Un Voyage :a CythZre
Quelle est cette ile triste et noire ? C'est Cythere . . Regardez, apres tout, c'est une pauvre terre. Baudelaire, 'Voyage a Cythere: It lay open on a beach of Cythera The slender Anthology of English Verse, Moist in the damp blue dawn.
Silence, not a soul, And the sand like bloodless lips Gagged with the kit of soldiers That had fled into the brooding night- Knap-sacks, guns, great-coats, bags, boots . . .
The rock behind the shingle steep enough To tether the wind, and the village huts empty Shells, bald eyes gaping at the sea That jogged along to the far side of the stars.
And the wind, turning the pages of the book, Blended its voice with the beat of the verse : 'Bring with ybu all the Nymphs that you can hear Both of the rivers and the forests greene . . . Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly . Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song . . . When you are old and grey and full of sleep . . The heart of the nation was beating; bare In the midst of the grand debacle,
'And the bay was white with silent light . . .1
Whose hands had held this paper heart exposed As the thunder-clouds growled from the North? Whose unlucky youth, caught in a world of flame, Had been eased by the graceful book?
And is the blood, qtlickened by those lines, still Flowing? The mind still bruised with the picture Of the cruel Cytherean beach?
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