THE SICK MUSE

by: Charles Baudelaire

      OOR Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day?
      Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn,
      Upon thy brow in alternation play,
      Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn.
       
      Have the green lemure and the goblin red,
      Poured on thee love and terror from their urn?
      Or with despotic hand the nightmare dread
      Deep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne?
       
      Would that the breast where so deep thoughts arise,
      Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs;
      Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by wave
       
      In rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave,
      When Phoebus shared his alternating reign
      With mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain.

'The Sick Muse' is reprinted from The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919.

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