Ah! dark-blue, streaming banner of the night,
You bring me back those azure skies afar,
Plunged in your silken folds my soul takes flight
And drinks once more with measureless delight
The scent of cocoa-oil and musk and tar.
For ever I will scatter in each strand,
That thou may’st never turn deaf ears to me,
Rubies, pearls, sapphires with a lavish hand. . . . .
Thou art the well-spring in a desert land
Wherefrom I quaff deep draughts of memory.
TO THEODORE DE BANVILLE, 1842
So proud your port, your arm so powerful.
With such a grip you grip the goddess’ hair,
That one might take you, from your casual air,
For a young ruffian flinging down his trull.
Your clear eye flashing with precocity,
You have displayed yourself proud architect
Of fabrics so audaciously correct
That we may guess what your ripe prime will be.
Poet, our blood ebbs out through every pore;
Is it, perchance, the robe the Centaur bore,
Which made a sullen streamlet of each vein,
Was three times dipped within the venom fell
Of those old reptiles fierce and terrible
Whom, in his cradle, Hercules had slain?
