THE SICK MUSE
by: Charles Baudelaire
- OOR
Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day?
- Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn,
- Upon thy brow in alternation play,
- Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn.
-
- Have the green lemure and the goblin red,
- Poured on thee love and terror from their urn?
- Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread
- Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne?
-
- Would that the breast where so deep thoughts arise,
- Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs;
- Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave
-
- In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave,
- When Phoebus shared his alternating reign
- With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain.
'The Sick Muse' is reprinted from
The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James
Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919. |
MORE POEMS BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE |
|