No More Learning

Seekers of fame, your living name,

Your smoke and flame

Will swiftly pass.

Going to the wars, Knight, so fair,

What will you there,

So far from home?

For this I'll weep, who was beguiled

And told my smile

Was sweeter so.

On a Dead Lady

She was beautiful, if Night

Who sleeps in the darkened chapel

Where Michelangelo made light,

Unmoving, can be beautiful.

She was good, if it suffice

For hand to open, give in passing,

Without God seeing anything,

If coins are alms: as cold as ice.

She thought, if the empty noise

Of a sweet harmonious voice

Like a murmuring stream, untaught,

Could make one believe in thought.

She prayed, if two lovely eyes,

Now fixed on earth

Now on the skies

Can claim a prayer's birth.

She would have smiled, if the flower

That never bloomed, to please,

Could open to the coolest hour

Of passing and forgetful breeze.

She might have wept if that hand

Coldly placed against her heart,

Had ever felt dew's heavenly wand

Touch human clay with subtle art.

She might have loved, if pride

Like the light that uselessly

Is lit beside the one who died,

Lit not her heart's sterility.

She is dead who never lived,

She who made pretence of being:

From her hands the book has slipped

In which her eyes read nothing.

Sonnet

To see each other truly, to love each other only,

Without deceit, diversion, without shame or lies,

With no desire eluding us, never remorsefully,

To live as one, give the heart to every moment's flight;

To respect all thought as deeply as one plunges in,

To make of love the light of day and not a dream,

And in that clarity breathe freely forever -

So Laure sighed and sang to her lover.

You whose every step touches grace supreme,

It's you, among the flowers who seem carefree:

That is how one should love, you said to me.

And it is I, old child of doubt and blasphemy,

Who listening, and thinking, make you this reply:

Yes, it's thus one loves, though one lives otherwise.

Theophile Gautier (1811-1872)

Theophile Gautier

'Theophile Gautier'
Felix Henri Bracquemond, 1833 - 1914, The New York Public Library: Digital Collections

Sonnet

To vein her brow's pallor, delicate,

Japan has granted its clearest blue;

The white porcelain is of white less true

Than her lucent neck, her temples of agate;

In her moist eye gleams a gentle light;

The nightingale's voice is harsher yet,

And, when she rises in our dark night,

We praise the moon in a cloudy dress;

Her silver eyes, burnished, move fluidly;

Caprice has pointed her pert little nose;

Her mouth has the red of raspberry, peach;

Her movements flow with a Chinese flow,

And beside her one breathes from her beauty

Something sweet, like the fragrance of tea.
The Hippopotamus

The big-bellied hippopotamus

Inhabits the jungles of Java,

Where in the depths of each lair, cuss

More monsters than haunt the dreamer.

The boa uncoils and hisses,

The tiger gives out its roars,

The angry buffalo whistles;

He grazes at peace or snores.

He fears nor kris nor assegai,

He gazes at man, with no cares at all,

And smiles at the sepoy's musket-ball,

That merely rebounds from his hide.

I'm like the hippopotamus;

Clothed with my convictions' weight,

Strong armour none can penetrate,

I tread, secure, the wilderness.

Carmen

Carmen is lean - a trace of yellow

Shadows her gipsy eye.

Her hair is a sinister black,

Her skin, tanned by the devil.

Women claim she's ugly,

But for her the men go mad:

The Archbishop of Toledo

Kneels at her feet to say Mass;

For above her amber nape

Is coiled a large chignon

That, in her room, undone

Yields her body a cape.

And gleams, through the pallor,

A mouth with a conquering smile;

Red chilli, a scarlet flower,

Hearts'-blood gives it fire.

So formed, the swarthy one

Outdoes nobler beauty,

And with her eyes that burn

Revives satiety.

She has, in her hot ugliness,

A salt-grain of that sea

From whose bitter gulf acrid Venus

Rose naked, provocatively.

Art

Yes, finer work emerges

From form that resists,

Our urges,

Marble, verse, onyx.

Not falsely to constrain!

But to walk straight, Muse,

Maintain,

Tight-fitting tragic shoes.

Shame on the idle rhythm,

A size or more too large,

All don

Sliding it off and on!

Sculptor, forever shun

Clay moulded there

By the thumb

When the mind's elsewhere;

Wrestle with Carrara,

With Parian marble rare

And hard,

Keep the outline clear;

From Syracuse borrow

Bronze which the proud

Furrow

Has charmingly endowed;

With a delicate hand,

The vein of agate, follow

Command

The profile of Apollo.

Fix the water-colour,

Too fragile tints that run,

Painter

In enameller's oven;

Make Sirens blue

Tails writhing free

For you,

Monsters of heraldry;

And with triple halo

The Virgin and her Jesus

the globe

With the Cross above.