The setting of the Romantic sun

 

How the sun is fair when fresh it rises o’er us,

Like a very explosion launching us good-day!

—Blest is he at last who with love willing may

Salute its setting thence more dreamlike glorious!

 

It comes back to me!... Everything, flower, well, furrow,

I saw yawn beneath its eye like beating hearts...

—Let us hie, it’s late, unto farmost parts,

At the very least a slanted beam to borrow!

 

And yet in vain I follow an absconding God;

Night without resistance gets the imperial nod,

Black, dank, baleful and shivery without fail;

 

A smell of graveclothes floats amid the settled dark,

And my foot frighted stamps, alongside of a marsh,

Imprevisaged toads and chilly garden snails.

 

Charles Baudelaire