The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire

The end was at hand. Baudelaire had been steadily, rather, unsteadily, going downhill; a desperate figure, a dandy in shabby attire. He went out only after dark, he haunted the exterior boulevards, associated with birds of nocturnal plumage. He drank without thirst, ate without hunger, as he has said. A woeful decadence for this aristocrat of life and letters. Most sorrowful of sinners, a morose delectation scourged his nerves and extorted the darkest music from his lyre. He fled to Brussels, there to rehabilitate his dwindling fortunes. He gave a few lectures, and met Rops, Lemonnier, drank to forget, and forgot to work. He abused Brussels, Belgium, its people. A country, he cried, where the trees are black, the flowers without odour, and where there is no conversation! He, the brilliant causeur, the chief blaguer of a circle in which young James McNeill Whistler was reduced to the rôle of a listener – this most spiritual among artists, found himself a failure in the Belgian capital. It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that Baudelaire was the creator of many of the paradoxes attributed, not only to Whistler, but to an entire school – if one may employ such a phrase. The frozen imperturbability of the poet, his cutting enunciation, his power of blasphemy, his hatred of Nature, his love of the artificial, have been copied by the æsthetic blades of our day. He it was who first taunted Nature with being an imitator of art, with always being the same. Oh, the imitative sunsets! Oh, the quotidian eating and drinking! And as pessimist, too, he led the mode. Baudelaire, like Flaubert, grasped the murky torch of pessimism once held by Chateaubriand, Benjamin Constant, and Senancour. Doubtless, all this stemmed from Byronism. And now it is as stale as Byronism.

His health failed, and he lacked money enough to pay for doctor's prescriptions; he even owed for the room in his hotel. At Namur, where he was visiting the father-in-law of Felician Rops (March, 1866), he suffered from an attack of paralysis. He was removed to Brussels. His mother, who lived at Honneur, in mourning for her husband, came to his aid. Taken to France, he was placed in a sanatorium. Aphasia set in. He could only ejaculate a mild oath, and when he caught sight of himself in the mirror he would bow pleasantly as if to a stranger. His friends rallied, and they were among the most distinguished people in Paris, the élite of souls. Ladies visited him, one or two playing Wagner on the piano – which must have added a fresh nuance to death – and they brought him flowers. He expressed his love for flowers and music to the last. He could not bear the sight of his mother; she revived in him some painful memories, but that passed, and he clamoured for her when she was absent. If anyone mentioned the names of Wagner or Manet, he smiled. And with a fixed stare, as if peering through some invisible window opening upon eternity, he died, August 31, 1867, aged forty-six.

Barbey d'Aurevilly himself a Satanist and dandy (oh, those comical old attitudes of literature), had prophesied that the author of Fleurs du Mal would either blow out his brains or prostrate himself at the foot of the cross. (Later he said the same of Huysmans.) Baudelaire had the alternative course forced upon him by fate after he had attempted spiritual suicide for how many years? (He once tried actual suicide, but the slight cut in his throat looked so ugly to him that he went no farther.) His soul had been a battle-field for the powers of good and evil. That at the end he brought the wreck of both soul and body to his God should not be a subject for comment. He was an extraordinary poet with a bad conscience, who lived miserably and was buried with honours. Then it was that his worth was discovered (funeral orations over a genius are a species of public staircase-wit). His reputation waxes with the years. He is an exotic gem in the crown of French poetry. Of him Swinburne has chanted Ave Atque Vale:

Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?

THE FLOWERS OF EVIL

THE DANCE OF DEATH

Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves,Proud of her height as when she lived, she movesWith all the careless and high-stepping grace,And the extravagant courtesan's thin face.Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed?Her floating robe, in royal amplitude,Palls in deep folds around a dry foot, shodWith a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod.The swarms that hum about her collar-bonesAs the lascivious streams caress the stones,Conceal from every scornful jest that flies,Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyesAre made of shade and void; with flowery spraysHer skull is wreathed artistically, and sways,Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebræ.O charm of nothing decked in folly! theyWho laugh and name you a Caricature,They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure,The nameless grace of every bleached, bare boneThat is most dear to me, tall skeleton!Come you to trouble with your potent sneerThe feast of Life! or are you driven here,To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stirAnd goad your moving corpse on with a spur?Or do you hope, when sing the violins,And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins,To drive some mocking nightmare far apart,And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart?Fathomless well of fault and foolishness!Eternal alembic of antique distress!Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sidesThe sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides.And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find,Among us here, no lover to your mind;Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave?The charms of horror please none but the brave.Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir,Brings giddiness; the prudent revellerSees, while a horror grips him from beneath,The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth.For he who has not folded in his armsA skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms,Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent,When Horror comes the way that Beauty went.O irresistible, with fleshless face,Say to these dancers in their dazzled race:"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones,Ye shall taste death, musk-scented skeletons!Withered Antinous, dandies with plump faces,Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces,Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath,Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death.From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream,The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream;They do not see, within the opened sky,The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high.In every clime and under every sun,Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run;And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like yeAnd mingles with your madness, irony!"

THE BEACONS

RUBENS, oblivious garden of indolence,Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love,Where life flows forth in troubled opulence,As airs in heaven and seas in ocean move,LEONARD DA VINCI, sombre and fathomless glass,Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile,Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass,Among the ice and pines that guard some isle.REMBRANDT, sad hospital that a murmuring fills,Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls,Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils,And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls.Strong MICHELANGELO, a vague far placeWhere mingle Christs with pagan Hercules;Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace,And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease.The fighter's anger, the faun's impudence,Thou makest of all these a lovely thing;Proud heart, sick body, mind's magnificence:PUGET, the convict's melancholy king.WATTEAU, the carnival of illustrious hearts,Fluttering like moths upon the wings of chance;Bright lustres light the silk that flames and darts,And pour down folly on the whirling dance.GOYA, a nightmare full of things unknown;The fœtus witches broil on Sabbath night;Old women at the mirror; children loneWho tempt old demons with their limbs delight.DELACROIX, lake of blood ill angels haunt,Where ever-green, o'ershadowing woods arise;Under the surly heaven strange fanfares chauntAnd pass, like one of Weber's strangled sighs.And malediction, blasphemy and groan,Ecstasies, cries, Te Deums, and tears of brine,Are echoes through a thousand labyrinths flown;For mortal hearts an opiate divine;A shout cried by a thousand sentinels,An order from a thousand bugles tossed,A beacon o'er a thousand citadels,A call to huntsmen in deep woodlands lost.It is the mightiest witness that could riseTo prove our dignity, O Lord, to Thee;This sob that rolls from age to age, and diesUpon the verge of Thy Eternity!

THE SADNESS OF THE MOON

The Moon more indolently dreams to-nightThan a fair woman on her couch at rest.Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.Upon her silken avalanche of down,Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh;And watches the white visions past her flown,Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep,Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow,Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snowWhence gleams of iris and of opal start,And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart.

EXOTIC PERFUME

When with closed eyes in autumn's eves of goldI breathe the burning odours of your breast,Before my eyes the hills of happy restBathed in the sun's monotonous fires, unfold.Islands of Lethe where exotic boughsBend with their burden of strange fruit bowed down.Where men are upright, maids have never grownUnkind, but bear a light upon their brows.Led by that perfume to these lands of ease,I see a port where many ships have flownWith sails outwearied of the wandering seas;While the faint odours from green tamarisks blown,Float to my soul and in my senses throng,And mingle vaguely with the sailor's song.

BEAUTY

I am as lovely as a dream in stone,And this my heart where each finds death in turn,Inspires the poet with a love as loneAs clay eternal and as taciturn.Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;I hate all movements that disturb my pose,I smile not ever, neither do I weep.Before my monumental attitudes,That breathe a soul into the plastic arts,My poets pray in austere studious moods,For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.

THE BALCONY

Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses,O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire,Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses,The charm of evenings by the gentle fire,Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses!The eves illumined by the burning coal,The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings —How soft your breast was then, how sweet your soul!Ah, and we said imperishable things,Those eves illumined by the burning coal.Lovely the suns were in those twilights warm,And space profound, and strong life's pulsing flood,In bending o'er you, queen of every charm,I thought I breathed the perfume in your blood.The suns were beauteous in those twilights warm.The film of night flowed round and over us,And my eyes in the dark did your eyes meet;I drank your breath, ah! sweet and poisonous,And in my hands fraternal slept your feet —Night, like a film, flowed round and over us.I can recall those happy days forgot,And see, with head bowed on your knees, my past.Your languid beauties now would move me notDid not your gentle heart and body castThe old spell of those happy days forgot.Can vows and perfumes, kisses infinite,Be reborn from the gulf we cannot sound;As rise to heaven suns once again made brightAfter being plunged in deep seas and profound?Ah, vows and perfumes, kisses infinite!

THE SICK MUSE

Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day?Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn,Upon thy brow in alternation play,Folly and Horror, cold and taciturn.Have the green lemure and the goblin red,Poured on thee love and terror from their urn?Or with despotic hand the nightmare dreadDeep plunged thee in some fabulous Minturne?Would that thy breast where so deep thoughts arise,Breathed forth a healthful perfume with thy sighs;Would that thy Christian blood ran wave by waveIn rhythmic sounds the antique numbers gave,When Phœbus shared his alternating reignWith mighty Pan, lord of the ripening grain.

THE VENAL MUSE

Muse of my heart, lover of palaces,When January comes with wind and sleet,During the snowy eve's long wearinesses,Will there be fire to warm thy violet feet?Wilt thou reanimate thy marble shouldersIn the moon-beams that through the window fly?Or when thy purse dries up, thy palace moulders,Reap the far star-gold of the vaulted sky?For thou, to keep thy body to thy soul,Must swing a censer, wear a holy stole,And chaunt Te Deums with unbelief between.Or, like a starving mountebank, exposeThy beauty and thy tear-drowned smile to thoseWho wait thy jeste to drive away thy spleen.

THE EVIL MONK

The ancient cloisters on their lofty wallsHad holy Truth in painted frescoes shown,And, seeing these, the pious in those hallsFelt their cold, lone austereness less alone.At that time when Christ's seed flowered all around,More than one monk, forgotten in his hour,Taking for studio the burial-ground,Glorified Death with simple faith and power.And my soul is a sepulchre where I,Ill cenobite, have spent eternity:On the vile cloister walls no pictures rise.O when may I cast off this weariness,And make the pageant of my old distressFor these hands labour, pleasure for these eyes?

THE TEMPTATION

The Demon, in my chamber high.This morning came to visit me,And, thinking he would find some fault,He whispered: "I would know of theeAmong the many lovely thingsThat make the magic of her face,Among the beauties, black and rose,That make her body's charm and grace,Which is most fair?" Thou didst replyTo the Abhorred, O soul of mine:"No single beauty is the bestWhen she is all one flower divine.When all things charm me I ignoreWhich one alone brings most delight;She shines before me like the dawn,And she consoles me like the night.The harmony is far too great,That governs all her body fair,For impotence to analyseAnd say which note is sweetest there.O mystic metamorphosis!My senses into one sense flow —Her voice makes perfume when she speaks,Her breath is music faint and low!"

THE IRREPARABLE

ICan we suppress the old RemorseWho bends our heart beneath his stroke,Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse,Or as the acorn on the oak?Can we suppress the old Remorse!Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell,May we drown this our ancient foe,Destructive glutton, gorging well,Patient as the ants, and slow?What wine, what philtre, or what spell?Tell it, enchantress, if you can,Tell me, with anguish overcast,Wounded, as a dying man,Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past.Tell it, enchantress, if you can,To him the wolf already tearsWho sees the carrion pinions wave,This broken warrior who despairsTo have a cross above his grave —This wretch the wolf already tears.Can one illume a leaden sky,Or tear apart the shadowy veilThicker than pitch, no star on high,Not one funereal glimmer paleCan one illume a leaden sky?Hope lit the windows of the Inn,But now that shining flame is dead;And how shall martyred pilgrims winAlong the moonless road they tread?Satan has darkened all the Inn!Witch, do you love accursèd hearts?Say, do you know the reprobate?Know you Remorse, whose venomed dartsMake souls the targets for their hate?Witch, do you know accursèd hearts?The Might-have-been with tooth accursedGnaws at the piteous souls of men,The deep foundations suffer first,And all the structure crumbles thenBeneath the bitter tooth accursed.IIOften, when seated at the play,And sonorous music lights the stage,I see the frail hand of a FayWith magic dawn illume the rageOf the dark sky. Oft at the playA being made of gauze and fireCasts to the earth a Demon great.And my heart, whence all hopes expire,Is like a stage where I await,In vain, the Fay with wings of fire!

A FORMER LIFE

Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes,By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired,Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows,Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired.The rolling surge that mirrored all the skiesMingled its music, turbulent and rich,Solemn and mystic, with the colours whichThe setting sun reflected in my eyes.And there I lived amid voluptuous calms,In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave,Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave,Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms.They were my slaves – the only care they hadTo know what secret grief had made me sad.

DON JUAN IN HADES

When Juan sought the subterranean flood.And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore.Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stoodWith one strong, vengeful hand on either oar.With open robes and bodies agonised,Lost women writhed beneath that darkling sky;There were sounds as of victims sacrificed:Behind him all the dark was one long cry.And Sganarelle, with laughter, claimed his pledge;Don Luis, with trembling finger in the air,Showed to the souls who wandered in the sedgeThe evil son who scorned his hoary hair.Shivering with woe, chaste Elvira the while,Near him untrue to all but her till now,Seemed to beseech him for one farewell smileLit with the sweetness of the first soft vow.And clad in armour, a tall man of stoneHeld firm the helm, and clove the gloomy flood;But, staring at the vessel's track alone,Bent on his sword the unmoved hero stood.

THE LIVING FLAME

They pass before me, these Eyes full of light,Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise;The holy brothers pass before my sight,And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes.They keep me from all sin and error grave,They set me in the path whence Beauty came;They are my servants, and I am their slave,And all my soul obeys the living flame.Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic lightAs candles lighted at full noon; the sunDims not your flame phantastical and bright.You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done;Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn,Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim!

CORRESPONDENCES

In Nature's temple living pillars rise,And words are murmured none have understood.And man must wander through a tangled woodOf symbols watching him with friendly eyes.As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dimMingle to one deep sound and fade away;Vast as the night and brilliant as the day,Colour and sound and perfume speak to him.Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child,Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green;Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild,Have all the expansion of things infinite:As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin,Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight.

THE FLASK

There are some powerful odours that can passOut of the stoppered flagon; even glassTo them is porous. Oft when some old boxBrought from the East is opened and the locksAnd hinges creak and cry; or in a pressIn some deserted house, where the sharp stressOf odours old and dusty fills the brain;An ancient flask is brought to light again,And forth the ghosts of long-dead odours creep.There, softly trembling in the shadows, sleepA thousand thoughts, funereal chrysalides,Phantoms of old the folding darkness hides,Who make faint flutterings as their wings unfold,Rose-washed and azure-tinted, shot with gold.A memory that brings languor flutters here:The fainting eyelids droop, and giddy FearThrusts with both hands the soul towards the pitWhere, like a Lazarus from his winding-sheet,Arises from the gulf of sleep a ghostOf an old passion, long since loved and lost.So I, when vanished from man's memoryDeep in some dark and sombre chest I lie.An empty flagon they have cast aside,Broken and soiled, the dust upon my pride,Will be your shroud, beloved pestilence!The witness of your might and virulence,Sweet poison mixed by angels; bitter cupOf life and death my heart has drunken up!

REVERSIBILITY

Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief?Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite,And the vague terrors of the fearful nightThat crush the heart up like a crumpled leaf?Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief?Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate?With hands clenched in the shade and tears of gall,When Vengeance beats her hellish battle-call,And makes herself the captain of our fate,Angel of kindness, have you tasted hate?Angel of health, did ever you know pain,Which like an exile trails his tired footfallsThe cold length of the white infirmary walls,With lips compressed, seeking the sun in vain?Angel of health, did ever you know pain?Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know?Know you the fear of age, the torment vileOf reading secret horror in the smileOf eyes your eyes have loved since long ago?Angel of beauty, do you wrinkles know?Angel of happiness, and joy, and light,Old David would have asked for youth afreshFrom the pure touch of your enchanted flesh;I but implore your prayers to aid my plight,Angel of happiness, and joy, and light.

THE EYES OF BEAUTY

You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose;But all the sea of sadness in my bloodSurges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose,Salt with the memory of the bitter flood.In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er,That which you seek, beloved, is desecrateBy woman's tooth and talon; ah, no moreSeek in me for a heart which those dogs ate.It is a ruin where the jackals rest,And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay —A perfume swims about your naked breast!Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way!With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flaredBurn up these tatters that the beasts have spared!

SONNET OF AUTUMN

They say to me, thy clear and crystal eyes:"Why dost thou love me so, strange lover mine?"Be sweet, be still! My heart and soul despiseAll save that antique brute-like faith of thine;And will not bare the secret of their shameTo thee whose hand soothes me to slumbers long,Nor their black legend write for thee in flame!Passion I hate, a spirit does me wrong.Let us love gently. Love, from his retreat,Ambushed and shadowy, bends his fatal bow,And I too well his ancient arrows know:Crime, horror, folly. O pale marguerite,Thou art as I, a bright sun fallen low,O my so white, my so cold Marguerite.

THE REMORSE OF THE DEAD

O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleepIn the deep heart of a black marble tomb;When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keepOnly one rainy cave of hollow gloom;And when the stone upon thy trembling breast,And on thy straight sweet body's supple grace,Crushes thy will and keeps thy heart at rest,And holds those feet from their adventurous race;Then the deep grave, who shares my reverie,(For the deep grave is aye the poet's friend)During long nights when sleep is far from thee,Shall whisper: "Ah, thou didst not comprehendThe dead wept thus, thou woman frail and weak" —And like remorse the worm shall gnaw thy cheek.

THE GHOST

Softly as brown-eyed Angels roveI will return to thy alcove.And glide upon the night to thee,Treading the shadows silently.And I will give to thee, my own,Kisses as icy as the moon,And the caresses of a snakeCold gliding in the thorny brake.And when returns the livid mornThou shalt find all my place forlornAnd chilly, till the falling night.Others would rule by tendernessOver thy life and youthfulness,But I would conquer thee by fright!

TO A MADONNA

(An Ex-Voto in the Spanish taste.)Madonna, mistress. I would build for theeAn altar deep in the sad soul of me;And in the darkest corner of my heart,From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart,Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrineFor thee to stand erect in, Image divine!And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crownedWrought of the gold of my smooth Verse, set roundWith starry crystal rhymes; and I will make,O mortal maid, a Mantle for thy sake,And weave it of my jealousy, a gownHeavy, barbaric, stiff, and weighted downWith my distrust, and broider round the hemNot pearls, but all my tears in place of them.And then thy wavering, trembling robe shall beAll the desires that rise and fall in meFrom mountain-peaks to valleys of repose,Kissing thy lovely body's white and rose.For thy humiliated feet divine,Of my Respect I'll make thee Slippers fineWhich, prisoning them within a gentle fold,Shall keep their imprint like a faithful mould.And if my art, unwearying and discreet,Can make no Moon of Silver for thy feetTo have for Footstool, then thy heel shall restUpon the snake that gnaws within my breast,Victorious Queen of whom our hope is born!And thou shalt trample down and make a scornOf the vile reptile swollen up with hate.And thou shalt see my thoughts, all consecrate,Like candles set before thy flower-strewn shrine,O Queen of Virgins, and the taper-shineShall glimmer star-like in the vault of blue,With eyes of flame for ever watching you.While all the love and worship in my senseWill be sweet smoke of myrrh and frankincense.Ceaselessly up to thee, white peak of snow,My stormy spirit will in vapours go!And last, to make thy drama all complete,That love and cruelty may mix and meet,I, thy remorseful torturer, will takeAll the Seven Deadly Sins, and from them makeIn darkest joy, Seven Knives, cruel-edged and keen,And like a juggler choosing, O my Queen,That spot profound whence love and mercy start,I'll plunge them all within thy panting heart!