Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/41

 heart was like a bird and took to flight,
 * Around the rigging circling joyously;
 * The ship rolled on beneath a cloudless sky

Like a great angel drunken with the light.

What is yon isle, sad and funereal?”
 * Cythera, famed in deathless song,” say they,
 * The gay old bachelors’ Eldorado–Nay,

Look! ’tis a poor bare country after all!”

Isle of sweet secrets and heart banquetings!
 * The queenly shade of antique Venus thrills
 * Scentlike above thy level seas and fills

Our souls with languor and all amorous things.

Fair island of green myrtles and blown flowers
 * Held holy by all men for evermore,
 * Where the faint sighs of spirits that adore

Float like rose-incense through the quiet hours,

And dovelike sounds each murmured orison:–
 * Cythera lay there barren ’neath bright skies,
 * A rocky waste rent by discordant cries:

Natheless I saw a curious thing thereon.