Spleen - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)

When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid              Upon the spirit aching for the light          And all the wide horizon's line is hid              By a black day sadder than any night;          When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank              Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering          And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank,              Bruises his tender head and timid wing;          When like grim prison-bars stretch down the thin,              Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain,          And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin              Their meshes in the caverns of the brain;,          Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air,              Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky          As 'twere a band of homeless spirits who fare              Through the strange heavens, wailing stubbornly.          And hearses, without drum or instrument,              File slowly through my soul; crushed, sorrowful,          Weeps Hope, and Grief, fierce and omnipotent,              Plants his black banner on my drooping skull.