POETRY.

STANZAS- FROM "BATEAU IVRE."

By- ARTHUR RIMBAUD.

As I was descending impassive Streams I felt no longer guided by the tows-men, squalling Redskins had taken them for targets and nailed them, naked, to painted stakes.

I cared no more for any sort of ship, bearer of Flemish corn or English cottons.

When with my guides the racket had died down at the stream's will I drifted where I wished.

* And I have since bathed in the poem Sea, milky with the infusion of the stars, devoured its glaucous spaces where, pale wreck, a drowned man rapt and pensive sometimes falls.

I followed for whole months the maddened waves like rabid herds at the assault of cliffs, not dreaming that the Virgins' shining feet might force a muzzle on these snorting Seas.

I have brushed, you must know, such Floridas as none believe in, where the flowers are mingled with eyes of man-skinned panthers and where rainbows hang under sea like reins to wave-green flocks.

I have seen bubbling marshes, huge fish-baskets,

where in the reeds a whole Leviathan rots. Ruins of waters in the midst of calms, and the distances cascading to the gulfs.

Glaciers, silver suns and rainbow waves and fearful strandings deep in dusky bays, where under red-hot skies huge serpents droop bug-eaten from trees twisted with black scents.

I would have shown to children those gold fish of the blue waves, those golden, singing fish. The foam in flowers has blest my goings-out, And sometimes ineffable hreeses winged me.

So I, lost boat beneath the hair of creeks, flung by the tempest into birdless ether, I whom no Monitor or Hansa schooner would have fished up the carcass mad with water, free, fuming, risen out of purple mists, who bored the sky that ruddy as a wall bears the good poets' exquisite conserve, the moss of sunlight dribbled with the blue, who trembled, hearing fifty leagues away the rut of Behemoths and Maelstroms grind, eternal threader of the blue serene, I regret Europe of the ancient ramparts. • * * * * I have seen star-archipelagoes ! the isles whose madding skies lie open to the wanderer : do you sleep self-exiled in those endless nights, Oh countless golden birds, Oh future Vigour ?

I have truly wept too much. Dawns break the heart, all moons are vile and bitter every sun. Harsh love with raptest torpors bloated me. May my pen splinter May I take the sea I I want no water of Europe but the cold dark puddle a sad-hearted child squats by, and launches out towards the scented dusk a boat as frail as a May butterfly.

I can no longer, in your languor steeped Oh waves, pick up the cotton merchants' wake nor yet confront the pride of flags and flames, nor float beneath the horrid eyes of hulks.

Late Summer 1871. Translated by EDGELL RICKWORD.