What will you say tonight, poor lonely soul,  What will you say, the old withered heart of mine,  To the most beautiful, the best, the most dear,  Whose heavenly regard brings back your bloom?      — We will assign our pride to sing her praise:  Nothing excels the sweetness of her will;  Her holy body has an angel's scent,  Her eye invests us with a cloak of light.      Whether it be at night or in solitude,  Or in the streets among the multitude,  Her ghost before us dances like a torch.      It speaks out: 'I'm lovely and command  That for my sake love, you'll adore only the Beautiful;  I am your Guardian, Madonna, and the Muse!

❝ Indolent darling, how I love to see the skin of your body so beautiful shimmering like silk! Upon your heavy head of hair with its acrid scents, adventurous, odorant sea with blue and brown waves, like a vessel that awakens to the morning wind, my dreamy soul sets sail for a distant sky. Your eyes where nothing is revealed of bitter or sweet are two cold jewels where are mingled iron and gold to see you walking in cadence with fine abandon. One would say is a snake that dances at the end of the staff under the weight of indolence but your child-like head sways gently to and fro like the head of a young elephant while your body stretches and leans like a slender ship that rolls from side to side and dips its yards in the sea like a stream swelled by the thaw of rumbling glaciers when the water in your mouth rises to the edge of your teeth. It seems as I drink Bohemian wine, bitter and conquering. A liquid sky that spreads stars in my heart!... ❞

❝ Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses, O you, the all my pleasure, O you, the all my treasure! You'll remember the sweetness of our caresses, The peace of the fireside, the charm of the evenings. Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses!   The evenings were lighted by the glow of the coals,   The evenings on the balcony, veiled with rose mist;   How soft your breast was to me! how kind was your heart!   We often said imperishable things,   The evenings lighted by the glow of the coals. How splendid the sunsets are on warm evenings! How deep space is! how potent is the heart! In bending over you, queen of adored women, I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood. How splendid the sunsets are on warm evenings!   The night was growing dense like an encircling wall,   My eyes in the darkness felt the fire of your gaze   And I drank in your breath, O sweetness, O poison!   And your feet nestled softly in my brotherly hands.   The night was growing dense like an encircling wa

❝ I am fair, O mortals! Like a dream carved in stone,  And my breast where each one, in turn, has bruised himself Is made to inspire the poet in a love As eternal and silent as matter. On a throne in the sky, a mysterious sphinx, I join a heart of snow to the whiteness of swans; I hate movement for it displaces lines, And never do I weep and never do I laugh. Poets, before my grandiose poses, Which I seem to assume from the proudest statues, Will consume their lives in the austere study; For I have, to enchant those submissive lovers, Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful: My eyes, my large, wide eyes of eternal brightness! ❞

❝ Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually. ⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯ Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry,  or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken. And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness on behalf  or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "Time to get drunk! Don't be martyred slaves of Time, Get drunk! Stay drunk! On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!" ❞