Charles Baudelaire

“ Beyond the confines of the starry spheres,
Swiftly, my spirit, thou dost hold thy flight,
And, as one swoons with joy on the sea’s breast,
Those calm eternal deeps thou furrowest
With an ineffable and strong delight. ”

“ THE ALCHEMY OF GRIEF
One, Nature! burns and makes thee bright,
One gives thee weeds to mourn withal;
And what to one is burial
Is to the other life and light.
The unknown Hermes who assists
And alway fills my heart with fear,
Makes the mighty Midas’ peer
The saddest of the alchemists. ”

“ Of the sad beauty of my vain desire.
I thought upon her brow clad round with fire
And matchless strength, her native majesty,
Her perfumed helm of hair whose memory
Makes me toward Love’s heights to reaspire. ”

“ This icy sun’s cold cruelty, and this vast
Night like primæval Chaos; would I were
Like the dumb brutes, who in a secret lair
Lie wrapt in stupid slumber for a space. . . .
The time creeps at so burdensome a pace. ”

“ Of all the objects black and rose
Which make the thing you love so well,
“Which is the sweetest?” O my soul!
Thou didst rejoin: “How tell of parts,
When all I know is that the whole
Works magic in my heart of hearts? ”

“ Both love, in their ripe time, the confident
Soft cats, the house’s chiefest ornament,
Who like themselves are cold and seldom stir.
Of knowledge and of pleasure amorous,
Silence they seek and Darkness’ fell domain ”

“ Stirred by some terrible avenging power,
An angel in the sated brute awakes.
Above the stricken, suffering man there glow
Far azure plains of unimagined bliss
Which draw his dreaming spirit like the abyss. ”

“ When Nature in her lavish lustiness
Bred day by day new, strange monstrosities,
Would I had lived with a young giantess
Like a warm cat who at a queen’s feet lies.
’Twere sweet to watch her soul and body blossom
While she disported her in terrible wise ”

“ Above your doomed head you will hear
Each night throughout the heavy year
The lean wolves’ melancholy cries,
Famished hags’ howlings for a crust,
Lewd pastimes of old men who lust,
And scoundrels’ dark conspiracies. ”

“ Out in the night and in the solitude
Out in the street and in the multitude
Her phantom dances torch-like in the air;
And sometimes speaks she: “Beauty, thou shalt choose
Thine only love, for love of me who am fair ”

“ Before she sleeps, the slope of her sweet breasts.
On her soft satined avalanches’ height
Dying, she laps herself for hours and hours
In long, long swoons, and gazes at the white
Visions which rise athwart the blue-like flowers. ”

“ Each man who is man, high or low,
Has in his heart a yellow snake
Who on a throne his seat doth take
And answers “I desire” with “No.”
Plunge thine eyes deep in Sirens’ eyes,
Drink in their sensuous sorceries ”

“ Shall find beneath this naked strand that streams
The mystic substance which their strength imparts?
O misery! misery! Time eats our lives,
And that dark Enemy who gnaws our hearts
Grows by the blood he sucks from us, and thrives. ”

“ I suffer all the throes, within my quivering form,
Of a great ship in pain,
Now a soft wind, and now the writhings of a storm
Upon the vasty main
Rock me: at other times a death-like calm, the bare
Mirror of my despair. ”

“ She strives with songs to people the cold air
It happens often that her feeble cries
Mock the harsh rattle of a man who lies
Wounded, forgotten, ’neath a mound of slain
And dies, pinned fast, writhing his limbs in vain. ”

“ Rather than crave a tear from human eyes
I would invite the crows their hunger sate
Upon my corpse’s foul extremities.
O worms! O black, deaf, sightless company!
There comes to you a dead man glad and free. ”

“ Tells the beholder at a glance
My master smokes incessantly.
If he is mournful or in pain
I smoke as does the ploughman’s cot
When the good wife prepares the pot
Before her spouse comes home again. ”