Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry

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 crinkles 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!

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 agèd 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.

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 souTo 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 Phœnix, 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 – Lais 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!"

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