Читать книгу Enamels and Cameos and other Poems - Gautier Théophile - Страница 5

A sculptor showed to me one day

A hand, a Cleopatra's lure,

Or an Aspasia's, cast in clay,

Of masterwork a fragment pure.

Seized in a snowy kiss, and fair

As lily in the argent rise

Of dawn, like whitest poem there

Its beauty lay before mine eyes,

Bright in its pallor lustreless,

Reposing on a velvet bed,

Its fingers, weighted with their dress

Of jewels, delicately spread.

A little parted lay the thumb,

Showing the undulating line,

Beautiful, graceful, subtlesome,

Of its proud contour Florentine.

Strange hand! I wonder if it toyed

In silken locks of Don Juan,

Or on a gem-bright caftan joyed

To stroke the beard of some soldan;

Whether, as courtesan or queen,

Within its fingers fair and slight

Was pleasure's gilded sceptre seen,

Or sceptre of a royal might!

But sweet and firm it must have lain

Full oft its touch of power rare

Upon the curling lion-mane

Of some chimera caught in air.

Imperial, idle fantasy,

And love of soft, luxurious things,

Frenzies of passion, wondrous, free,

Impossible dream-flutterings!

Romances wild, and poesy

Of hasheech and of wine, vain speeds

Beneath Bohemia's brilliant sky

On unrestrained and maddened steeds!

All these were in the lines of it,

Of that white book with magic scrolled,

Where ciphers stood, by Venus writ,

That Love had trembled to behold.

Strange contrast was the severed hand

Of Lacenaire, the murderer dead,

Soaked in a powerful essence, and

Near by upon a cushion spread.

Letting a morbid fancy win,

I touched, despite my loathing sane,

The cold, hair-covered, slimy skin,

Not yet washed clean of deathly stain.

Yellow, uncanny, mummified,

Like to a Pharaoh's hand it lay,

And stretched its faun-shaped fingers wide,

Crisp with temptation's awful play;

As though an itch for flesh and gold

Lured them to horrors yet to be,

Twisting them roughly as of old,

Teasing their immobility.

There every vice and passion's whim

Had seamed the flesh abundantly

With hideous hieroglyphs and grim,

That headsmen read with fluency.

There plainly writ in furrows fell,

I saw the deeds of sin and soil,

Scorchings from every fiery hell

Wherein corruptions seethe and boil.

There was a track of Capri's vice,

Of lupanars and gaming-scores,

Fretted with wine and blood and dice,

Like ennui of old emperors.

Supple and fierce, it had some dower

Of grace unto the searching eye,

Some brutal fascination's power,

A gladiator's mastery.

Cold aristocracy of crime!

No plane inured, no hammer spent

The hand whose task for every time

Had but the knife for implement.

The hand of Lacenaire! No clue

Therein to labour's honest pride!

False poet, and assassin true,

The Manfred of the gutter died!

Romances wild, and poesy

Of hasheech and of wine, vain speeds

Beneath Bohemia's brilliant sky

On unrestrained and maddened steeds!