L’Amour du Mensonge
After Charles Baudelaire
When I behold thee, O my indolent love,
To the sound of ringing brazen melodies,
Through garish halls harmoniously move,
Scattering a scornful light from languid eyes;
When I see, smitten by the blazing lights,
Thy pale front, beauteous in its bloodless glow
As the faint fires that deck the Northern nights,
And eyes that draw me wheresoe’er I go;
I say, She is fair, too coldly strange for speech;
A crown of memories, her calm brow above,
Shines; and her heart is like a bruised red peach,
Ripe as her body for intelligent love.
Art thou late fruit of spicy savour and scent?
A funeral vase awaiting tearful showers?
An Eastern odour, waste and oasis blent?
A silken cushion or a bank of flowers?
I know there are eyes of melancholy sheen
To which no passionate secrets e’er were given;
Shrines where no god or saint has ever been,
As deep and empty as the vault of Heaven.
But what care I if this be all pretence?
’Twill serve a heart that seeks for truth no more.
All one thy folly or indifference,—
Hail, lovely mask, thy beauty I adore!