Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE AZURE, by STEPHANE MALLARME


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE AZURE, by             Poem Explanation         Poet's Biography
First Line: In serene irony the infinite azure
Last Line: I am obsessed. The azure! The azure! The azure! The azure!


In serene irony the infinite azure,
Languidly lovely as the flowers, smites
The impotent poet cursing his genius
Across a barren wilderness of Sorrows.

Fleeing with eyes closed, I feel it probe
Deep as a racking remorse
My empty soul. Where escape? And what eerie night
To hurl, O remains, against this heart-mangling scorn?

O fogs, come forth! Pour your monotonous ashes
In long shreds of haze across the skies,
Drowning the livid quagmire of the autumns
And rearing a vast ceiling of silence!

And you, from the lethal morasses emerge and gather
As you come the slime and the vapid reeds,
Dear Ennui, to stuff with untiring hands
The great blue holes the birds maliciously make.

More! Let the sad chimneys unceasingly
Smoke, and a wandering prison of soot
Blot out in the horror of their murky trails
The sun dying yellowish on the horizon!

-The Sky is dead. -Toward you I run! O matter, give
Oblivion of the cruel Ideal and of Sin
To this martyr who comes to share the straw
Where men's contented cattle lie,

For here I wish, since at the last my brain, empty
As the pot of paint lying at the foot of a wall,
The art to adorn the woeful Idea possesses no more,
To yawn disconsolately to a desolate death . . .

In vain! The Azure triumphs, and in the bells
I hear it sing. My soul, it becomes a voice
Instilling us with fear anew of its awful victory,
And from the living metal comes in bluenesses the Angelus!

It whirls through the mist as of old and cleaves
Like a resolute sword your intrinsic agony;
In the helpless and hopeless revolt what escape?
I am obsessed. The Azure! The Azure! The Azure! The Azure!





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