Page:Poems of Baudelaire Sturm.djvu/93

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he be, on water or land,
 * Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold;

One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band,
 * Shadowy beggar or Crœsus rich with gold;

Citizen, peasant, student, tramp, whate'er
 * His little brain may be, alive or dead;

Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere,
 * And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead.

The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall; The lighted ceiling of a music-hall
 * Where every actor treads a bloody soil—

The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot; The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot
 * Where the vast human generations boil!