Sonnet

Still smiling on at the fairest disaster,

Bloody sighs, murdering gold, swoonings, holiday!

One thousandth time learning hot the way

My lonely love beats down the cenotaph.

So! from all that sunset, no sweet scrap

Rests, it is midnight, in the poet’s clawing

Save a treasure-trove too frisky headways

Pours out a diffuse gleam without a lamp!

Yours, still frivolous! Your own your very own

Sole pledge of vanished eves yet keeping on

A little sorry combat doing your tresses

With grace, every time on cushions you put it

Like a war helmet of some child empress

Whence to figure you, roses fall in petals.

Stéphane Mallarmé