | |
| |
| Sleep, and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, | 45 |
| If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; | |
| And to give thanks is good, and to forgive. | |
| Out of the mystic and the mournful garden | |
| Where all day through thine hands in barren braid | |
| Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, | 50 |
| Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants grey, | |
| Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, | |
| Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started, | |
| Shall death not bring us all as thee one day | |
| Among the days departed?… | 55 |
| |
| Content thee, howsoe’er, whose days are done; | |
| There lies not any troublous thing before, | |
| Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more, | |
| For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, | |
| All waters as the shore. | 60 |
| |
