And here is Mr. Scott's rendering:
"All ardent lovers and all sages prize,
As ripening years incline upon their brows—
The mild and mighty cats—pride of the house—
That likeunto them are indolent, stern, and wise.
"The friends of Learning and of Ecstasy,
They search for silence and the horrors of gloom;
The devil had used them for his steeds of Doom,
Could he alone have bent their pride to slavery.
"When musing, they display those outlines chaste,
Of the great sphinxes—stretched o'er the sandy waste,
That seem to slumber deep in a dream without end:
"From out their loins a fountainous furnace flies,
And grains of sparkling gold, as fine as sand,
Bestar the mystic pupils of theireyes."
I don't in the least like this translation, but the reader has only to turn to the poems of Oscar Wilde in the collected edition, issued by Messrs. Methuen—and he will find an æsthetic perspective of which the words of Baudelaire form the foreground.
Let him open the page where the reverberating words of the Sphinx begin, and it will be enough.
I shall only write a very few words about the last name on my list—that of Ernest Dowson.
This true poet, king of the minor poets as he has been called, was influenced by Baudelaire through Verlaine. As all students of modern poetry know, Ernest Dowson died a few years ago and left very little to the world—though what he left was almost perfect within its scope and purpose. I knew Dowson well, and he has often told me the debt he owed to Baudelaire. One can see it in such poems as "Cynara," which Mr. Arthur Symons says (and I thoroughly agree with him) is one of the imperishable lyrics of our literature.
And surely these two verses of "Impenitentia Ultima "—
"Before my light goes out for ever, if God should give me a choice
of graces,
I would not reck of length of days, nor crave for things to be;
But cry: 'One day of the great lost days, one face of all the
faces,
Grant me to see and touch once more and nothing more to see.
"'For, Lord, I was free of all Thy flowers, but I chose the world's
sad roses,
And that is why my feet are torn and mine eyes are blind
with sweat,
But at Thy terrible judgment-seat, when this my tired life closes,
I am ready to reap whereof I sowed, and pay my righteous
debt'"—
have all the weary hunger, satiety, and unconquerable desire that over and over again glow out in such sad beauty upon the petals of the "Fleurs du Mal."