Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/15

A living brain so near
Behind its carven screen,
A heart I can often hear
And yet have never seen;

That through head and trunk and limbs,
In artery and vein,
The blood sings pulsing hymns
To serve that heart and brain;

That your stomach’s creamy skin,
Soft-downed like a giant peach,
Conceals a coiled fire within
That flames in thought and speech;

Tubes in a cavern of bone
Writhing fold upon fold,
Mine, miner, philosopher’s stone,
Pent forge of infinite gold;

That there rest in your raftered room,
Distilling their secret dews,
Great gems of flesh in the gloom
With a hundred hidden hues.

And I fetch back my eyes, half dazed
At the miracles richly spread
In this temple Time has raised
On countless tribes of the dead,

And draw our bosoms asunder,
And quiver, and backward sink
In a luminous cloud of wonder,
And look at the sky and think