Collected Poetical Works of Charles Baudelaire

by Charles Baudelaire

  For conquering Night makes firm her dark domain,

  Mist and gloom fall, and terrors glide between,

  And graveyard odours in the shadow swim,

  And my faint footsteps on the marsh’s rim,

  Bruise the cold snail and crawling toad unseen.

  THE CORPSE.

  Remember, my Beloved, what thing we met

  By the roadside on that sweet summer day;

  There on a grassy couch with pebbles set,

  A loathsome body lay.

  The wanton limbs stiff-stretched into the air,

  Steaming with exhalations vile and dank,

  In ruthless cynic fashion had laid bare

  The swollen side and flank.

  On this decay the sun shone hot from heaven

  As though with chemic heat to broil and burn,

  And unto Nature all that she had given

  A hundredfold return.

  The sky smiled down upon the horror there

  As on a flower that opens to the day;

  So awful an infection smote the air,

  Almost you swooned away.

  The swarming flies hummed on the putrid side,

  Whence poured the maggots in a darkling stream,

  That ran along these tatters of life’s pride

  With a liquescent gleam.

  And like a wave the maggots rose and fell,

  The murmuring flies swirled round in busy strife:

  It seemed as though a vague breath came to swell

  And multiply with life

  The hideous corpse. From all this living world

  A music as of wind and water ran,

  Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirled

  By the swift winnower’s fan.

  And then the vague forms like a dream died out,

  Or like some distant scene that slowly falls

  Upon the artist’s canvas, that with doubt

  He only half recalls.

  A homeless dog behind the boulders lay

  And watched us both with angry eyes forlorn,

  Waiting a chance to come and take away

  The morsel she had torn.

  And you, even you, will be like this drear thing,

  A vile infection man may not endure;

  Star that I yearn to! Sun that lights my spring!

  O passionate and pure!

  Yes, such will you be, Queen of every grace!

  When the last sacramental words are said;

  And beneath grass and flowers that lovely face

  Moulders among the dead.

  Then, O Beloved, whisper to the worm

  That crawls up to devour you with a kiss,

  That I still guard in memory the dear form

  Of love that comes to this!

  AN ALLEGORY.

  Here is a woman, richly clad and fair,

  Who in her wine dips her long, heavy hair;

  Love’s claws, and that sharp poison which is sin,

  Are dulled against the granite of her skin.

  Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon,

  For their sharp scythe-like talons every one

  Pass by her in their all-destructive play;

  Leaving her beauty till a later day.

  Goddess she walks; sultana in her leisure;

  She has Mohammed’s faith that heaven is pleasure,

  And bids all men forget the world’s alarms

  Upon her breast, between her open arms.

  She knows, and she believes, this sterile maid,

  Without whom the world’s onward dream would fade,

  That bodily beauty is the supreme gift

  Which may from every sin the terror lift.

  Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies;

  And when black Night shall roll before her eyes,

  She will look straight in Death’s grim face forlorn,

  Without remorse or hate — as one new born.

  THE ACCURSED.

  Like pensive herds at rest upon the sands,

  These to the sea-horizons turn their eyes;

  Out of their folded feet and clinging hands

  Bitter sharp tremblings and soft languors rise.

  Some tread the thicket by the babbling stream,

  Their hearts with untold secrets ill at ease;

  Calling the lover of their childhood’s dream,

  They wound the green bark of the shooting trees.

  Others like sisters wander, grave and slow,

  Among the rocks haunted by spectres thin,

  Where Antony saw as larvæ surge and flow

  The veined bare breasts that tempted him to sin.

  Some, when the resinous torch of burning wood

  Flares in lost pagan caverns dark and deep,

  Call thee to quench the fever in their blood,

  Bacchus, who singest old remorse to sleep!

  Then there are those the scapular bedights,

  Whose long white vestments hide the whip’s red stain,

  Who mix, in sombre woods on lonely nights,

  The foam of pleasure with the tears of pain.

  O virgins, demons, monsters, martyrs! ye

  Who scorn whatever actual appears;

  Saints, satyrs, seekers of Infinity,

  So full of cries, so full of bitter tears;

  Te whom my soul has followed into hell,

  I love and pity, O sad sisters mine,

  Tour thirsts unquenched, your pains no tongue can tell,

  And your great hearts, those urns of love divine!

  LA BEATRICE.

  In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew,

  I to the winds my cries of anguish threw;

  And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart,

  Pricked gently with the poignard o’er my heart.

  Then in full noon above my head a cloud

  Descended tempest-swollen, and a crowd

  Of wild, lascivious spirits huddled there,

  The cruel and curious demons of the air,

  Who coldly to consider me began;

  Then, as a crowd jeers some unhappy man,

  Exchanging gestures, winking with their eyes —

  I heard a laughing and a whispering rise:

  “Let us at leisure contemplate this clown,

  This shadow of Hamlet aping Hamlet’s frown,

  With wandering eyes and hair upon the wind.

  Is’t not a pity that this empty mind,

  This tramp, this actor out of work, this droll,

  Because he knows how to assume a rôle

  Should dream that eagles and insects, streams and woods,

  Stand still to hear him chaunt his dolorous moods?

  Even unto us, who made these ancient things,

  The fool his public lamentation sings.”

  With pride as lofty as the towering cloud,

  I would have stilled these clamouring demons loud,

  And turned in scorn my sovereign head away

  Had I not seen — O sight to dim the day! —

  There in the middle of the troupe obscene

  The proud and peerless beauty of my Queen!

  She laughed with them at all my dark distress,

  And gave to each in turn a vile caress.

  THE SOUL OF WINE.

  One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine:

  “Man, unto thee, dear disinherited,

  I sing a song of love and light divine —

  Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red.

  “I know thou labourest on the hill of fire,

  In sweat and pain beneath a flaming sun,

  To give the life and soul my vines desire,

  And I am grateful for thy labours done.

  “For I find joys unnumbered when I lave

  The throat of man by travail long outworn,

  And his hot bosom is a sweeter grave

  Of sounder sleep than my cold caves forlorn.

  “Hearest thou not the echoing Sabba
th sound?

  The hope that whispers in my trembling breast?

  Thy elbows on the table! gaze around;

  Glorify me with joy and be at rest.

  “To thy wife’s eyes I’ll bring their long-lost gleam,

  I’ll bring back to thy child his strength and light,

  To him, life’s fragile athlete I will seem

  Rare oil that firms his muscles for the fight.

  “I flow in man’s heart as ambrosia flows;

  The grain the eternal Sower casts in the sod —

  From our first loves the first fair verse arose,

  Flower-like aspiring to the heavens and God!”

  THE WINE OF LOVERS.

  Space rolls to-day her splendour round!

  Unbridled, spurless, without bound,

  Mount we upon the wings of wine

  For skies fantastic and divine!

  Let us, like angels tortured by

  Some wild delirious phantasy,

  Follow the far-off mirage born

  In the blue crystal of the morn.

  And gently balanced on the wing

  Of the wild whirlwind we will ride,

  Rejoicing with the joyous thing.

  My sister, floating side by side,

  Fly we unceasing whither gleams

  The distant heaven of my dreams.

  THE DEATH OF LOVERS.

  There shall be couches whence faint odours rise,

  Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound;

  Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies

  The death-bed of our love shall breathe around.

  And guarding their last embers till the end,

  Our hearts shall be the torches of the shrine,

  And their two leaping flames shall fade and blend

  In the twin mirrors of your soul and mine.

  And through the eve of rose and mystic blue

  A beam of love shall pass from me to you,

  Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell;

  And later still an angel, flinging wide

  The gates, shall bring to life with joyful spell

  The tarnished mirrors and the flames that died.

  THE DEATH OF THE POOR.

  Death is consoler and Death brings to life;

  The end of all, the solitary hope;

  We, drunk with Death’s elixir, face the strife,

  Take heart, and mount till eve the weary slope.

  Across the storm, the hoar-frost, and the snow,

  Death on our dark horizon pulses clear;

  Death is the famous hostel we all know,

  Where we may rest and sleep and have good cheer.

  Death is an angel whose magnetic palms

  Bring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calms

  To smooth the beds of naked men and poor.

  Death is the mystic granary of God;

  The poor man’s purse; his fatherland of yore;

  The Gate that opens into heavens un trod!

  THE BENEDICTION.

  When by the high decree of powers supreme,

  The Poet came into this world outworn,

  She who had borne him, in a ghastly dream,

  Clenched blasphemous hands at God, and cried in scorn:

  “O rather had I borne a writhing knot

  Of unclean vipers, than my breast should nurse

  This vile derision, of my joy begot

  To be my expiation and my curse!

  “Since of all women thou hast made of me

  Unto my husband a disgust and shame;

  Since I may not cast this monstrosity,

  Like an old love-epistle, to the flame;

  “I will pour out thine overwhelming hate

  On this the accursed weapon of thy spite;

  This stunted tree I will so desecrate

  That not one tainted bud shall see the light!”

  So foaming with the foam of hate and shame,

  Blind unto God’s design inexorable,

  With her own hands she fed the purging flame

  To crimes maternal consecrate in hell.

  Meanwhile beneath an Angel’s care unseen

  The child disowned grows drunken with the sun;

  His food and drink, though they be poor and mean,

  With streams of nectar and ambrosia run.

  Speaking to clouds and playing with the wind,

  With joy he sings the sad Way of the Rood;

  His shadowing pilgrim spirit weeps behind

  To see him gay as birds are in the wood.

  Those he would love looked sideways and with fear,

  Or, taking courage from his aspect mild,

  Sought who should first bring to his eye the tear,

  And spent their anger on the dreaming child.

  With all the bread and wine the Poet must eat

  They mingled earth and ash and excrement,

  All things he touched were spurned beneath their feet;

  They mourned if they must tread the road he went.

  His wife ran crying in the public square:

  “Since he has found me worthy to adore,

  Shall I not be as antique idols were,

  With gold and with bright colours painted o’er?

  “I will be drunk with nard and frankincense.

  With myrrh, and knees bowed down, and flesh and wine.

  Can I not, smiling, in his love-sick sense,

  Usurp the homage due to beings divine?

  “I will lay on him my fierce, fragile hand

  When I am weary of the impious play;

  For well these harpy talons understand

  To furrow to his heart their crimson way.

  “I’ll tear the red thing beating from his breast,

  To cast it with disdain upon the ground,

  Like a young bird torn trembling from the nest —

  His heart shall go to gorge my favourite hound.”

  To the far heaven, where gleams a splendid throne,

  The Poet uplifts his arms in calm delight,

  And the vast beams from his pure spirit flown,

  Wrap all the furious peoples from his sight:

  “Thou, O my God, be blest who givest pain,

  The balm divine for each imperfect heart,

  The strong pure essence cleansing every stain

  Of sin that keeps us from thy joys apart.

  “Among the numbers of thy legions blest,

  I know a place awaits the poet there;

  Him thou hast bid attend the eternal feast

  That Thrones and Virtues and Dominions share.

  “I know the one thing noble is a grief

  Withstanding earth’s and hell’s destructive tooth,

  And I, through all my dolorous life and brief,

  To gain the mystic crown, must cry the truth.

  “The jewels lost in Palmyra of old,

  Metals unknown, pearls of the outer sea,

  Are far too dim to set within the gold

  Of the bright crown that Time prepares for me.

  “For it is wrought of pure unmingled light,

  Dipped in the white flame whence all flame is born —

  The flame that makes all eyes, though diamond-bright,

  Seem obscure mirrors, darkened and forlorn.”

  GYPSIES TRAVELLING.

  The tribe prophetic with the eyes of fire

  Went forth last night; their little ones at rest

  Each on his mother’s back, with his desire

  Set on the ready treasure of her breast.

  Laden with shining arms the men-folk tread

  By the long wagons where their goods lie hidden;

  They watch the heaven with eyes grown wearied

  Of hopeless dreams that come to them unbidden.

  The grasshopper, from out his sandy screen,

  Watching them pass redoubles his shrill song;

  Dian, who loves them, makes the grass more green,

  And m
akes the rock run water for this throng

  Of ever-wandering ones whose calm eyes see

  Familiar realms of darkness yet to be.

  FRANCISCÆ MEÆ LAUDES.

  Novis te cantabo chordis,

  O novelletum quod ludia

  In solitudine cordis.

  Esto sertis implicata,

  O fœmina delicata

  Per quam solvuntur peccata

  Sicut beneficum Lethe,

  Hauriam oscula de te,

  Quæ imbuta es magnete.

  Quum vitiorum tempestas

  Turbabat omnes semitas,

  Apparuisti, Deitas,

  Velut stella salutaris

  In naufragiis amaris....

  Suspendam cor tuis aris!

  Piscina plena virtutis,

  Fons æternæ juventutis,

  Labris vocem redde mutis!

  Quod erat spurcum, cremasti;

  Quod rudius, exæquasti;

  Quod debile, confirmasti!

  In fame mea taberna,

  In nocte mea lucerna,

  Recte me semper guberna.

  Adde nunc vires viribus,

  Dulce balneum suavibus,

  Unguentatum odoribus!

  Meos circa I umbos mica,

  O castitatis lorica,

  Aqua tincta seraphica;

  Patera gemmis corusca,

  Panis salsus, mollis esca,

  Divinum vinum, Francisca!

  ROBED IN A SILKEN ROBE.

  Robed in a silken robe that shines and shakes,

  She seems to dance whene’er she treads the sod,

  Like the long serpent that a fakir makes

  Dance to the waving cadence of a rod.

  As the sad sand upon the desert’s verge,

  Insensible to mortal grief and strife;

  As the long weeds that float among the surge,

  She folds indifference round her budding life.

  Her eyes are carved of minerals pure and cold,

  And in her strange symbolic nature where

  An angel mingles with the sphinx of old,

  Where all is gold and steel and light and air,

  For ever, like a vain star, unafraid

  Shines the cold hauteur of the sterile maid.

  A LANDSCAPE.

  I would, when I compose my solemn verse,

  Sleep near the heaven as do astrologers,

  Near the high bells, and with a dreaming mind

  Hear their calm hymns blown to me on the wind.

  Out of my tower, with chin upon my hands,