The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire

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 knotOf unclean vipers, than my breast should nurseThis vile derision, of my joy begotTo be my expiation and my curse!"Since of all women thou hast made of meUnto 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 hateOn this the accursed weapon of thy spite;This stunted tree I will so desecrateThat 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 flameTo crimes maternal consecrate in hell.Meanwhile beneath an Angel's care unseenThe 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 behindTo 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 eatThey 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 handWhen I am weary of the impious play;For well these harpy talons understandTo 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 stainOf 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 feastThat Thrones and Virtues and Dominions share."I know the one thing noble is a griefWithstanding 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 goldOf 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 fireWent forth last night; their little ones at restEach on his mother's back, with his desireSet on the ready treasure of her breast.Laden with shining arms the men-folk treadBy the long wagons where their goods lie hidden;They watch the heaven with eyes grown weariedOf 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 throngOf ever-wandering ones whose calm eyes seeFamiliar realms of darkness yet to be.

FRANCISCÆ MEÆ LAUDES

Novis te cantabo chordis,O novelletum quod ludiaIn solitudine cordis.Esto sertis implicata,O fœmina delicataPer quam solvuntur peccataSicut beneficum Lethe,Hauriam oscula de te,Quæ imbuta es magnete.Quum vitiorum tempestasTurbabat omnes semitas,Apparuisti, Deitas,Velut stella salutarisIn 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 makesDance 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 whereAn angel mingles with the sphinx of old,Where all is gold and steel and light and air,For ever, like a vain star, unafraidShines 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 mindHear 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 birthOf 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-paneAnd 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 stillOf summoning the spring-time with my will,Drawing the sun out of my heart, and thereWith burning thoughts making a summer air.

THE VOYAGE

IThe world is equal to the child's desireWho plays with pictures by his nursery fire —How vast the world by lamplight seems! How smallWhen 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 flightFor the embrasured heavens, and space, and light,Till one by one the stains her kisses madeIn biting cold and burning sunlight fade.But the true voyagers are they who partFrom all they love because a wandering heartDrives 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.IIWe 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 anywhereWhere a man runs, hope waking in his breast,For ever like a madman, seeking rest.Our souls are wandering ships outwearied;And one upon the bridge asks: "What's ahead?"The topman's voice with an exultant soundCries: "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 seaThis drunken sailor whose ecstatic moodMakes 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 sleepWhere'er the light shines on a rubbish heap.IIIStrange voyagers, what tales of noble deedsDeep 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 fledPass 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 flyDeep in the glimmering distance of the sky;"The loveliest countries that rich cities bless,Never contained the strange wild lovelinessBy 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 fairThan 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 blownIn palaces whose faery pomp and gleamTo 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 – "VAnd 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!"VIIO 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 froLike 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 CathayWith 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 voiceThat sings: O come all ye whose wandering joysAre set upon the scented Lotus flower,For here we sell the fruit's miraculous boon;Come ye and drink the sweet and sleepy powerOf the enchanted, endless afternoon.VIIIO 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 upThat we would wander Hell and Heaven through,Deep in the Unknown seeking something new!

LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE

THE STRANGER

Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love best? Your father, your mother, your sister, or your brother?

"I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother."

Your friends, then?

"You use a word that until now has had no meaning for me."

Your country?

"I am ignorant of the latitude in which it is situated."

Then Beauty?

"Her I would love willingly, goddess and immortal."

Gold?

"I hate it as you hate your God."

What, then, extraordinary stranger, do you love?

"I love the clouds – the clouds that pass – yonder – the marvellous clouds."

EVERY MAN HIS CHIMÆRA

Beneath a broad grey sky, upon a vast and dusty plain devoid of grass, and where not even a nettle or a thistle was to be seen, I met several men who walked bowed down to the ground.

Each one carried upon his back an enormous Chimæra as heavy as a sack of flour or coal, or as the equipment of a Roman foot-soldier.

But the monstrous beast was not a dead weight, rather she enveloped and oppressed the men with her powerful and elastic muscles, and clawed with her two vast talons at the breast of her mount. Her fabulous head reposed upon the brow of the man like one of those horrible casques by which ancient warriors hoped to add to the terrors of the enemy.

I questioned one of the men, asking him why they went so. He replied that he knew nothing, neither he nor the others, but that evidently they went somewhere, since they were urged on by an unconquerable desire to walk.

Very curiously, none of the wayfarers seemed to be irritated by the ferocious beast hanging at his neck and cleaving to his back: one had said that he considered it as a part of himself. These grave and weary faces bore witness to no despair. Beneath the splenetic cupola of the heavens, their feet trudging through the dust of an earth as desolate as the sky, they journeyed onwards with the resigned faces of men condemned to hope for ever. So the train passed me and faded into the atmosphere of the horizon at the place where the planet unveils herself to the curiosity of the human eye.

During several moments I obstinately endeavoured to comprehend this mystery; but irresistible Indifference soon threw herself upon me, nor was I more heavily dejected thereby than they by their crushing Chimæras.

VENUS AND THE FOOL

How admirable the day! The vast park swoons beneath the burning eye of the sun, as youth beneath the lordship of love.

There is no rumour of the universal ecstasy of all things. The waters themselves are as though drifting into sleep. Very different from the festivals of humanity, here is a silent revel.

It seems as though an ever-waning light makes all objects glimmer more and more, as though the excited flowers burn with a desire to rival the blue of the sky by the vividness of their colours; as though the heat, making perfumes visible, drives them in vapour towards their star.

Yet, in the midst of this universal joy, I have perceived one afflicted thing.

At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those motley fools, those willing clowns whose business it is to bring laughter upon kings when weariness or remorse possesses them, lies wrapped in his gaudy and ridiculous garments, coined with his cap and bells, huddled against the pedestal, and raises towards the goddess his eyes filled with tears.

And his eyes say: "I am the last and most alone of all mortals, inferior to the meanest of animals in that I am denied either love or friendship. Yet I am made, even I, for the understanding and enjoyment of immortal Beauty. O Goddess, have pity upon my sadness and my frenzy."

The implacable Venus gazed into I know not what distances with her marble eyes.

INTOXICATION

One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and timepiece will answer you: "It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will."

THE GIFTS OF THE MOON

The Moon, who is caprice itself, looked in at the window as you slept in your cradle, and said to herself: "I am well pleased with this child."

And she softly descended her stairway of clouds and passed through the window-pane without noise. She bent over you with the supple tenderness of a mother and laid her colours upon your face. Therefrom your eyes have remained green and your cheeks extraordinarily pale. From contemplation of your visitor your eyes are so strangely wide; and she so tenderly wounded you upon the breast that you have ever kept a certain readiness to tears.

In the amplitude of her joy, the Moon filled all your chamber as with a phosphorescent air, a luminous poison; and all this living radiance thought and said: "You shall be for ever under the influence of my kiss. You shall love all that loves me and that I love: clouds, and silence, and night; the vast green sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where you are not; the lover you will never know; monstrous flowers, and perfumes that bring madness; cats that stretch themselves swooning upon the piano and lament with the sweet, hoarse voices of women.

"And you shall be loved of my lovers, courted of my courtesans. You shall be the Queen of men with green eyes, whose breasts also I have wounded in my nocturnal caress: men that love the sea, the immense green ungovernable sea; the unformed and multitudinous waters; the place where they are not; the woman they will never know; sinister flowers that seem to bear the incense of some unknown religion; perfumes that trouble the will; and all savage and voluptuous animals, images of their own folly."

And that is why I am couched at your feet, O spoiled child, beloved and accursed, seeking in all your being the reflection of that august divinity, that prophetic godmother, that poisonous nurse of all lunatics.

THE INVITATION TO THE VOYAGE

It is a superb land, a country of Cockaigne, as they say, that I dream of visiting with an old friend. A strange land, drowned in our northern fogs, that one might call the East of the West, the China of Europe; a land patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy.

A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all things, my beloved, are like you.

Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguish of curiosity? It is a land which resembles you, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil and honest, where phantasy has built and decorated an occidental China, where life is sweet to breathe, and happiness married to silence. It is there that one would live; there that one would die.

Yes, it is there that one must go to breathe, to dream, and to lengthen one's hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written the "Invitation to the Waltz"; where is he who will write the "Invitation to the Voyage," that one may offer it to his beloved, to the sister of his election?

Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live, – yonder, where slower hours contain more thoughts, where the clocks strike the hours of happiness with a more profound and significant solemnity.

Upon the shining panels, or upon skins gilded with a sombre opulence, beatified paintings have a discreet life, as calm and profound as the souls of the artists who created them.

The setting suns that colour the rooms and salons with so rich a light, shine through veils of rich tapestry, or through high leaden-worked windows of many compartments. The furniture is massive, curious, and bizarre, armed with locks and secrets, like profound and refined souls. The mirrors, the metals, the ail ver work and the china, play a mute and mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from the corners, from the chinks in the drawers, from the folds of drapery, a singular perfume escapes, a Sumatran revenez-y, which is like the soul of the apartment.

A true country of Cockaigne, I have said; where all is rich, correct and shining, like a beautiful conscience, or a splendid set of silver, or a medley of jewels. The treasures of the world flow there, as in the house of a laborious man who has well merited the entire world. A singular land, as superior to others as Art is superior to Nature; where Nature is made over again by dream; where she is corrected, embellished, refashioned.

Let them seek and seek again, let them extend the limits of their happiness for ever, these alchemists who work with flowers! Let them offer a prize of sixty or a hundred thousand florins to whosoever can solve their ambitious problems! As for me, I have found my black tulip and my blue dahlia!

Incomparable flower, tulip found at last, symboli-cal dahlia, it is there, is it not, in this so calm and dreamy land that you live and blossom? Will you not there be framed in your proper analogy, and will you not be mirrored, to speak like the mystics, in your own correspondence?

Dreams! – always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul, the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that resembles you?

These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity, reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your lovely soul; – and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from Infinity.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence ailed the air with the ideal and whose eyes spread abroad the desire of grandeur, of beauty, of glory, and of all that makes man believe in immortality.

But this miraculous maiden was too beautiful for long life, so she died soon after I knew her first, and it was I myself who entombed her, upon a day when spring swung her censer even in the burial-ground. It was I myself who entombed her, fast closed in a coffin of perfumed wood, as uncorruptible as the coffers of India.

And, as my eyes rested upon the spot where my treasure lay hidden, I became suddenly aware of a little being who singularly resembled the dead; and who, stamping the newly-turned earth with a curious and hysterical violence, burst into laughter, and said: "It is I, the true Benedicta! It is I, the notorious drab! As the punishment of your folly and blindness you shall love me as I truly am."