Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/39

 La Haine est un ivrogne au fond d'une taverne, Qui sent toujours la soif naître de la liqueur Et se multiplier comme l'hydre de Lerne.

—Mais les buveurs heureux connaissent leur vainqueur, Et la Haine est vouée à ce sort lamentable De ne pouvoir jamais s'endormir sous la table!"

At one time we have a poem on "her hair," in the course of which we learn (what indeed we should have guessed) that, as other persons delight in love's "music," he (Baudelaire) revels in its "perfume." He is still insatiable, and yet uncomplimentary, actually comparing his attack on her "cold beauty" to the attack of a swarm of worms on a corpse ("comme après un cadavre un chœur de vermisseaux!") and yet crying fiercely:—

Je chéris, O bête implacable et cruelle! Jusqu'à cette froideur par où tu m'es plus belle!"

He finds delight in tracing resemblances between this marble person and his cat:—

Viens, mon beau chat, sur mon cœur amoureux; Retiens griffes de ta patte, Et laisse-moi plonger dans tes beaux yeux Mêlés de métal et d'agate."(Page 135.)

But it would be tedious indeed to trace all the morbid sensations of such a lover as this; at Paris or in the East, he is equally used up and yet insatiable; and after having tried all sorts of complexions, from the pale wax-like Jewess of the Parisian brothel to the black and lissom beauty of Malabar, he finds himself still wretched and disgusted with human nature. It is soon quite obvious that he is possessed by the demon of Hasheesh. Thoughts horrible and foul surge through his brain as the filth drives through a sewer. At least half of all the "Fleurs de Mal" read as if they had