Poems By Arjava

(From Baudelaire)

NATURE is a shrine where vista'd gloom enhances

Whispering tongues that speak from every column—

Whereto man fares through serried forests solemn

Of symbols that scan him with their intimate glances.

As flight of echoes from a far-off beach

Into a shadowiness profound unite,

Vast as the day's width or as the titaned night,

Are matched sounds, colours, perfumes each to each.

For perfumes are sensed dawn-pure as childhood's flesh,

Softly as oboes, greenly as meadow-shroud,

-And others, vitiate, choicely and richly proud,

Winged with out flowing through the finite's mesh,

As musk, benzoin, incense, ambergris,

That sing the mind's and senses' joy-release.