Midnight Confession. (From Charles Baudelaire.) At the dreary midnight hour, Strikes the clock, as if it said ‘ Mortals, to what use, what power, Have ye put the day just dead ?’ From our lips the words unbidden In despairing chorus fell (No one string of ours being hidden), ‘ We have lived as dogs in hell !’ ‘ We have cursed and blasphem’d Jesus, Holiest, kindliest God of all ; And beneath the board of Cresus, Fawn’d we for the crumbs that fall ; And to please the brute who buys us, Soul and body, with his gold, Flatter’d those who must despise us, Spurn’d the hands we ought to hold ! ‘ In our slavish melancholy, Sick at heart, our heads we bow To the hideous monster, Folly— Folly with the bull-like brow ; Till we gibe at all that raises Mankind from the brutes accurst, Heaping still our fulsome praises On the loathsomest and worst. ‘ And to crown our ghastly madness, We, the high priests of the eyre— We, whose theme is joy and sadness, Half akin to ours, but higher— We, before our songs were spoken, Stoop’d to carnal base delight;— Hurl the lamp down; when ’tis broken We can hide us in the night !’ H. Curwen .