"You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose;
But all the sea of sadness in my blood
Surges, and, ebbing, leaves my lips morose,
Salt with the memory of the bitter flood.
"In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er,
That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate
By woman's tooth and talon! ah; no more
Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate.
"It is a ruin where the jackals rest,
And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay—
A perfume swims about your naked breast!
"Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way!
With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared
Bum up these tatters that the beasts have spared!"
Now let us come to Swinburne. If the following verses of "Laus Veneris" in "Ballads and Poems" are not directly derived from Baudelaire, I ask who indeed influenced the young Oxford poet in 1886?
"Me, most forsaken of all souls that fell;
Me, satiated with things insatiable;
Me, for whose sake the extreme hell makes mirth,
Yea, laughter kindles at the heart of hell.
"Alas thy beauty! for thy mouth's sweet sake
My soul is bitter to me, my limbs quake
As water, as the flesh of men that weep,
As their heart's vein whose heart goes nigh to break.
"Ah God, that sleep with flower-sweet finger-tips
Would crush the fruit of death upon my lips;
Ah God, that death would tread the grapes of sleep
And wring their juice upon me as it drips.
"There is no change of cheer for many days,
But change of chimes high up in the air, that sways
Rung by the running fingers of the wind;
And singing sorrows heard on hidden ways."
"I dare not always touch her, lest the kiss
Leave my lips charred. Yea, Lord, a little bliss,
Brief, bitter bliss, one hath for a great sin;
Natheless thou knowest how sweet a thing it is."
The verse of Swinburne is more musical, and has a wider range of imagery. But the passion is the same, the method is the same, and, for those who understand French as a Frenchman understands it, the "atmosphere" fails in the magic intensity that Baudelaire achieves.
This is one single instance. Those who are interested can pursue these comparisons between the two poets for themselves. They will be richly rewarded.
I have mentioned Walter Pater, that great artist in English who may be said to have succeeded Ruskin as the exponent of the most critical and refined thought of our time. When I say that he succeeded Ruskin I do not mean to imply that he has the slightest æsthetic affinity with the author of "Modern Painters." I only speak of him as having had as strong an influence upon later thought as Ruskin had upon his.
Pater was curious of everything in life and Art that offered a new sensation—that should enable men to realise themselves in the completest and most varied way. Baudelaire was certainly not Walter Pater's master in the same degree that he was the master of Swinburne and of Wilde. Yet, none the less certainly, the Frenchman's work made expression possible to the recluse of Oxford.
Hellenic thought, with its dangerous conclusions, was restated by Pater because "Les fleurs du Mal" had paved the way.
Here again, within the compass of a brief essay it is impossible to set forth these contentions in detail. But those who have read Baudelaire, and what Gautier says about him—those who have studied contemporary thought and contemporary literature when Pater began to weave his magical prose—will confirm what is no discovery of mine, but a fact of literature. They will recognise that, in the "Conclusion" of Walter Pater's "Renaissance" the following words could hardly have been written had it not been for the daring expression of the poet whom Frenchmen admit to be second to. Hugo alone.