spleen et ideal (carlos schwabe, 1907)
Great woods, you frighten me like cathedrals; You roar like the organ; and in our cursed hearts, Rooms of endless mourning where old death-rattles sound, Respond the echoes of your De profundis.
I hate you, Ocean! your bounding and your tumult, My mind finds them within itself; that bitter laugh Of the vanquished man, full of sobs and insults, I hear it in the immense laughter of the sea.
How I would like you, Night! without those stars Whose light speaks a language I know! For I seek emptiness, darkness, and nudity!
But the darkness is itself a canvas Upon which live, springing from my eyes by thousands, Beings with understanding looks, who have vanished.
— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)