Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/41

 Sont les corbillards de mes rêves, Et vos lueurs sont le reflet De l'Enfer où mon cœur se plaît!"

Truly enough did Edward Thierry say, in writing of this poetry, that "it is sorrow which absolves and justifies it. The poet does not delight in the spectacle of evil." Still, Baudelaire broods over evil things with a tremendous persistency, a morbid satisfaction, which shows a mind radically diseased and a nature utterly heartless. In and out of season, he invoked the spirit of Horror. Jaded with self-indulgence, he had a mad pleasure in considering the world a charnel-house, and in posing the figures of Love and Beauty in the agonies of disease and the ghastly stillness of death. As a necessary pendant to his pictures of human ugliness, he delighted to add a few glimpses of divine malignity. Looking to the section of his book called "Révolte," we find where Mr. Swinburne got his first lessons in blasphemy. In "The Denial of St. Peter" we have the following picture of the Deity, quite in the fleshly manner:—

Comme un tyran gorgé de viande et de vins, Il s'endort au doux bruit de nos affreux blasphèmes!"

And after passing in review the horrible sufferings of Christ, he concludes bitterly:—

In another poem he draws a series of contrasts between the race of Cain and the race of Abel,—in other words, between the domestic type of humanity and the outcast type,—concluding in these memorable words:—

Race de Caïn, au ciel monte Et sur la terre jette Dieu!"