Collected Poems and Other Verse Quotes

“I see myself––an angel!––and I die;
the window may be art or mysticism, yet
I long for rebirth in the former sky
where Beauty blooms, my dream being my coronet!

But, alas, our low World is suzerain!
even in this retreat it can be too
loathsome––till the foul vomit of the Inane
drives me to stop my nose before the blue.

O Self familiar with these bitter things,
can the glass outraged by that monster be
shattered? can I flee with my featherless wings––
and risk falling through all eternity?”
― Stéphane Mallarmé, Collected Poems and Other Verse

“You made the sobbing white of lilies too,
tumbling lightly across a sea of sighs on
their dreamy way to weeping moonlight through
the azure incense of the pale horizon!”
― Stéphane Mallarmé, Collected Poems and Other Verse

“Was it a dream I loved?”
― Stéphane Mallarmé, Collected Poems and Other Verse

“I kiss your knees that self-communing prayers chastize,
I kiss your feet that would appease the open sea;
I wish to plunge my head between your vital thighs
and in your hair-shirt weep for my iniquity;

there, my dear saint, in that oblivion of the dim
Chasm and the Boundless, rapt with scents vibrant and fresh,
when I have finished softly chanting my long hymn,
I shall assuage my torment on your wholesome flesh.”
― Stéphane Mallarmé, Collected Poems and Other Verse

“Verse is everywhere in language where there is rhythm, everywhere, except in notices and on page four of the papers. In the genre called prose, there are verses [...] of all rhythms. But in truth there is no prose: there is the alphabet, and then verses more or less tight, more or less diffuse.”
― Stéphane Mallarmé, Collected Poems and Other Verse

“Did I love a dream?”
― Stéphane Mallarmé, Collected Poems and Other Verse

“Resumir en una mirada la virgen ausencia disperta en esta soledad y, como se corta, para recuerdo de un lugar, uno de esos mágicos nenúfares cerrados que de súbito surgen envolviendo en el hueco de su blancura una nada formada de sueños intactos, de la ventura que no llegará, y de mi aliento contenido por el temor de una aparición, partir con él: tácitamente, desentrañando poco a poco sin choque, romper ilusión, sin que el crepitar de la visible pompa de espuma enroscada a mi huida no arroje a los pies de nadie que sobrevenga la semejanza transparente del rapto de mi flor ideal.”
― Stéphane Mallarmé, Poésies