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Read Ebook: The Three Hills and Other Poems by Baudelaire Charles Squire John Collings Sir
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Ebook has 214 lines and 58500 words, and 5 pages
Surely I knew that flesh was grass nor valued overmuch the prize, But all the powers of chance conspired to cheat a man both just and wise. Happy I'd been had I but had my due reward, and not a sword Flaming in diabolic hand between me and my Paradise.
THE OTHER
No hooded band of fates did stand your heart's ambitions to gainsay, No flaming brand in evil hand was ever thrust across your way, Only the things all men must meet, the common attributes of men, That men may flinch to see or, seeing, deny, but avoid them no man may.
Fall the dice, not once or twice but always, to make the self-same sum; Chance what may, a life's a life and to a single goal must come; Though a man search far and wide, never is hunger satisfied; Nature brings her natural fetters, man is meshed and the wise are dumb.
O vain all art to assuage a heart with accents of a mortal tongue, All earthly words are incomplete and only sweet are the songs unsung, Never yet was cause for regret, yet regret must afflict us all, Better it were to grasp the world 'thwart which this world is a curtain flung.
CREPUSCULAR
No creature stirs in the wide fields. The rifted western heaven yields The dying sun's illumination. This is the hour of tribulation When, with clear sight of eve engendered, Day's homage to delusion rendered, Mute at her window sits the soul.
Clouds and skies and lakes and seas, Valleys and hills and grass and trees, Sun, moon, and stars, all stand to her Limbs of one lordless challenger, Who, without deigning taunt or frown, Throws a perennial gauntlet down: "Come conquer me and take thy toll."
No cowardice or fear she knows, But, as once more she girds, there grows An unresign?d hopelessness From memory of former stress. Head bent, she muses whilst he waits: How with such weapons dint his plates? How quell this vast and sleepless giant Calmly, immortally defiant,
How fell him, bind him, and control With a silver cord and a golden bowl?
AT NIGHT
Dark firtops foot the moony sky, Blue moonlight bars the drive; Here at the open window I Sit smoking and alive.
Wind in the branches swells and breaks Like ocean on a beach; Deep in the sky and my heart there wakes A thought I cannot reach.
FOR MUSIC
Death in the cold grey morning Came to the man where he lay; And the wind shivered, and the tree shuddered And the dawn was grey.
And the face of the man was grey in the dawn, And the watchers by the bed Knew, as they heard the shaking of the leaves, That the man was dead.
THE ROOF
When the clouds hide the sun away The tall slate roof is dull and grey, And when the rain adown it streams 'Tis polished lead with pale-blue gleams.
When the clouds vanish and the rain Stops, and the sun comes out again, It shimmers golden in the sun Almost too bright to look upon.
Then at the last, as night draws near, The lines grow faint and disappear, The roof becomes a purple mist A great square darkening amethyst
Which sinks into the gathering shade Till separate form and colour fade, And it is but a patch which mars The beauty of a field of stars.
It stands so lonely in the sky The sparrows never come anigh, The glossy starlings seldom stop To preen and chatter on the top.
For a whole week sometimes up there No wing-wave stirs the quiet air, The roof lies silent and serene As though no life had ever been;
Till some bright afternoon, athwart The edge two sudden shadows dart, And two white pigeons with pink feet Flutter above and pitch on it.
Jerking their necks out as they walk They talk awhile their pigeon-talk, A low continuous murmur blent Of mock reproaches and content.
Then cease, and sit there warm and white An hour, till in the fading light They wake, and know the close of day, Flutter above, and fly away,
Leaving the roof whereon they sat As 'twas before, a peaceful flat Expanse, as silent and serene As though no life had ever been.
TREETOPS
There beyond my window ledge, Heaped against the sky a hedge Of huge and wavering treetops stands With multitudes of fluttering hands.
Wave they, beat they to and fro, Never stillness may they know, Plunged by the wind and hurled and torn Anguished, purposeless, forlorn.
"O ferocious, O despairing, In huddled isolation faring Through a scattered universe, Lost coins from the Almighty's purse!"
"No, below you do not see The firm foundations of the tree; Anchored to a rock beneath We laugh in the hammering tempest's teeth."
"Boughs like men but burgeons are On an adamantine star; Men are myriad blossoms on A staunch and cosmic skeleton."
IN THE PARK
This dense hard ground I tread These iron bars that ripple past, Will they unshaken stand when I am dead And my deep thoughts outlast?
Is it my spirit slips, Falls, like this leaf I kick aside; This firmness that I feel about my lips, Is it but empty pride?
Mute knowledge conquers me; I contemplate them as they are, Faint earth and shadowy bars that shake and flee, Less hard, more transient far
Than those unbodied hues The sunset flings on the calm river; And, as I look, a swiftness thrills my shoes And my hands with empire quiver.
Now light the ground I tread, I walk not now but rather float; Clear but unreal is the scene outspread, Pitiful, thin, remote.
Poor vapour is the grass, So frail the trees and railings seem, That, did I sweep my hand around, 'twould pass Through them, as in a dream.
Godlike I fear no changes; Shatter the world with thunders loud, Still would I ray-like flit about the ranges Of dark and ruddy cloud.
SONG
Light on the grass their slim limbs glance, Their shadows in the moonlight swing in quiet unison, And the moon discovers that they all have lovers, But they never break their hearts.
They never grieve at all for sands that run, They never know regret for a deed that's done, And they never think of going to a shed with a gun At the rising of the sun.
TOWN
Mostly in a dull rotation We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep, Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation-- Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep.
Dimly convinced, poor groping wretches, Like eyeless insects in a murky pond That out and out this city stretches, Away, away, and there is no beyond.
No larger earth, no loftier heaven, No cleaner, gentler airs to breathe. And yet, Even to us sometimes is given Visions of things we otherwhiles forget.
Some day is done, its labour ended, And as we brood at windows high, A steady wind from far descended, Blows off the filth that hid the deeper sky;
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