Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/82

78 wife is dead and I am free,
 * Now I may drink to my content;
 * When I came back without a cent

Her piteous outcries tortured me.

Now I am happy as a king,
 * The air is pure, the sky is clear;
 * Just such a summer as that year,

When first I went a-sweethearting.

A horrible thirst is tearing me,
 * To quench it I should have to swill
 * Just as much cool wine as would fill

Her tomb–that’s no small quantity.

I threw her down and then began
 * To pile upon her where she fell
 * All the great stones around the well—

I shall forget it if I can.

By all the soft vows of our prime,
 * By those eternal oaths we swore,
 * And that our love might be once more

As ’twas in our old passionate time,

I begged her in a lonely spot
 * To come and meet me at nightfall;
 * She came, mad creature—we are all

More or less crazy, are we not?