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Evening Harmony

Now, see! the time is come when solemnly and slow
The flowers on their stem like shaken censers fume;
When sounds and odors, trembling, turn upon the gloom:
A melancholy valse, a languorous vertigo!

The flowers on their stem like shaken censers fume;
The violin's a heart all tremulous with woe;
A melancholy valse, a languorous vertigo!
The fair, sad heavens like a darkling altar loom.

The violin's a heart all tremulous with woe,
A tender heart, that hates the nothingness of doom;
The fair, sad heavens like a darkling altar loom;
Drowned in his frozen blood, the sun lies far and low.

A tender heart, that hates the nothingness of doom,
Re-culls each faint and fallen gleam from the long ago;
Drowned in his frozen blood, the sun lies far and low;
In me thy memory like a monstrance doth relume.

Notes

Harmonie du Soir
Translated "from the French of Charles Pierre Baudelaire"

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