Deliberately plant them all where throbs
Thy bleeding heart, and stifling with its sobs.
FEMMES DAMNÉES
Like moody beasts they lie along the sands;,
Look where the sky against the sea-rim clings:
Foot stretches out to foot, and groping hands
Have languors soft and bitter shudderings.
Some, smitten hearts with the long secrecies,
On velvet moss, deep in their bowers' ease,
Prattling the love of timid infancies,
Are tearing the green bark from the young trees.
Others, like sisters, slowly walk and grave;
By rocks that swarm with ghostly legions,
Where Anthony saw surging on the waves
The purple breasts of his temptations,
Some, by the light of crumbling, resinous gums,
In the still hollows of old pagan dens,
Call thee in aid to their deliriums
O Bacchus! cajoler of ancient pains.
And those whose breasts for scapulars are fain
Nurse under their long robes the cruel thong.
These, in dim woods, where huddling shadows throng.
Mix with the foam of pleasure tears of pain.
LE VOYAGE À CYTHÈRE
Bird-like, my heart was glad to soar and vault;
Fluttering among the cordages; and on
The vessel flew, under an empty vault:
An angel drunken of a radiant sun.
Tell me, what is that gray, that sombre isle?
'Tis Cythera, famed on many a poet string;
A name that has not lacked the slavering smile;
But now, you see, it is not much to sing.