Collected Poetical Works of Charles Baudelaire

by Charles Baudelaire

  Ye whom my soul has followed into hell,

  I love and pity, O sad sisters mine,

  Your 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 Sabbath 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 untrod!

  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 weariëd

  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 makes 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 ludis

  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 tabema,

  In nocte mea lucerna,

  Recte me semper gubema.

  Adde nunc vires viribus,

  Dulce balneum suavibus,

  Unguentatum odoribus!

  Meos circa lumbos mica,

  O castitatis lorica,

  Aqua tincta seraphica;

  Patera gemmis corusca,

  Panis salsus, mollis esca,

  Divinum vinum, Francisca!

  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,

  I’ll watch the singing, babbling human bands;

  And see clock-towers like spars against the sky,

  And heavens that bring thoughts of eternity;

  And softly, through the mist, will watch the birth

  Of stars in heaven and lamplight on the earth;

  The threads of smoke that rise above the town;

  The moon that pours her pale enchantment down.

  Seasons will pass till Autumn fades the rose;

  And when comes Winter with his weary snows,

  I’ll shut the doors and window-casements tight,

  And build my faery palace in the night.

  Then I will dream of blue horizons deep;

  Of gardens where the marble fountains weep;

  Of kisses, and of ever-singing birds —

  A sinless Idyll built of innocent words.

  And Trouble, knocking at my window-pane

  And at my closet door, shall knock in vain;

  I will not heed him with his stealthy tread,

  Nor from my reverie uplift my head;

  For I will plunge deep in the pleasure still

  Of summoning the spring-time with my will,

  Drawing the sun out of my heart, and there

  With burning thoughts making a summer air.

  THE VOYAGE

  I

  The world is equal to the child’s desire

  Who plays with pictures by his nursery fire —

  How vast the world by lamplight seems! How small

  When memory’s eyes look back, remembering all! —

  One morning we set forth with thoughts aflame,

  Or heart o’erladen with desire or shame;

  And cradle, to the song of surge and breeze,

  Our own infinity on the finite seas.

  Some flee the memory of their childhood’s home;

  And others flee their fatherland; and some,

  Star-gazers drowned within a woman’s eyes,

  Flee from the tyrant Circe’s witcheries;

  And, lest they still be changed to beasts, take flight

  For the embrasured heavens, and space, and light,

  Till one by one the stains her kisses made

  In biting cold and burning sunlight fade.

  But the true voyagers are they who part

  From all they love because a wandering heart

  Drives them to fly the Fate they cannot fly;

  Whose call is ever “On!” — they know not why.

  Their thoughts are like the clouds that veil a star

  They dream of change as warriors dream of war;

  And strange wild wishes never twice the same:

  Desires no mortal man can give a name.

  II

  We are like whirling tops and rolling balls —

  For even when the sleepy night-time falls,

  Old Curiosity still thrusts us on,

  Like the cruel Angel who goads forth the sun.

  The end of fate fades ever through the air,

  And, being nowhere, may be anywhere

  Where a man runs, hope waking in his breast,

  For ever like a madman, seeking rest.

  Our souls are wandering ships outweariëd;

  And one upon the bridge asks: “What’s ahead?”

  The topman’s voice with an exultant sound

  Cries: “Love and Glory!” — then we run aground.

  Each isle the pilot signals when ’tis late,

  Is El Dorado, promised us by fate —

  Imagination, spite of her belief,

  Finds, in the light of dawn, a barren reef.

  Oh the poor seeker after lands that flee!

  Shall we not bind and cast into the sea

  This drunken sailor whose ecstatic mood

  Makes bitterer still the water’s weary flood?

  Such is an old tramp wandering in the mire,

  Dreaming the paradise of his own desire,

  Discovering cities of enchanted sleep

  Where’er the light shines on a rubbish heap.

  III

  Strange voyagers, what tales of noble deeds

  Deep in your dim sea-weary eyes one reads!

  Open the casket where your memories are,

  And show each jewel, fashioned from a star;

  For I would travel without sail or wind,

  And so, to lift the sorrow from my mind,

  Let your long memories of sea-days far fled

  Pass o’er my spirit like a sail outspread.

  What have you seen?

  IV

  “We have seen waves and stars,

  And lost sea-beaches, and known many wars,

  And notwithstanding war and hope and fear,

  We were as weary there as we are here.

  “The lights that on the violet sea poured down,

  The suns that set behind some far-off town,

  Lit in our hearts the unquiet wish to fly

  Deep in the glimmering distance of the sky;

  “The loveliest countries that rich cities bless,

  Never contained the strange wild loveliness

  By fate and chance shaped from the floating cloud —

  And we were always sorrowful and proud!

  “Desire from joy gains strength in weightier measure.

  Desire, old tree who draw’st thy sap from pleasure,

  Though thy bark thickens as the years pass by,

  Thine arduous branches rise towards the sky;

  “And wilt thou still grow taller, tree more fair

  Than the tall cypress?

  — Thus have we, with care,

  “Gathered some flowers to please your eager mood,

  Brothers who dream that distant things are good!

  “We have seen many a jewel-glimmering throne;

  And bowed to Idols when wild horns were blown

  In palaces whose faery pomp and gleam

  To your rich men would be a ruinous dream;

  “And robes that were a madness to the eyes;

  Women whose teeth and nails were stained with dyes;

  Wise jugglers round whose neck the serpent winds — —”

  V

  And then, and then what more?

  VI

  “O childish minds!

  “Forget not that which we found everywhere,

  From top to bottom of the fatal stair,

  Above, beneath, around us and within,

  The weary pageant of immortal sin.

  “We have seen woman, stupid slave and proud,

  Before her own frail, foolish beauty bowed;

  And man, a greedy, cruel, lascivious fool,

  Slave of the slave, a ripple in a pool;

  “The martyrs groan, the headsman’s merry mood;

  And banquets seasoned and perfumed with blood;

  Poison, that gives the tyrant’s power the slip;

  And nations amorous of the brutal whip;

  “Many religions not unlike our own,

  All in full flight for heaven’s resplendent throne;

  And Sanctity, seeking delight in pain,

  Like a sick man of his own sickness vain;

  “And mad mortality, drunk with its own power,

  As foolish now as in a bygone hour,

  Shouting, in presence of the tortured Christ:

  ‘I curse thee, mine own Image sacrificed.’

  “And silly monks in love with Lunacy,

  Fleeing the troops herded by destiny,

  Who seek for peace in opiate slumber furled —

  Such is the pageant of the rolling world!”

  VII

  O bitter knowledge that the wanderers gain!

  The world says our own age is little and vain;

  For ever, yesterday, to-day, to-morrow,

  ’Tis horror’s oasis in the sands of sorrow.

  Must
we depart? If you can rest, remain;

  Part, if you must. Some fly, some cower in vain,

  Hoping that Time, the grim and eager foe,

  Will pass them by; and some run to and fro

  Like the Apostles or the Wandering Jew;

  Go where they will, the Slayer goes there too!

  And there are some, and these are of the wise,

  Who die as soon as birth has lit their eyes.

  But when at length the Slayer treads us low,

  We will have hope and cry, “’Tis time to go!”

  As when of old we parted for Cathay

  With wind-blown hair and eyes upon the bay.

  We will embark upon the Shadowy Sea,

  Like youthful wanderers for the first time free —

  Hear you the lovely and funereal voice

  That sings: O come all ye whose wandering joys

  Are set upon the scented Lotus flower,

  For here we sell the fruit’s miraculous boon;

  Come ye and drink the sweet and sleepy power

  Of the enchanted, endless afternoon.

  VIII

  O Death, old Captain, it is time, put forth!

  We have grown weary of the gloomy north;

  Though sea and sky are black as ink, lift sail!

  Our hearts are full of light and will not fail.

  O pour thy sleepy poison in the cup!

  The fire within the heart so burns us up

  That we would wander Hell and Heaven through,

  Deep in the Unknown seeking something new!

  From ‘THE FLOWERS OF EVIL’ (Translated by W. J. Robertson)

  BENEDICTION

  When, by the sovran will of Powers Eternal,

  The poet passed into this weary world,

  His mother, filled with fears and doubts infernal,

  Clenching her hands towards Heaven these curses hurled.

  — “Why rather did I not within me treasure

  “A knot of serpents than this thing of scorn?

  “Accursed be the night of fleeting pleasure

  “Whence in my womb this chastisement was borne!

  “Since thou hast chosen me to be the woman

  “Whose loathsome fruitfulness her husband shames,

  “Who may not cast aside this birth inhuman,

  “As one that flings love-tokens to the flames,

  “The hatred that on me thy vengeance launches

  “On this thwart creature I will pour in flood:

  “So twist the sapling that its withered branches

  “Shall never once put forth a cankered bud!”

  Regorging thus the venom of her malice,