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 | Fantasy and Passion |  |
191
VIII. BAUDELAIRE.
O poet of such unique fantastic rhyme,
Lover of some strange muse who bound her hair
With poisonous myrtles, grown in no Greek air
But fostered of some feverous Gothic clime;
Degenerate god, half loathsome, half sublime,
By what fatality wert thou led to fare
Through haunts that all corruption's colors wear,
Through pestilent noisome paths of woe and crime?
Lover of some strange muse who bound her hair
With poisonous myrtles, grown in no Greek air
But fostered of some feverous Gothic clime;
Degenerate god, half loathsome, half sublime,
By what fatality wert thou led to fare
Through haunts that all corruption's colors wear,
Through pestilent noisome paths of woe and crime?
For me thy poesy's morbid splendors wake
A thought of how, in close miasmatic gloom,
Deep amid some toad-haunted humid brake
That dark moss clothes or flexuous fern-leaves plume,
Some rank red fungus, dappled like a snake,
Spots the black dampness with its clammy bloom!
A thought of how, in close miasmatic gloom,
Deep amid some toad-haunted humid brake
That dark moss clothes or flexuous fern-leaves plume,
Some rank red fungus, dappled like a snake,
Spots the black dampness with its clammy bloom!
| Fantasy and Passion | |