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L’INVITATION AU VOYAGE 
 
MY sister, my child, 
 How sweet to the wild 
To travel and live there together !   
 At leisure to lie, 
 To love and to die 
In thine own strange native weather !   
 The watery suns 
 Of those hot horizons 
Have the mystical charm of the years 
 That mysterious lies 
 In thy traitorous eyes 
As they glitter behind their tears. 
 
 There, all is peace and ecstasy ;   
 Pleasure, calm, and luxury !   
 
 Furniture fine 
 That the years make shine 
Shall stand in our own bedchamber. 
 The rarest flowers 
 Shed their scented showers 
To tinge the vague rapture of amber.