Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/42

38 No shady temple was it, close enshrined
 * I’ the trees; no flower-crowned priestess hither came
 * With her young body burnt by secret flame,

Baring her breast to the caressing wind;

But when so close to the land’s edge we drew
 * Our canvas scared the sea-fowl–gradually
 * We knew it for a three-branched gallows tree

Like a black cypress stark against the blue.

A rotten carcase hung, whereon did sit
 * A swarm of foul black birds; with writhe and shriek
 * Each sought to pierce and plunge his knife-like beak

Deep in the bleeding trunk and limbs of it.

The eyes were holes; the belly opened wide,
 * Streaming its heavy entrails on the thighs;
 * The grim birds, gorged with dreadful delicacies,

Had dug and furrowed it on every side.

Beneath the blackened feet there strove and pressed
 * A herd of jealous beasts with upward snout,
 * And in the midst of these there turned about

One, the chief hangman, larger than the rest

Lone Cytherean! now all silently
 * Thou sufferest these insults to atone
 * For those old infamous sins that thou hast known,

The sins that locked the gate o’ the grave to thee.