Destroyers and Other Verses/August Is Blazing Through the Dingy Window
August is blazing through the dingy window;Splotches of sunlight on carpet, wall and ceiling,Glow through the sickroom, its tawdry and dust-stainedMeanness revealing.
Silent he dreams, stretched out upon a mattressWith eyelids closed and waxen hands together,Dreams, and a youth again, bids death defiance.Midsummer weather
Glimmers through rifts in the canopied pinetops,Glints on the brown stream that tumbles and racesTo join a blue river, and lights up its flowery,Precipitous places.
Grasshoppers whirr, and the resinous carpetSprings at his tread, as once more with arms swinging,Free and exultant he climbs the dark hilltops,Splendidly singing.
With a sigh he awakes; from a neighbouring casementPours a piano's impudent jangle:Down in the courtyard a man and a womanBitterly wrangle.
Paris, 1855.