Baudelairian "Clips"

From Paris Spleen:

Life is a hospital, in which every patient is possessed by the desire of changing his bed. One would prefer to suffer near the fire, and another is certain that he would get well if he were by the window.

It seems to me that I should always be happy if I were somewhere else, and this question of moving house is one that I am continually talking over with my soul.

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Two poems (from Knopf's Everyman's -- my breaks):

ARTIST UNKNOWN

Flesh is willing, but the Soul requires

Sisyphean patience for its song.

Time, Hippocrates remarked, is short

and Art is long.

 

No illustrious tombstones ornament

the lonely churchyard where I often go

to hear my heart, a muffled drum,

parade incognito.

 

‘Many a gem,’ the poet mourns, abides

forgotten in the dust,

unnoticed there;

 

‘many a rose’ regretfully confides

the secret of its scent

to empty air.

'I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN ...'

I have not forgotten the house we lived in then,  

it was just outside of town, a little white house

in a skimpy grove that hid the naked limbs  

of plaster goddesses – the Venus was chipped!  

Nor those seemingly endless evenings when the sun 

(whose rays ignited every windowpane) seemed,  

like a wide eye in the wondering sky, 

to contemplate our long silent meals,  

kindling more richly than any candlelight 

the cheap curtains and the much-laundered cloth.