Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/53

Rh And all this life was strangely musical
 * Like wind or bubbling spring,

Or corn which moves with rhythmic rise and fall
 * In time of winnowing.

The lines became indefinite and faint
 * As a thin dream that dies,

A half-forgotten scene the hand can paint
 * Only from memories

Behind the rocks there lurked a hungry hound
 * With melancholy eye,

Longing to nose the morsel he had found
 * And gnaw it greedily.

Yet thou shalt be as vile a carrion
 * As this infection dire,

O bright star of my eyes, my nature’s sun,
 * My angel, my desire!

Yea, such, O queen of the graces, shalt thou be
 * After the last soft breath,

Beneath the grass and the lush greenery
 * A mouldering in death!

When thy sweet flesh the worms devour with kisses,
 * Tell them, O beauty mine,

Of rotting loves I keep the bodily blisses
 * And essence all-divine!