Page:Poems of Baudelaire Sturm.djvu/83

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are some powerful odours that can pass Out of the stoppered flagon; even glass To them is porous. Oft when some old box Brought from the East is opened and the locks And hinges creak and cry; or in a press In some deserted house, where the sharp stress Of odours old and dusty fills the brain ; An ancient flask is brought to light again, And forth the ghosts of long-dead odours creep. There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleep A thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides, Phantoms of old the folding darkness hides, Who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold, Rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold.

A memory that brings languor flutters here : The fainting eyelids droop, and giddy Fear Thrusts with both hands the soul towards the pit Where, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet, Arises from the gulf of sleep a ghost Of an old passion, long since loved and lost.