To learn if kind and merciful the sea, And midst the sobs that make the rock resound, Brings back some eve to pardoning Lesbos, free The worshipp'd corpse of Sappho, who made her bound To learn if kind and merciful the sea! Of her the man-like lover-poetess, In her sad pallor more than Venus fair! The azure eye yields to that black eye, where The cloudy circle tells of the distress Of her the man-like lover-poetess! Fairer than Venus risen on the world, Pouring the treasures of her aspect mild, The radiance of her fair white youth unfurl'd On Ocean old enchanted with his child; Fairer than Venus risen on the world. Of Sappho, who, blaspheming, died that day When trampling on the rite and sacred creed, She made her body fair the supreme prey Of one whose pride punish'd the impious deed Of Sappho who, blaspheming, died that day. And since that time it is that Lesbos moans, And, spite the homage which the whole world pays, Is drunk each night with cries of pain and groans, Her desert shores unto the heavens do raise, And since that time it is that Lesbos moans! INTIMATE PAPERS FROM THE UNPUBLISHED WORKS OF BAUDELAIRE Translated by Joseph T. Shipley ROCKETS MY HEART LAID BARE The following pages (not included in the "complete" French edition) contain notes found after the death of Baudelaire; disconnected fragments; echoes; pistils of ideas, promising wondrous blossom, to which no pollen came. They epitomize the moral and intellectual life of the artist. In his own art, Baudelaire is the creator of a new mood, in which Maeterlinck and Verlaine are among his disciples, where Swinburne and Wilde have followed him; in painting and in music, his criticism was seeking in 1850 all that the later development of these arts has brought forth. The reflection of that brilliant mind glows in these intimate pages. In the almost absolute isolation in which he confined himself more and more, Baudelaire, who had so loved to expand in conversation, felt the need of a confidant that would not importune him with useless counsels, nor with expressions of sympathy he would have repulsed, if only through dandyism. Paper alone could be that confidant. The poet is wholly within these journals, with his religious, political, moral and literary theories, above all, with the explicit evidence of his weaknesses and his griefs. What skilled theologian has made a more haughty confession than this: "There are none great among men save the poet, the priest and the soldier; the man who sings, the man who blesses, the man who sacrifices others and himself. The rest is made for the whip"? What political economist has made a more absolute declaration of principles than this: "There is no reasonable, stable government save the aristocratic. Monarchy and republic, based on democracy, are equally weak and absurd"?