Spleen (When the low heavy sky…)
| Spleen (When the low heavy sky…) / Spleen (Quand le ciel bas et lourd…) by |
| NOTE: No. 78 in the 1861 edition of "The Flowers of Evil" / "Les Fleurs du mal". Translated by Sir John Squire (1884 - 1958), published 1908. Source: The Flowers of Evil, ed. Marthiel and Jackson Mathews, New Directions edition, 1989. |
Spleen
When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the spirit aching for the light
And all the wide horizon’s line is hid
By a black day sadder than any night;
When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank
Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering
And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank,
Bruises his tender head and timid wing;
When like grim prison bars stretch down the thin,
Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain,
And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin
Their meshes in the caverns of the brain,
Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air,
Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky
As ’twere a band of homeless spirits who fare
Through the strange heavens, wailing stubbornly.
And hearses, without drum or instrument,
File slowly through my soul; crushed, sorrowful,
Weeps Hope, and Grief, fierce and omnipotent,
Plants his black banner on my drooping skull.
The note on the translation:
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