Charles Baudelaire

“ THE OWLS
'Neath their black yews in solemn state
The owls are sitting in a row
Like foreign gods; and even so
Blink their red eyes; they meditate.
Quite motionless they hold them thus
Until at last the day is done,
And driving down the slanting sun,
The sad night is victorious.
They teach the wise who gives them ear
That in this world he most should fear
All things which loud or restless be. ”

“ Brought by the chime soft-singing through the mist.
Happy the sturdy, vigorous-throated bell
Who, spite of age alert and confident,
Cries hourly, like some strong old sentinel
Flinging the ready challenge from his tent.
For me, my soul is cracked; when sick with care,
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 pain.
THE OFFENDED MOON
O moon, O lamp of hill and secret dale! ”

“ And blue-winged words and rose-bloomed kisses
In galleys gowned with gold and silk
Shake on a lake of dainty blisses.
Coyness is not, nor bear they thought
Save of a shining gracious flow,
All natural joys are temperate sought,
For calm desire there they know,
A fire promiscuous, languorous, kind;
They scorn all fiercer lusts and quarrels,
Nor blow about on anger's wind,
Nor burn with love, nor rust with morals. ”

“ 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.
When sometimes in her perfect indolence
She lets a furtive tear steal gently thence,
Some pious poet, a lone, sleepless one,
Takes in his hollowed hand this gem, shot through,
Like an opal stone, with gleams of every hue,
And in his heart's depths hides it from the sun. ”

“ Fall the dice, not once or twice but always, to
make the self-same sum;
Chance what may, a life's a life and to a
single goal must come;
Though a man search far and wide, never
is hunger satisfied ”

“ Of those high-pilèd clouds which 'thwart the night are thrown,
Veiling its starry deeps.
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.
THE CATS
The lover and the stern philosopher
Both love, in their ripe time, the confident
Soft cats, the house's chiefest ornament,
Who like themselves are cold and seldom stir. ”

“ Had chance but joinèd different dice, but
once or twice, but once or twice,
All lovely things that I desired I should have
held before too late.
Surely I knew that flesh was grass nor valued
overmuch the prize,
But all the powers of chance conspired to
cheat a man both just and wise. ”

“ Fleet are his feet and his heart apart.
For the wind of his feet still straightly shaping,
He loosed at our breasts from his eyes escaping
One crooked swift glance like a javelin leaping.
Fleet are his feet and his heart apart. ”

“ Look! 'tis a poor bare country after all!"
Isle of sweet secrets and heart banquetings!
The queenly shade of antique Venus thrills
Scentlike above thy level seas and fills
Our souls with languor and all amorous things.
Fair isle and of green myrtles and blown flowers
Held holy by all men for evermore,
Where the faint sighs of spirits that adore
Float like rose-incense through the quiet hours,
And dovelike sounds each murmured orison:—
Cythera lay there barren 'neath bright skies,
A rocky waste rent by discordant cries:
Natheless I saw a curious thing thereon. ”

“ How far thou art, O scented paradise,
O paradise where all is love and joy,
Where all is worthy love 'neath the azure skies,
And the heart drowns in bliss without alloy!
How far thou art, O scented paradise!
But the green paradise of childish loves,
The games, the songs, the kisses and the flowers,
The laughing draughts of wine in hidden groves,
The violins throbbing through the twilight hours,
—But the green paradise of childish loves,
The artless paradise of stealthy joys,
Is that already leagues beyond Cathay? ”

“ Three of the short poems and most of the translations are extracted from an earlier volume.
ANTINOMIES ON A RAILWAY STATION
As I stand waiting in the rain
For the foggy hoot of the London train,
Gazing at silent wall and lamp
And post and rail and platform damp,
What is this power that comes to my sight
That I see a night without the night,
That I see them clear, yet look them through,
The silvery things and the darkly blue,
That the solid wall seems soft as death,
A wavering and unanchored wraith,
And rails that shine and stones that stream
Unsubstantial as a dream? ”

“ Even a critic's more than clay
And every dog outlives his day.
This kind of vagueness suits your view,
You would not carp at it; for you
Did never stand with those who take
Their pleasures in a world opaque. ”

“ Derelict on the city's tide,
As then for penury now for pride
Thy bodily senses were denied;
Though they cried out and would not sleep,
Ascetic thou didst armour them
Lest acid pleasure should eat thine art's pure gem. ”

“ Brother, yet great thy power;
Thou stood'st as on a tower
Small 'neath the stars yet high above the fields;
In thy alembic song
Imagination strong
Distilled what essences the quest to mortals yields. ”

“ The cool sheets' tremulous kisses
O'er all my body steal ...
Is sleep as sweet as this is?
THE MIND OF MAN
I
Beneath my skull-bone and my hair,
Covered like a poisonous well,
There is a land: if you looked there
What you saw you'd quail to tell. ”

“ TWELVE TRANSLATIONS FROM CHARLES BAUDELAIRE TOUT ENTIÈRE
This morning in my attic high
The Demon came to visit me,
And seeking faults in my reply,
He said: "I would inquire of thee,
"Of all the beauties which compose
Her charming body's potent spell,
Of all the objects black and rose
Which make the thing you love so well,
"Which is the sweetest?" ”

“ Horrors that make the heart stand still.
There, 'neath a heaven diseased, it lies,
The mere alive with slimy worms,
With perverse terrible infamies,
And murders and repulsive forms
That have no name, but slide here deep
Whilst I, their holder, silence keep.
A REASONABLE PROTESTATION
[To F., who complained of his vagueness and lack of
dogmatic statement]
Not, I suppose, since I deny
Appearance is reality,
And doubt the substance of the earth
Does your remonstrance come to birth ”