The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire

THE SKY

Where'er he be, on water or on land,Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold;One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band,Shadowy beggar or Crœsus rich with gold;Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'erHis little brain may be, alive or dead;Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere,And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead.The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall;The lighted ceiling of a music-hallWhere every actor treads a bloody soil —The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot;The sky: the black lid of the mighty potWhere the vast human generations boil!

SPLEEN

I'm like some king in whose corrupted veinsFlows aged blood; who rules a land of rains;Who, young in years, is old in all distress;Who flees good counsel to find wearinessAmong his dogs and playthings, who is stirredNeither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird;Whose weary face emotion moves no moreE'en when his people die before his door.His favourite Jester's most fantastic wileUpon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile;The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good,Can lighten this young skeleton's dull moodNo more with shameless toilets. In his gloomEven his lilied bed becomes a tomb.The sage who takes his gold essays in vainTo purge away the old corrupted strain,His baths of blood, that in the days of oldThe Romans used when their hot blood grew cold,Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains,For green Lethean water fills his veins.

THE OWLS

Under the overhanging yews,The dark owls sit in solemn state.Like stranger gods; by twos and twosTheir red eyes gleam. They meditate.Motionless thus they sit and dreamUntil that melancholy hourWhen, with the sun's last fading gleam,The nightly shades assume their power.From their still attitude the wiseWill learn with terror to despiseAll tumult, movement, and unrest;For he who follows every shade,Carries the memory in his breast,Of each unhappy journey made.

BIEN LOIN D'ICI

Here is the chamber consecrate,Wherein this maiden delicate,And enigmatically sedate,Fans herself while the moments creep,Upon her cushions half-asleep,And hears the fountains plash and weep.Dorothy's chamber undefiled.The winds and waters sing afarTheir song of sighing strange and wildTo lull to sleep the petted child.From head to foot with subtle care,Slaves have perfumed her delicate skinWith odorous oils and benzoin.And flowers faint in a corner there.

MUSIC

Music doth oft uplift me like a seaTowards my planet pale,Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinityI lift my wandering sail.With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee,And through the cordage wail,I mount the hurrying waves night hides from meBeneath her sombre veil.I feel the tremblings of all passions knownTo ships before the breeze;Cradled by gentle winds, or tempest-blownI pass the abysmal seasThat are, when calm, the mirror level and fairOf my despair!

CONTEMPLATION

Thou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still,The eve is thine which even now drops down,To carry peace or care to human will,And in a misty veil enfolds the town.While the vile mortals of the multitude,By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on,Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood —Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be goneFar from them. Lo, see how the vanished years,In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim;And from the water, smiling through her tears,Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim;And in the east, her long shroud trailing light,List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night.

TO A BROWN BEGGAR-MAID

White maiden with the russet hair,Whose garments, through their holes, declareThat poverty is part of you,And beauty too.To me, a sorry bard and mean,Your youthful beauty, frail and lean,With summer freckles here and there,Is sweet and fair.Your sabots tread the roads of chance,And not one queen of old romanceCarried her velvet shoes and laceWith half your grace.In place of tatters far too shortLet the proud garments worn at CourtFall down with rustling fold and pleatAbout your feet;In place of stockings, worn and old,Let a keen dagger all of goldGleam in your garter for the eyesOf roués wise;Let ribbons carelessly untiedReveal to us the radiant prideOf your white bosom purer farThan any star;Let your white arms uncovered shine.Polished and smooth and half divine;And let your elfish fingers chaseWith riotous graceThe purest pearls that softly glow.The sweetest sonnets of Belleau,Offered by gallants ere they fightFor your delight;And many fawning rhymers whoInscribe their first thin book to youWill contemplate upon the stairYour slipper fair;And many a page who plays at cards,And many lords and many bards,Will watch your going forth, and burnFor your return;And you will count before your glassMore kisses than the lily has;And more than one Valois will sighWhen you pass by.But meanwhile you are on the tramp,Begging your living in the damp,Wandering mean streets and alleys o'er,From door to door;And shilling bangles in a shopCause you with eager eyes to stop,And I, alas, have not a sonTo give to you.Then go, with no more ornament,Pearl, diamond, or subtle scent,Than your own fragile naked graceAnd lovely face.

THE SWAN

IAndromache, I think of you! The stream,The poor, sad mirror where in bygone daysShone all the majesty of your widowed grief,The lying Simoïs flooded by your tears,Made all my fertile memory blossom forthAs I passed by the new-built Carrousel.Old Paris is no more (a town, alas,Changes more quickly than man's heart may change);Yet in my mind I still can see the booths;The heaps of brick and rough-hewn capitals;The grass; the stones all over-green with moss;The débris, and the square-set heaps of tiles.There a menagerie was once outspread;And there I saw, one morning at the hourWhen toil awakes beneath the cold, clear sky,And the road roars upon the silent air,A swan who had escaped his cage, and walkedOn the dry pavement with his webby feet,And trailed his spotless plumage on the ground.And near a waterless stream the piteous swanOpened his beak, and bathing in the dustHis nervous wings, he cried (his heart the whileFilled with a vision of his own fair lake):"O water, when then wilt thou come in rain?Lightning, when wilt thou glitter?"Sometimes yetI see the hapless bird – strange, fatal myth —Like him that Ovid writes of, lifting upUnto the cruelly blue, ironic heavens,With stretched, convulsive neck a thirsty face,As though he sent reproaches up to God!IIParis may change; my melancholy is fixed.New palaces, and scaffoldings, and blocks,And suburbs old, are symbols all to meWhose memories are as heavy as a stone.And so, before the Louvre, to vex my soul,The image came of my majestic swanWith his mad gestures, foolish and sublime,As of an exile whom one great desireGnaws with no truce. And then I thought of you,Andromache! torn from your hero's arms;Beneath the hand of Pyrrhus in his pride;Bent o'er an empty tomb in ecstasy;Widow of Hector – wife of Helenus!And of the negress, wan and phthisical,Tramping the mud, and with her haggard eyesSeeking beyond the mighty walls of fogThe absent palm-trees of proud Africa;Of all who lose that which they never find;Of all who drink of tears; all whom grey griefGives suck to as the kindly wolf gave suck;Of meagre orphans who like blossoms fade.And one old Memory like a crying hornSounds through the forest where my soul is lost…I think of sailors on some isle forgotten;Of captives; vanquished … and of many more.

THE SEVEN OLD MEN

O swarming city, city full of dreams,Where in full day the spectre walks and speaks;Mighty colossus, in your narrow veinsMy story flows as flows the rising sap.One morn, disputing with my tired soul,And like a hero stiffening all my nerves,I trod a suburb shaken by the jarOf rolling wheels, where the fog magnifiedThe houses either side of that sad street,So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing floodLeaves desolate by the river-side. A mist,Unclean and yellow, inundated space —A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul.Then suddenly an aged man, whose ragsWere yellow as the rainy sky, whose looksShould have brought alms in floods upon his head,Without the misery gleaming in his eye,Appeared before me; and his pupils seemedTo have been washed with gall; the bitter frostSharpened his glance; and from his chin a beardSword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth.He was not bent but broken: his backboneMade a so true right angle with his legs,That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gaveThe finish to the picture, made him seemLike some infirm and stumbling quadrupedOr a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mudHe walked with troubled and uncertain gait,As though his sabots trod upon the dead,Indifferent and hostile to the world.His double followed him: tatters and stickAnd back and eye and beard, all were the same;Out of the same Hell, indistinguishable,These centenarian twins, these spectres odd,Trod the same pace toward some end unknown.To what fell complot was I then exposed!Humiliated by what evil chance?For as the minutes one by one went bySeven times I saw this sinister old manRepeat his image there before my eyes!Let him who smiles at my inquietude,Who never trembled at a fear like mine,Know that in their decrepitude's despiteThese seven old hideous monsters had the mienOf beings immortal.Then, I thought, must I,Undying, contemplate the awful eighth;Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double;Disgusting Phoenix, father of himselfAnd his own son! In terror then I turnedMy back upon the infernal band, and fledTo my own place, and closed my door; distraughtAnd like a drunkard who sees all things twice,With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick,Wounded by mystery and absurdity!In vain my reason tried to cross the bar,The whirling storm but drove her back again;And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck,Mastless, upon a monstrous, shoreless sea.

THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN

IDeep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns,Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns,I watch, obedient to my fatal mood,For the decrepit, strange and charming beings,The dislocated monsters that of oldWere lovely women – Laïs or Eponine!Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be,Let us still love them, for they still have souls.They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags,Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind,They tremble when an omnibus rolls by,And at their sides, a relic of the past,A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs.They trot about, most like to marionettes;They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast;Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bellWhere hangs and swings a demon without pity.Though they be broken they have piercing eyes,That shine like pools where water sleeps at night;The astonished and divine eyes of a childWho laughs at all that glitters in the world.Have you not seen that most old women's shroudsAre little like the shroud of a dead child?Wise Death, in token of his happy whim,Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet.And when I see a phantom, frail and wan,Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris,It ever seems as though the delicate thingTrod with soft steps towards a cradle new.And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form,How many times must workmen change the shapeOf boxes where at length such limbs are laid?These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears;Crucibles where the cooling metal pales —Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to himWhose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster.IIThe love-sick vestal of the old "Frasciti";Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose nameOnly the prompter knows and he is dead;Bygone celebrities that in bygone daysThe Tivoli o'ershadowed in their bloom;All charm me; yet among these beings frailThree, turning pain to honey-sweetness, saidTo the Devotion that had lent them wings:"Lift me, O powerful Hippogriffe, to the skies" —One by her country to despair was driven;One by her husband overwhelmed with grief;One wounded by her child, Madonna-like;Each could have made a river with her tears.IIIOft have I followed one of these old women,One among others, when the falling sunReddened the heavens with a crimson wound —Pensive, apart, she rested on a benchTo hear the brazen music of the band,Played by the soldiers in the public parkTo pour some courage into citizens' hearts,On golden eves when all the world revives.Proud and erect she drank the music in,The lively and the warlike call to arms;Her eyes blinked like an ancient eagle's eyes;Her forehead seemed to await the laurel crown!IVThus you do wander, uncomplaining Stoics,Through all the chaos of the living town:Mothers with bleeding hearts, saints, courtesans,Whose names of yore were on the lips of all;Who were all glory and all grace, and nowNone know you; and the brutish drunkard stops,Insulting you with his derisive love;And cowardly urchins call behind your back.Ashamed of living, withered shadows all,With fear-bowed backs you creep beside the walls,And none salute you, destined to loneliness!Refuse of Time ripe for Eternity!But I, who watch you tenderly afar,With unquiet eyes on your uncertain steps,As though I were your father, I – O wonder! —Unknown to you taste secret, hidden joy.I see your maiden passions bud and bloom,Sombre or luminous, and your lost daysUnroll before me while my heart enjoysAll your old vices, and my soul expandsTo all the virtues that have once been yours.Ruined! and my sisters! O congenerate hearts,Octogenarian Eves o'er whom is stretchedGod's awful claw, where will you be to-morrow?

A MADRIGAL OF SORROW

What do I care though you be wise?Be sad, be beautiful; your tearsBut add one more charm to your eyes,As streams to valleys where they rise;And fairer every flower appearsAfter the storm. I love you mostWhen joy has fled your brow downcast;When your heart is in horror lost,And o'er your present like a ghostFloats the dark shadow of the past.I love you when the teardrop flows,Hotter than blood, from your large eye;When I would hush you to reposeYour heavy pain breaks forth and growsInto a loud and tortured cry.And then, voluptuousness divine!Delicious ritual and profound!I drink in every sob like wine,And dream that in your deep heart shineThe pearls wherein your eyes were drowned.I know your heart, which overflowsWith outworn loves long cast aside,Still like a furnace flames and glows,And you within your breast encloseA damnèd soul's unbending pride;But till your dreams without releaseReflect the leaping flames of hell;Till in a nightmare without ceaseYou dream of poison to bring peace,And love cold steel and powder well;And tremble at each opened door,And feel for every man distrust,And shudder at the striking hour —Till then you have not felt the powerOf Irresistible Disgust.My queen, my slave, whose love is fear,When you awaken shuddering,Until that awful hour be here,You cannot say at midnight drear:"I am your equal, O my King!"

THE IDEAL

Not all the beauties in old prints vignetted,The worthless products of an outworn age,With slippered feet and fingers castanetted,The thirst of hearts like this heart can assuage.To Gavarni, the poet of chloroses,I leave his troupes of beauties sick and wan;I cannot find among these pale, pale roses,The red ideal mine eyes would gaze upon.Lady Macbeth, the lovely star of crime,The Greek poet's dream born in a northern clime —Ah, she could quench my dark heart's deep desiring;Or Michelangelo's dark daughter Night,In a strange posture dreamily admiringHer beauty fashioned for a giant's delight!

MIST AND RAIN

Autumns and winters, springs of mire and rain,Seasons of sleep, I sing your praises loud,For thus I love to wrap my heart and brainIn some dim tomb beneath a vapoury shroudIn the wide plain where revels the cold wind,Through long nights when the weathercock whirls round,More free than in warm summer day my mindLifts wide her raven pinions from the ground.Unto a heart filled with funereal thingsThat since old days hoar frosts have gathered on,Naught is more sweet, O pallid, queenly springs,Than the long pageant of your shadows wan,Unless it be on moonless eves to weepOn some chance bed and rock our griefs to sleep.

SUNSET

Fair is the sun when first he flames above,Flinging his joy down in a happy beam;And happy he who can salute with loveThe sunset far more glorious than a dream.Flower, stream, and furrow! – I have seen them allIn the sun's eye swoon like one trembling heart —Though it be late let us with speed departTo catch at least one last ray ere it fall!But I pursue the fading god in vain,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 metBy 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 bareThe swollen side and flank.On this decay the sun shone hot from heavenAs though with chemic heat to broil and burn,And unto Nature all that she had givenA hundredfold return.The sky smiled down upon the horror thereAs 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 prideWith 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 swellAnd multiply with lifeThe hideous corpse. From all this living worldA music as of wind and water ran,Or as of grain in rhythmic motion swirledBy the swift winnower's fan.And then the vague forms like a dream died out,Or like some distant scene that slowly fallsUpon the artist's canvas, that with doubtHe only half recalls.A homeless dog behind the boulders layAnd watched us both with angry eyes forlorn,Waiting a chance to come and take awayThe 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 faceMoulders among the dead.Then, O Beloved, whisper to the wormThat crawls up to devour you with a kiss,That I still guard in memory the dear formOf 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 onePass 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 alarmsUpon 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 giftWhich 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 handsBitter 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 flowThe veined bare breasts that tempted him to sin.Some, when the resinous torch of burning woodFlares 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! yeWho 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 cloudDescended tempest-swollen, and a crowdOf 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 rôleShould 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 awayHad I not seen – O sight to dim the day! —There in the middle of the troupe obsceneThe 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 laveThe throat of man by travail long outworn,And his hot bosom is a sweeter graveOf 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 seemRare 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 wineFor skies fantastic and divine!Let us, like angels tortured bySome wild delirious phantasy,Follow the far-off mirage bornIn the blue crystal of the morn.And gently balanced on the wingOf the wild whirlwind we will ride,Rejoicing with the joyous thing.My sister, floating side by side,Fly we unceasing whither gleamsThe 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 skiesThe 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 blendIn the twin mirrors of your soul and mine.And through the eve of rose and mystic blueA beam of love shall pass from me to you,Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell;And later still an angel, flinging wideThe gates, shall bring to life with joyful spellThe 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 palmsBring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calmsTo 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!