So sweetly, or thine eyelids leave so clear
Thy gracious eyes that never made a tear?
Though for their love our tears like blood should flow,
Though love and life and death should come and go,
45 So dreadful, so desirable, so dear? Yea, sweet, I know; I saw in what swift wise0 how swiftly
Beneath the woman's and the water's kiss
Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis,
And the large light turned tender in thine eyes,
50 And all thy boy's breath softened into sighs; But Love being blind,2 how should he know of this?
Au Mus.e du Louvre, Mars 1863. 3
1863 1866
Ave atque Vale1
In Memory of Charles Baudelaire
Nous devrions ?pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs; Les morts, les ?pauvres niorts, ont de grandes douleurs, Et quand Octobre souffle, emondeur des vieux arbres, Son vent melancolique a Ventour de leurs marbres, Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats.
?'Les Fleurs du Mai'2
Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,3
Brother, on this that was the veil4 of thee?
Or quiet sea-flower molded by the sea,
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,
2. Love, personified in classical mythology as Eros of suffering felt or inflicted'; 'it has the languid, or Cupid, is often represented as blindfolded or lurid beauty of close and threatening weather?a blind. heavy, heated temperature, with dangerous hot3. At the Museum of the Louvre, March 1863 house scents in it.' These qualities are also cele( French). brated in Swinburne's elegy, into which are woven 1. Hail and farewell (Latin); a line from an elegy many allusions to Baudelaire's poems, especially by Catullus occasioned by a farewell visit to the his 'Litanies de Satan,' which Swinburne regarded grave of his brother, to whom he brought gifts, a as the keynote poem of Les Fleurs du Mai. situation closely echoed in Swinburne's final 2. From 'La Servante au Grand Coeur' ('The stanza. Swinburne's elegy likewise begins with a Great-hearted Servant'): We must nevertheless visit to the grave of a man whom the poet regards bring some flowers to her [or him]. / The dead, the as a brother but had never met. Charles Baudelaire poor dead, have great sadnesses, / And when Octo( 1821?1867) had impressed Swinburne as one of ber, the pruner of old trees, blows, / Its melancholy the 'most perfect poets of the century.' In 1861, wind in the vicinity of their marble tombs, / Then in an essay on the 2nd edition of Baudelaire's col-indeed they must find the living highly ungrateful lection Les Fleurs du Mai (Flowers of Evil, 1857), (French). Swinburne had commented on the French poet's 3. Respectively, symbols of love, mourning, and preoccupation with 'sad and strange things'?'the poetic fame. sharp and cruel enjoyments of pain, the acrid relish 4. I.e., the body as a veil for the soul.
.
AVE ATQUE VALE / 1501
Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads0 weave, wood nymphs Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve?
Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,
Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat
And full of bitter summer, but more sweet
To thee than gleanings of a northern shore
Trod by no tropic feet?5
2
For always thee the fervid languid glories
Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies;
Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs
Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories,
The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave
That knows not where is that Leucadian grave6
Which hides too deep the supreme head of song.
Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were,
The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear
Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong,
Blind gods that cannot spare. 3
Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother,
Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us:
