THE FLOWERS OF EVIL. Charles Baudelaire
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the lightenings from his lucid spirit veil
The sight of the infuriated mob that swarms.
“Oh blest be thou, Almighty who bestowest pain,
Like some divine redress for our infirmities,
And like the most refreshing and the purest rain,
To sanctify the strong, for saintly ecstasies.”
“I know that for the poet thou wilt grant a chair,
Among the Sainted Legion and the Blissful ones,
That of the endless feast thou wilt accord his share
To him, of Virtues, Dominations and of Thrones.”
“I know, that Sorrow is that nobleness alone,
Which never may corrupted be by hell nor curse,
I know, in order to enwreathe my mystic crown
I must inspire the ages and the universe.”
“And yet the buried jewels of Palmyra old,
The undiscovered metals and the pearly sea
Of gems, that unto me you show could never hold
Beside this diadem of blinding brilliancy.”
“For it shall be engendered from the purest fire
Of rays primeval, from the holy hearth amassed,
Of which the eyes of Mortals, in their sheen entire,
Are but the tarnished mirrors, sad and overcast!”
Echoes
In Nature’s temple, living columns rise,
Which oftentimes give tongue to words subdued,
And Man traverses this symbolic wood,
Which looks at him with half familiar eyes,
Like lingering echoes, which afar confound
Themselves in deep and sombre unity,
As vast as Night, and like transplendency,
The scents and colours to each other respond.
And scents there are, like infant’s flesh as chaste,
As sweet as oboes, and as meadows fair,
And others, proud, corrupted, rich and vast,
Which have the expansion of infinity,
Like amber, musk and frankincense and myrrh,
That sing the soul’s and senses’ ecstasy.
The Sick Muse
Alas – my poor Muse – what aileth thee now?
Thine eyes are bedimmed with the visions of Night,
And silent and cold – I perceive on thy brow
In their turns – Despair and Madness alight.
A succubus green, or a hobgoblin red,
Has it poured o’er thee Horror and Love from its urn?
Or the Nightmare with masterful bearing hath led
Thee to drown in the depths of some magic Minturne?
I wish, as the health-giving fragrance I cull,
That thy breast with strong thoughts could for ever be full,
And that rhymthmic’ly flowing – thy Christian blood
Could resemble the olden-time metrical-flood,
Where each in his turn reigned the father of Rhymes
Phoebus – and Pan, lord of Harvest-times.
The Venal Muse
Oh Muse of my heart – so fond of palaces old,
Wilt have – when New Year speeds its wintry blast,
Amid those tedious nights, with snow o’ercast,
A log to warm thy feet, benumbed with cold?
Wilt thou thy marbled shoulders then revive
With nightly rays that through thy shutters peep?
And – void thy purse and void thy palace – reap
A golden hoard within some azure hive?
Thou must, to earn thy daily bread, each night,
Suspend the censer like an acolyte,
Te–Deums sing, with sanctimonious ease,
Or as a famished mountebank, with jokes obscene
Essay to lull the vulgar rabble’s spleen;
Thy laughter soaked in tears which no one sees.
The Evil Monk
The cloisters old, expounded on their walls
With paintings, the Beatic Verity,
The which – adorning their religious halls,
Enriched the frigidness of their Austerity.
In days when Christian seeds bloomed o’er the land,
Full many a noble monk unknown today,
Upon the field of tombs would take his stand,
Exalting Death in rude and simple way.
My soul is a tomb where – bad monk that I be-
I dwell and search its depths from all eternity,
And nought bedecks the walls of the odious spot.
Oh sluggard monk! when shall I glean aright
From the living spectacle of my bitter lot,
To mold my handywork and mine eyes’ Delight?
The Enemy
My childhood was nought but a ravaging storm,
Enlivened at times by a brilliant sun;
The rain and the winds wrought such havoc and harm
That of buds on my plot there remains hardly one.
Behold now the Fall of ideas I have reached,
And the shovel and rake one must therefore resume,
In collecting the turf, inundated and breached,
Where the waters dug trenches as deep as a tomb.
And yet these new blossoms, for which I craved,
Will they find in this earth – like a shore that is laved –
The mystical fuel which vigour imparts?
Oh misery! – Time devours our lives,
And the enemy black, which consumeth our hearts
On