Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/50

46  Ah! dark-blue, streaming banner of the night,
 * You bring me back those azure skies afar,

Plunged in your silken folds my soul takes flight And drinks once more with measureless delight
 * The scent of cocoa-oil and musk and tar.

For ever I will scatter in each strand,
 * That thou may’st never turn deaf ears to me,

Rubies, pearls, sapphires with a lavish hand Thou art the well-spring in a desert land
 * Wherefrom I quaff deep draughts of memory.

proud your port, your arm so powerful.
 * With such a grip you grip the goddess’ hair,
 * That one might take you, from your casual air,

For a young ruffian flinging down his trull.

Your clear eye flashing with precocity,
 * You have displayed yourself proud architect
 * Of fabrics so audaciously correct

That we may guess what your ripe prime will be.

Poet, our blood ebbs out through every pore; Is it, perchance, the robe the Centaur bore,
 * Which made a sullen streamlet of each vein,

Was three times dipped within the venom fell Of those old reptiles fierce and terrible
 * Whom, in his cradle, Hercules had slain?