Enamels and Cameos/The Garret

From balcony tiles where casual cats Sit low in wait for birds unwise, I see the worn and riven slats Of a poor, humble garret rise.

Now could I as an author lie, To give you comfort as you think, Its window I would falsify, And frame with flowers refined and pink,

And place within it Rigolette With her cheap looking-glass, somehow, Whose broken glazing mirrors yet A portion of her pretty brow;

Or Margery, her dress undone, Her hair blown free, her tie forgot, Watering in the pleasant sun Her pail-encompassed garden-plot;

Or poet-youth whom fame awaits, Who scans his verse and eyes the hills, Or in a reverie contemplates Montmartre with its distant mills.

Alas! my garret is no feint. There climbeth no convolvulus. The window with its nibbled paint Leers filmy and unluminous.

Alike for artist and grisette, Alike for widower and lad, A garret — save to music set — Is never otherwise than sad.

Of old, beneath an angle pent, That forced the forehead to a kiss, Love, with a folding-couch content, To chat with Susan deemed it bliss.

But we must wad our bliss about With cushioned walls and laces wide, And silks that flutter in and out, O’er beds by Monbro canopied.

This evening, to Mount Breda fled Is Rigolette, to linger there, And Margery, well clothed and fed, No longer tends her garden fair.

The poet, tired of catching rimes Upon the wing, has turned to cull Reporter’s bays, and left betimes A heaven for an entresol.

And in the window this is all: An ancient goody chattering, And railing at a kitten small That toys forever with a string.

La Mansarde Мансарда (Готье/Гумилёв)