Collected Poetical Works of Charles Baudelaire

by Charles Baudelaire

  And misconceiving thy decrees sublime,

  In deep Gehenna’s gulf she fills the chalice

  Of torments destined to maternal crime.

  Yet, safely sheltered by his viewless angel,

  The Childe forsaken revels in the Sun;

  And all his food and drink is an evangel

  Of nectared sweets, sent by the Heavenly One.

  He communes with the clouds, knows the wind’s voices,

  And on his pilgrimage enchanted sings;

  Seeing how like the wild bird he rejoices

  The hovering Spirit weeps and folds his wings.

  All those he fain would love shrink back in terror,

  Or, boldened by his fearlessness elate,

  Seek to seduce him into sin and error,

  And flesh on him the fierceness of their hate.

  In bread and wine, wherewith his soul is nourished,

  They mix their ashes and foul spume impure;

  Lying they cast aside the things he cherished,

  And curse the chance that made his steps their lure.

  His spouse goes crying in the public places:

  “Since he doth choose my beauty to adore,

  “Aping those ancient idols Time defaces

  “I would regild my glory as of yore.

  “Nard, balm and myrrh shall tempt till he desires me

  “With blandishments, with dainties and with wine,

  “Laughing if in a heart that so admires me

  “I may usurp the sovranty divine!

  “Until aweary of love’s impious orgies,

  “Fastening on him my fingers firm and frail,

  “These claws, keen as the harpy’s when she gorges,

  “Shall in the secret of his heart prevail.

  “Then, thrilled and trembling like a young bird captured,

  “The bleeding heart shall from his breast be torn;

  “To glut his maw my wanton hound, enraptured,

  “Shall see me fling it to the earth in scorn.”

  Heavenward, where he beholds a throne resplendent,

  The poet lifts his hands, devout and proud,

  And the vast lightnings of a soul transcendent

  Veil from his gaze awhile the furious crowd: —

  “Blessed be thou, my God, that givest sorrow,

  “Sole remedy divine for things unclean,

  “Whence souls robust a healing virtue borrow,

  “That tempers them for sacred joys serene!

  “I know thou hast ordained in blissful regions

  “A place, a welcome in the festal bowers,

  “To call the poet with thy holy Legions,

  “Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers.

  “I know that Sorrow is the strength of Heaven,

  “‘Gainst which in vain strive ravenous Earth and Hell,

  “And that his crown must be of mysteries woven

  “Whereof all worlds and ages hold the spell.

  “But not antique Palmyra’s buried treasure,

  “Pearls of the sea, rare metal, precious gem,

  “Though set by thine own hand could fill the measure

  “Of beauty for his radiant diadem;

  “For this thy light alone, intense and tender,

  “Flows from the primal source of effluence pure,

  “Whereof all mortal eyes, though bright their splendour,

  “Are but the broken glass and glimpse obscure.”

  SPLEEN ET IDÉAL.

  ILL LUCK

  To bear so vast a load of grief

  Thy courage, Sisyphus, I crave!

  My heart against the task is brave,

  But Art is long and Time is brief.

  For from Fame’s proud sepulchral arches,

  Towards a graveyard lone and dumb,

  My sad heart, like a muffled drum,

  Goes beating slow funereal marches.

  — Full many a shrouded jewel sleeps

  In dark oblivion, lost in deeps

  Unknown to pick or plummet’s sound:

  Full many a weeping blossom flings

  Her perfume, sweet as secret things,

  In silent solitudes profound.

  LE GUIGNON.

  BEAUTY

  My face is a marmoreal dream, O mortals!

  And on my breast all men are bruised in turn,

  So moulded that the poet’s love may burn

  Mute and eternal as the earth’s cold portals.

  Throned like a Sphinx unveiled in the blue deep,

  A heart of snow my swan-white beauty muffles;

  I hate the line that undulates and ruffles:

  And never do I laugh and never weep.

  The poets, prone beneath my presence towering

  With stately port of proudest obelisks,

  Worship with rites austere, their days devouring;

  For I have charms to keep their love, pure disks

  That make all things more beautiful and tender:

  My large eyes, radiant with eternal splendour!

  LA BEAUTÉ.

  IDEAL LOVE

  No, never can these frail ephemeral creatures,

  The withered offspring of a worthless age,

  These buskined limbs, these false and painted features,

  The hunger of a heart like mine assuage.

  Leave to the laureate of sickly posies

  Gavami’s hospital sylphs, a simpering choir!

  Vainly I seek among those pallid roses

  One blossom that allures my red desire.

  Thou with my soul’s abysmal dreams be blended,

  Lady Macbeth, in crime superb and splendid,

  A dream of Æschylus flowered in cold eclipse

  Of Northern suns! Thou, Night, inspire my passion,

  Calm child of Angelo, coiling in strange fashion

  Thy large limbs moulded for a Titan’s lips!

  L’IDÉAL.

  HYMN TO BEAUTY

  Be thou from Hell upsprung or Heaven descended,

  Beauty! thy look demoniac and divine

  Pours good and evil things confusedly blended,

  And therefore art thou likened unto wine.

  Thine eye with dawn is filled, with twilight dwindles,

  Like winds of night thou sprinklest perfumes mild;

  Thy kiss, that is a spell, the child’s heart kindles,

  Thy mouth, a chalice, makes the man a child.

  Fallen from the stars or risen from gulfs of error,

  Fate dogs thy glamoured garments like a slave;

  With wanton hands thou scatterest joy and terror,

  And rulest over all, cold as the grave.

  Thou tramplest on the dead, scornful and cruel,

  Horror coils like an amulet round thine arms,

  Crime on thy superb bosom is a jewel

  That dances amorously among its charms.

  The dazzled moth that flies to thee, the candle,

  Shrivels and burns, blessing thy fatal flame;

  The lover that dies fawning o’er thy sandal

  Fondles his tomb and breathes the adored name.

  What if from Heaven or Hell thou com’st, immortal

  Beauty? O sphinx-like monster, since alone

  Thine eye, thy smile, thy hand opens the portal

  Of the Infinite I love and have not known.

  What if from God or Satan be the evangel?

  Thou my sole Queen! Witch of the velvet eyes!

  Since with thy fragrance, rhythm and light, O Angel!

  In a less hideous world time swiftlier flies.

  HYMNE À LA BEAUTÉ.

  EXOTIC FRAGRANCE

  When, with closed eyes in the warm autumn night,

  I breathe the fragrance of thy bosom bare,

  My dream unfurls a clime of loveliest air,

  Drenched in the fiery sun’s unclouded light.

  An indolent island dowered with heaven’s delight,

  Trees singular and fruits
of savour rare,

  Men having sinewy frames robust and spare,

  And women whose clear eyes are wondrous bright.

  Led by thy fragrance to those shores I hail

  A charmed harbour thronged with mast and sail,

  Still wearied with the quivering sea’s unrest;

  What time the scent of the green tamarinds

  That thrills the air and fills my swelling breast

  Blends with the mariners’ song and the sea-winds.

  PARFUM EXOTIQUE.

  XXVIII SONNET

  In undulant robes with nacreous sheen impearled

  She walks as in some stately saraband;

  Or like lithe snakes by sacred charmers curled

  In cadence wreathing on the slender wand.

  Calm as blue wastes of sky and desert sand

  That watch unmoved the sorrows of this world;

  With slow regardless sweep as on the strand

  The long swell of the woven sea-waves swirled.

  Her polished orbs are like a mystic gem,

  And, while this strange and symbolled being links

  The inviolate angel and the antique sphinx,

  Insphered in gold, steel, light and diadem

  The splendour of a lifeless star endows

  With clear cold majesty the barren spouse.

  MUSIC

  Launch me, O music, whither on the soundless

  Sea my star gleams pale!

  I beneath cloudy cope or rapt in boundless

  Æther set my sail;

  With breast outblown, swollen by the wind that urges

  Swelling sheets, I scale

  The summit of the wave whose vexed surges

  Night from me doth veil;

  A labouring vessel’s passions in my pulses

  Thrill the shuddering sense;

  The wind that wafts, the tempest that convulses,

  O’er the gulf immense

  Swing me. — Anon flat calm and clearer air

  Glass my soul’s despair!

  LA MUSIQUE.

  THE SPIRITUAL DAWN

  When on some wallowing soul the roseate East

  Dawns with the Ideal that awakes and gnaws,

  By vengeful working of mysterious laws

  An angel rises in the drowsed beast.

  The inaccessible blue of the soul-sphere

  To him whose grovelling dream remorse doth gall

  Yawns wide as when the gulfs of space enthral.

  So, heavenly Goddess, Spirit pure and clear,

  Even on the reeking ruins of vile shame

  Thy rosy vision, beautiful and bright,

  For ever floats on my enlargëd sight.

  Thus sunlight blackens the pale taper-flame;

  And thus is thy victorious phantom one,

  O soul of splendour, with the immortal Sun!

  L’AUBE SPIRITUELLE.

  THE FLAWED BELL

  Bitter and sweet it is, in winter night,

  Hard by the flickering fire that smokes, to list

  While far-off memories rise in sad slow flight,

  With chimes that echo singing through the mist.

  O blessëd be the bell whose vigorous throat,

  In spite of age alert, with strength unspent,

  Utters religiously his faithful note,

  Like an old warrior watching near the tent!

  My soul, alas! is flawed, and when despair

  Would people with her songs the chill night-air

  Too oft they faint in hoarse enfeebled tones,

  As when a wounded man forgotten moans

  By the red pool, beneath a heap of dead,

  And dying writhes in frenzy on his bed.

  LA CLOCHE FÉLÉE.

  THREE POEMS FROM BAUDELAIRE (Translated by Richard Herne Shepherd)

  A CARCASS

  Recall to mind the sight we saw, my soul,

  That soft, sweet summer day:

  Upon a bed of flints a carrion foul,

  Just as we turn’d the way

  Its legs erected, wanton-like, in air,

  Burning and sweating past,

  In unconcern’d and cynic sort laid bare

  To view its noisome breast.

  The sun lit up the rottenness with gold,

  To bake it well inclined,

  And give great Nature back a hundredfold

  All she together join’d.

  The sky regarded as the carcass proud

  Oped flower-like to the day;

  So strong the odour, on the grass you vow’d

  You thought to faint away.

  The flies the putrid belly buzz’d about,

  Whence black battalions throng

  Of maggots, like thick liquid flowing out

  The living rags along.

  And as a wave they mounted and went down,

  Or darted sparkling wide:

  As if the body, by a wild breath blown,

  Lived as it multiplied.

  From all this life a music strange there ran,

  Like wind and running burns:

  Or like the wheat a winnower in his fan

  With rhythmic movement turns.

  The forms wore off, and as a dream grew faint,

  An outline dimly shown,

  And which the artist finishes to paint

  From memory alone.

  Behind the rocks watch’d us with angry eye

  A bitch disturb’d in theft,

  Waiting to take, till we had pass’d her by

  The morsel she had left.

  Yet you will be like that corruption too,

  Like that infection prove —

  Star of my eyes, sun of my nature, you,

  My angel and my love!

  Queen of the graces, you will even be so,

  When, the last ritual said,

  Beneath the grass and the fat flowers you go,

  To mould among the dead.

  Then, O my beauty, tell the insatiate worm,

  Who wastes you with his kiss,

  I have kept the godlike essence and the form

  Of perishable bliss!

  WEEPING AND WANDERING

  Say, Agatha, if at times your spirit turns

  Far from the black sea of the city’s mud,

  To another ocean, where the splendour burns

  All blue, and clear, and deep as maidenhood?

  Say, Agatha, if your spirit thither turns?

  The boundless sea consoles the weary mind!

  What demon gave the sea — that chantress hoarse

  To the huge organ of the chiding wind —

  The function grand to rock us like a nurse?

  The boundless ocean soothes the jaded mind!

  O car and frigate, bear me far away,

  For here our tears moisten the very clay.

  Is’t true that Agatha’s sad heart at times

  Says, far from sorrows, from remorse, from crimes,

  Remove me, car, and, frigate, bear away?

  O perfumed paradise, how far removed,

  Where ‘neath a clear sky all is love and joy,

  Where all we love is worthy to be loved,

  And pleasure drowns the heart, but does not cloy.

  O perfumed paradise, so far removed!

  But the green paradise of childlike loves,

  The walks, the songs, the kisses, and the flowers,

  The violins dying behind the hills, the hours

  Of evening and the wine-flasks in the groves.

  But the green paradise of early loves,

  The innocent paradise, full of stolen joys,

  Is’t farther off than ev’n the Indian main?

  Can we recall it with our plaintive cries,

  Or give it life, with silvery voice, again,

  The innocent paradise, full of furtive joys?

  LESBOS

  Mother of Latin sports and Greek delights,

  Where kisses languishing or pleasureful,

  Warm as the
suns, as the water-melons cool,

  Adorn the glorious days and sleepless nights,

  Mother of Latin sports and Greek delights.

  Lesbos, where kisses are as waterfalls

  That fearless into gulfs unfathom’d leap,

  Now run with sobs, now slip with gentle brawls,

  Stormy and secret, manifold and deep;

  Lesbos, where kisses are as waterfalls!

  Lesbos, where Phryne Phryne to her draws,

  Where ne’er a sigh did echoless expire,

  As Paphos’ equal thee the stars admire,

  Nor Venus envies Sappho without cause!

  Lesbos, where Phryne Phryne to her draws,

  Lesbos, the land of warm and languorous nights,

  Where by their mirrors seeking sterile good,

  The girls with hollow eyes, in soft delights,

  Caress the ripe fruits of their womanhood,

  Lesbos, the land of warm and languorous nights.

  Leave, leave old Plato’s austere eye to frown;

  Pardon is thine for kisses’ sweet excess,

  Queen of the land of amiable renown,

  And for exhaustless subtleties of bliss,

  Leave, leave old Plato’s austere eye to frown.

  Pardon is thine for the eternal pain

  That on the ambitious hearts for ever lies,

  Whom far from us the radiant smile could gain,

  Seen dimly on the verge of other skies;

  Pardon is thine for the eternal pain!

  Which of the gods will dare thy judge to be,

  And to condemn thy brow with labour pale,

  Not having balanced in his golden scale

  The flood of tears thy brooks pour’d in the sea?

  Which of the gods will dare thy judge to be?

  What boot the laws of just and of unjust?

  Great-hearted virgins, honour of the isles,

  Lo, your religion also is august,

  And love at hell and heaven together smiles!

  What boot the laws of just and of unjust?

  For Lesbos chose me out from all my peers,

  To sing the secret of her maids in flower,

  Opening the mystery dark from childhood’s hour

  Of frantic laughters, mix’d with sombre tears;

  For Lesbos chose me out from all my peers.

  And since I from Leucate’s top survey,

  Like a sentinel with piercing eye and true,

  Watching for brig and frigate night and day,