Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/40

 been written by a man in one of the worst stages of delirium tremens. No one certainly can accuse him of making crime look beautiful. To him, in his own words,

His crime is, that he sees only these two shapes on all the solid earth, and avers that there is nothing left for men but to sin and die. His dreams and thoughts are wretched. The sun rises, and immediately he pictures it shining, not into happy homes, but into dens of crime and ghastly hospitals. Night comes, but sleep comes not; and he only cries:—

Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminel; Il vient comme un complice, à pas de loup; le ciel Se ferme lentement comme une grande alcôve, Et l'homme impatient se change en bête fauve."

The gas-jets of prostitution are lit, and flare on the doomed faces of pale women and jaded men. Some few men sit at happy hearths, but the majority "have never lived." On such a night, doubtless, he composed such poems as this, which I quote entire in all its morbid pain and horror:—

"HORREUR SYMPATHIQUE.

'De ce ciel bizarre et livide, Tourmenté comme ton destin, Quels pensers dans ton âme vide Descendent?—Réponds, libertin.'

—Insatiablement avide De l'obscur et de l'incertain, Je ne geindrai pas comme Ovide Chassé du paradis latin.

Cieux déchirés comme des grèves En vous se mire mon orgueil! Vos vastes nuages en deuil