Recall to mind the sight we saw, my soul,
⁠That soft, sweet summer day:
Upon a bed of flints a carrion foul,
⁠Just as we turn'd the way,

Its legs erected, wanton-like, in air.
⁠Burning and sweating pest.
In unconcern'd and cynic sort laid bare
⁠To view its noisome breast.

The sun lit up the rottenness with gold,
⁠To bake it well inclined,
And give great Nature back a hundredfold
⁠All she together joln'd.

The sky regarded as the carcass proud
⁠Oped flower-like to the day;
So strong the odour, on the grass you vow'd
⁠You thought to faint away.

​The flies the putrid belly buzz'd about,
⁠Whence black battalions throng
Of maggots, like thick liquid flowing out
⁠The living rags along.

And as a wave they mounted and went down.
⁠Or darted sparkling wide ;
As if the body, by a wild breath blown,
⁠Lived as it multiplied.

From all this life a music strange there ran.
⁠Like wind and running burns;
Or like the wheat a winnower in his fan
⁠With rhythmic movement turns.

The forms wore off, and as a dream grew faint,
⁠An outline dimly shown.
And which the artist finishes to paint
⁠From memory alone.

Behind the rocks watch'd us with angry eye
⁠A bitch disturb'd in theft,
"Waiting to take, till we had pass'd her by,
⁠The morsel she had left.

​Yet you will be like that corruption too,
⁠Like that infection prove—
Star of my eyes, sun of my nature, you,
⁠My angel and my love!

Queen of the graces, you will even be so,
⁠When, the last ritual said,
Beneath the grass and the fat flowers you go,
⁠To mould among the dead.

Then, O my beauty, tell the insatiate worm,
⁠Who wastes you with his kiss,
I have kept the godlike essence and the form
⁠Of perishable bliss!