Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/15

Rh 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