A Voyage To Cythera - (twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire) Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCA BDDB EEEE EFFE DEED GHHG IBBI JKKJ LEEL MNNM BDDB BOOB PEEP QEEQ RSTR| My heart was like a bird and took to flight | A |
| Around the rigging circling joyously | B |
| The ship rolled on beneath a cloudless sky | C |
| Like a great angel drunken with the light | A |
| - | |
| What is yon isle sad and funereal | B |
| Cythera famed in deathless song said they | D |
| The gay old bachelors' Eldorado Nay | D |
| Look 'tis a poor bare country after all | B |
| - | |
| Isle of sweet secrets and heart banquetings | E |
| The queenly shade of antique Venus thrills | E |
| Scentlike above thy level seas and fills | E |
| Our souls with languor and all amorous things | E |
| - | |
| Fair isle and of green myrtles and blown flowers | E |
| Held holy by all men for evermore | F |
| Where the faint sighs of spirits that adore | F |
| Float like rose incense through the quiet hours | E |
| - | |
| And dovelike sounds each murmured orison | D |
| Cythera lay there barren 'neath bright skies | E |
| A rocky waste rent by discordant cries | E |
| Natheless I saw a curious thing thereon | D |
| - | |
| No shady temple was it close enshrined | G |
| I' the trees no flower crowned priestess hither came | H |
| With her young body burnt by secret flame | H |
| Baring her breast to the caressing wind | G |
| - | |
| But when so close to the land's edge we drew | I |
| Our canvas scared the sea fowl gradually | B |
| We knew it for a three branched gallows tree | B |
| Like a black cypress stark against the blue | I |
| - | |
| A rotten carcase hung whereon did sit | J |
| A swarm of foul black birds with writhe and shriek | K |
| Each sought to pierce and plunge his knife like beak | K |
| Deep in the bleeding trunk and limbs of it | J |
| - | |
| The eyes were holes the belly opened wide | L |
| Streaming its heavy entrails on the thighs | E |
| The grim birds gorged with dreadful delicacies | E |
| Had dug and furrowed it on every side | L |
| - | |
| Beneath the blackened feet there strove and pressed | M |
| A herd of jealous beasts with upward snout | N |
| And in the midst of these there turned about | N |
| One the chief hangman larger than the rest | M |
| - | |
| Lone Cytherean now all silently | B |
| Thou sufferest these insults to atone | D |
| For those old infamous sins that thou hast known | D |
| The sins that locked the gate o' the grave to thee | B |
| - | |
| Mine are thy sorrows ludicrous corse yea all | B |
| Are mine I stood thy swaying limbs beneath | O |
| And like a bitter vomit to my teeth | O |
| There rose old shadows in a stream of gall | B |
| - | |
| O thou unhappy devil I felt afresh | P |
| Gazing at thee the beaks and jaws of those | E |
| Black savage panthers and those ruthless crows | E |
| Who loved of old to macerate my flesh | P |
| - | |
| The sea was calm the sky without a cloud | Q |
| Henceforth for me all things that came to pass | E |
| Were blood and darkness round my heart alas | E |
| There clung that allegory like a shroud | Q |
| - | |
| Naught save mine image on a gibbet thrust | R |
| Found I on Venus island desolate | S |
| Ah God the courage and strength to contemplate | T |
| My body and my heart without disgust | R |
John Collings Squire, Sir
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
About A Voyage To Cythera - (twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)
A Voyage To Cythera - (twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire) is a poem by John Collings Squire, Sir. This page includes the poem text, poet information, related topics, comments, and similar poems.
Write your comment about A Voyage To Cythera - (twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire) poem by John Collings Squire, Sir
Best Poems of John Collings Squire, Sir