Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/53

And all this life was strangely musical
Like wind or bubbling spring,
Or corn which moves with rhythmic rise and fall
In time of winnowing.

The lines became indefinite and faint
As a thin dream that dies,
A half-forgotten scene the hand can paint
Only from memories. . . . .

Behind the rocks there lurked a hungry hound
With melancholy eye,
Longing to nose the morsel he had found
And gnaw it greedily.

Yet thou shalt be as vile a carrion
As this infection dire,
O bright star of my eyes, my nature’s sun,
My angel, my desire!

Yea, such, O queen of the graces, shalt thou be
After the last soft breath,
Beneath the grass and the lush greenery
A mouldering in death!

When thy sweet flesh the worms devour with kisses,
Tell them, O beauty mine,
Of rotting loves I keep the bodily blisses
And essence all-divine!