"Causerie"

You are a roseate autumn-sky, that glows!
Yet sadness rises in me like the flood,
And leaves in ebbing on my lips morose,
The poignant memory of its bitter mind.

In vain your hands my swooning breast embrace,
Oh, friend! alone remains the plundered spot,
Where woman's biting grip has left its trace:
My heart, the beasts devoured--seek it not!

My heart is a palace pillaged by the herd;
They kill and take each other by the throat!
A perfume glides around your bosom bared--

O loveliness, thou scourge of souls--devote
Thine eyes of fire--luminous-like feasts,
To burn these rags--rejected by the beasts!