The Book of Jade

wallowing peaceless sea looks down,
Set far aloft within the heaven’s crown.

Song of Golden Youth

Quelle bêtise! O Muse, no longer lappt in sadness let us lie,
Bring the jars of old Falernum, bring the roses ere they die!
I love laughter, I love kisses, I love Lili, I love love,
But these dingy funeral dirges ennuyer us by-and-by;
Fellows, disinvoltamente, when the lords of life depart,
Lift the wine-cup to your haughty lips, and sing, Goodbye, goodbye!
We have laughter on our lips, and in our hearts the laughing spring,
Nothing greatly can afflict us, nor our spirits mortify;
All the laws and regulations under scornful feet we tread,
We laugh loud at all the virtues underneath the shining sky;
I have heard, when haughty Tarquin did his horrid deed of sin,
That Lucretia’s lily fingers slapp’d his face vivaciously;
Though of all my life dear Lili make a gay dégringolade,
Yet to my ennuis doth Lili sing an endless lullaby;
We are Greeks and we are Tartars, we know all the languages,
To the girls of Persia, India, China, we know how to sigh;
If the heartless heart of Lili tediously cruel prove,
Go and dance the tarantella with the girls of Hôkusai!
In the golden-citied world from Paris unto Tokiô
We are quite at home, we saunter languidly through tall Shanghai;
Chairete! the shaw of rosy Persia is a gentleman,
Charming people in Benares where the Ganges loiters by;
Allah akbar! O great world, O golden-tower’d cities gay,
Into all your gates with laughter and with roses enter I!

Kalliste, your Persian ghazal cease to sing: the sun is low,
And the sacred hour of absinthe now is very very nigh.

Mais Moi Je Vis La Vie en Rouge

Your soul is like a purple flower,
Mary, whose eyes are amethyst,
Whose lips are like red wine when kist,
With sweet life and sweet death for dower;
There are who will have none of these,
Who walk in peace all day upright,
And in the night pray on their knees⁠—
The pleasures of the life in white.

All cloth’d with virtues manifold
Are these⁠—their souls are like white snow;
Fair love, around thy heart I know
My heart is bound with chains of gold.
Sweet youths whose life is in the spring,
The water is all wine they drink,
They sorrow not at anything⁠—
The pleasures of the life in pink.

Your gold hair’s like an aureole,
Your lips are gold wine bought and sold,
Pure golden kisses bought for gold;
Each breast is like a golden bowl.
These things are for a scorn to those
That read great books both night and day,
That say, Joy dieth as the rose⁠—
The pleasures of the life in gray.

Sweet youths, white ladies, scholars sour,
Rejoice, and hasten on your way;
Mary, whose skin is white as whey,
Your soul is like a purple flower.

Louanges d’Elle

—O Muse of mine that sittest orientally
With a green emerald snake about the waist of thee,
With henna-tinted feet, and almond eyes that dream,
Put down the opium-pipe of jade and ivory,
For she that is most fair is fain to hear thy song:
Awake, O Muse, and sing her praises solemnly,
That to the laughing heart of California
Hath added all the grace of France and Italy;
She who, to put to sleep my pitiless ennuis
Is come from distant Paris and from Varsovie;
Athens is in her heart, and Paris in her eyes,
Dear European angel from beyond the sea!

—There is no use to sing; she is not to be sung;
What mortal praise can come unto her glory near?
And she hath quite forgot her natal English tongue;
She is too far, too high, thy languid praise to hear,
Too delicate, too strange, too wicked, too divine,
Too heavenly, too sweet, too bad, too fair, too dear!
“N’est-elle pas l’oasis où tu rêves et la gourde
Où tu humes à longs traits le vin du souvenir?”

Hélas

—Why sittest thou, O Muse, in grief enfolden?
—Thou hast me promis’d jewels rich and rare
To wear within my hair;
And for my slaves the kings of kingdoms olden;

And to abide in lofty castles golden,
Because I am most fair.
And lo, I have no sandals for my feet,
And little bread to eat.

Of that far golden Irem I am dreaming,
Whence for few kisses I did follow thee;
Fair is that spot to see,

With far-off waving palms and towers gleaming;
Great deserts round that isle of blissful seeming
Lie stretching endlessly.

Sonnet

When I contemplate how my state is low,
And how my pride that had the earth for throne
In this dark city sitteth all alone,
My heart is fain for death to end its woe;

Then when I think how all the great below
Had only sorrow and grief through all their days,
I, that with these shall some time stand in place,
My fortune like their bitter fortune know.

Among whom also holy Baudelaire,
Though unto him the loftiest lot was given
To hear the blessed muses sing in heaven,

Past his few days in anguish and despair;
Yet did he not bow down his mournful head
Until Peace found him in his glory dead.

So thou in this low lair,
Although in sorrow and grief thou dost remain,
Though of all things whereof thy soul was fain
Remaineth only pain,
Yet be not thou, O soul, disconsolate:
Forget not thou thy far-exalted state.

Sonnet

Be not cast down my heart, and be not sad,
That thou like common men must sorrow know;
Not only they that live and die below,
But ev’n the gods thy supreme sorrow had;

Not unto Tammuz was this fortune given,
Not to know grief; whom starry Ashtoreth
Sought through the seven-gated realm of death,
Far from the great moon and the stars of heaven.

Osiris also could not but to die;
He reigneth king among the perisht dead;
And Christ, when his long grief was finished,

Hid his great glory in the lowly ground.
All these had sorrow, that were great and high;
These also were august, these also crown’d.

Rondeau

As shadows pass, in the misty night,
Over the wan and moonlit grass,
So passeth our glory out of sight,
As shadows pass.

A little