A Phantom I. Shadows

In the caverns of unsoundable sadness
Where Destiny has already relegated me;
Where a rosy and gay sunbeam never enters;
Where, alone with the Night, sullen hostess,

I am like a painter whom a mocking God
Condemns to paint, alas! on shadows;
Where, a cook with morbid appetites,
I boil and eat my own heart,

At certain moments a gracious and splendid specter
Glimmers, lengthens, and expands.
By her dreamy oriental demeanor,

When she reaches her full size,
I recognize my beautiful visitor:
It is she! black and nevertheless luminous.

II. Perfume

Reader, have you sometimes breathed in
With intoxication and slow gluttony
That grain of incense that fills a church,
Or the inveterate musk of a sachet?

Profound charm, magic that gets us drunk
In the present on the restored past!
So the lover upon an adored body
Gathers the exquisite flower of memory.

From her elastic and heavy hair,
A living sachet, the bedchamber's censer,
A scent rose, savage and wild,

And from her clothes, whether muslin or velvet,
So imbued with her pure youthfulness,
Came a perfume of fur.

III. The Frame

Just as a beautiful frame adds a certain something
Strange and enchanted to a painting,
Even when it comes from a much vaunted brush,
By isolating it from immense nature,

So jewels, furniture, metals, gilding,
Adapt themselves aptly to her rare beauty;
Nothing obscures her perfect brightness,
And everything seems to serve her as border.

One might even have said that there were times
When she believed that everything wanted to love her;
She drowned her nudity voluptuously

In the kisses of satin and linens,
And, whether slow or abrupt, with each movement
Displayed the childish grace of an ape.

IV. The Portrait

Sickness and Death make ashes
Of all of the fire that blazed for us.
Of those large eyes so fervent and so tender,
Of that mouth on which my heart drowned,

Of those kisses as powerful as a balm,
Of those transports livelier than sunbeams,
What is left? How dreadful it is, oh my soul!
Nothing but a very pale drawing, in charcoal, red, and white,

That, like me, dies in solitude,
And that Time, abusive old man,
Each day rubs with his rough wing ...

Black assassin of Life and of Art,
You will never kill in my memory
She who was my pleasure and my glory!