The Poetry Corner

The Sadness Of The Moon - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)

By John Collings Squire, Sir

This evening the Moon dreams more languidly, Like a beauty who on mounded cushions rests, And with her light hand fondles lingeringly, Before she sleeps, the slope of her sweet breasts. On her soft satined avalanches' height Dying, she laps herself for hours and hours In long, long swoons, and gazes at the white Visions which rise athwart the blue like flowers. When sometimes in her perfect indolence She lets a furtive tear steal gently thence, Some pious poet, a lone, sleepless one, Takes in his hollowed hand this gem, shot through, Like an opal stone, with gleams of every hue, And in his heart's depths hides it from the sun.