Charles Baudelaire

One day in ashy, cindery terrains, As I meandered, making my complaint To nature, slowly sharpening the knife

Remember, my love, the object we saw That beautiful morning in June: By a bend in the path a carcass reclined

This freakish ghost has nothing else to wear But some cheap crown he picked up at a fair Grotesquely perched atop his bony corpse.

Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows,

Surrounded by flasks, and by spangled lames, All matter of sumptuous goods, Marble sculptures, fine paintings, and perfumed peignoirs

I. The Blackness In vaults of fathomless obscurity Where Destiny has sentenced me for life;

Reader, have you ever breathed deeply, with slow savour and intoxicated sense, a church's saturating grain of incense,

My soul, do you remember the object we saw on what was a fine summer's day: at the path's far corner, a shameful corpse

My heart was like a bird that fluttered joyously And glided free among the tackle and the lines! The vessel rolled along under a cloudless sky

I. Race of Abel, sleep and eat; God smiles on you complacently.

Though your eyebrows surprise, and give you an air of strangeness, which isn't that of the angels,

One's ardour, Nature, makes you bright, One finds within you mourning, grief! What speaks to one of tombs and death

Picture a beauty, shoulders rich and fine, Letting her long hair trail into her wine. Talons of love, the poison tooth of sin

A hundred times already the sun had leaped, radiant or saddened, from the immense cup of the sea whose rim could scarcely be seen; a hundred times it had again sunk, glittering or morose, into its mighty bath of twilight. For many days we had contemplated the other side of the firmament, and deciphered the celestial alphabet of the antipodes. And each of the passengers sighed and complained. One had said that the approach of land only exasperated their sufferings. "When, then," they said, "shall we cease to sleep a sleep broken by the surge, troubled by a wind that snores louder than we? When shall we be able to eat at an unmoving table?" There were those who thought of their own firesides, who regretted their sullen, faithless wives, and their noisy progeny. All so doted upon the image of the absent land, that I believe they would have eaten grass with as much enthusiasm as the beasts. At length a coast was signalled, and on approaching we saw a magnificent and dazzling land. It seemed as though the music of life flowed therefrom in a vague murmur; and the banks, rich with all kinds of growths, breathed, for leagues around, a delicious odour of flowers and fruits.

Alone at last! Nothing is to be heard but the rattle of a few tardy and tired-out cabs. There will be silence now, if not repose, for several hours at least. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared I shall not suffer except alone. At last it is permitted me to refresh myself in a bath of shadows. But first a double turn of the key in the lock. It seems to me that this turn of the key will deepen my solitude and strengthen the barriers which actually separate me from the world. A horrible life and a horrible city! Let us run over the events of the day. I have seen several literary men ; one of them wished to know if he could get to Russia by land (he seemed to have an idea that Russia was an island) ; I have disputed generously enough with the editor of a review, who to each objection replied: "We take the part of respectable people," which implies that every other paper but his own is edited by a knave; I have saluted some twenty people, fifteen of them unknown to me; and shaken hands with a like number, without having taken the precaution of first buying gloves; I have been driven to kill time, during a shower, with a mountebank, who wanted me to design for her a costume as Venusta; I have made my bow to a theatre manager, who said: "You will do well, perhaps, to interview Z; he is the heaviest, foolishest, and most celebrated of all my authors; with him perhaps you will be able to come to something. See him, and then we'll see." I have boasted (why?) of several villainous deeds I never committed, and indignantly denied certain shameful things I accomplished with joy, certain misdeeds of fanfaronade, crimes of human respect; I have refused an easy favour to a friend and given a written recommendation to a perfect fool.

La sottise, l'erreur, le p'ch', la l'sine, Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps, Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords,

I. Now will we plunge into the frigid dark, The living light of summer gone too soon!

I hear them say to me, your crystal eyes, 'Strange love, what merit do you find in me?' Be charming and be still! My heart, disturbed

To roll the rock you fought takes your courage, Sisyphus! No matter what effort from us,

Through fields of ash, burnt, without verdure, where I was complaining one day to Nature, and slowly sharpened the knife of my thought,

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 lone

When, by an edict of the powers supreme, The Poet in this bored world comes to be, His daunted mother, eager to blaspheme,

Lorsque, par un d'cret des puissances supr'mes, Le Po'te appara't en ce monde ennuy', Sa m're 'pouvant'e et pleine de blasph'mes

You can scorn more illustrious eyes, sweet eyes of my child, through which there takes flight something as good or as tender as night.

Beside a monstrous Jewish whore I lay One night, we were two corpses side by side, And came to dream beside this hired bride

Ere is the chamber consecrate, Wherein this maiden delicate, And enigmatically sedate,

La tribu proph'tique aux prunelles ardentes Hier s'est mise en route, emportant ses petits Sur son dos, ou livrant ' leurs fiers app'tits

If on some woebegone night A generous Christian soul Behind an old garbage-dump, might

Have patience, O my sorrow, and be still. You asked for night: it falls: it is here. A shadowy atmosphere enshrouds the hill,

Stiff scholars and the hody amorous Will in their ripeness equally admire Powerful, gende cats, pride of the house,

Sous un grand ciel gris, dans une grande plaine poudreuse, sans chemins, sans gazon, sans un chardon, sans une ortie, je rencontrai plusieurs hommes qui marchaient courb's.

I Bient't nous plongerons dans les froides t'n'bres; Adieu vive clart' de nos 't's trop courts!

One would say your gaze was a misted screen: your strange eyes (are they blue, grey or green?) changeable, tender, dreamy, cruel, and again

The Devil and I had a chat This morning in my snuggery; Trying to catch me in a lapse,

Like pensive cattle lying on the sands They gaze upon the endless seas, until Feet grope for feet, and hands close over hands,

Within the dwindling glow of light from languid lamps, Sunk in the softest cushions soaked with heady scent, Hippolyta lay dreaming of the thrilling touch

Once, once only, sweet and lovable woman, you leant your smooth arm on mine (that memory has never faded a moment

Une fois, une seule, aimable et douce femme, A mon bras votre bras poli S'appuya (sur le fond t'n'breux de mon 'me

From this bizarre and livid sky Tormented by your destiny, Into your vacant spirit fly

Hou, 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,

You are a pink and lovely autumn sky! But sadness in me rises like the sea, And leaves in ebbing only bitter clay

In Nature's temple living pillars rise, And words are murmured none have understood, And man must wander through a tangled wood

' Ernest Christophe Fi're, autant qu'un vivant, de sa noble stature, Avec son gros bouquet, son mouchoir et ses gants,

For Ernest Christophe Proud, like one living, of her noble height, With handkerchief and gloves, her great bouquet,

Reveille sang its call among the barracks' paths, And moving air disturbed the tall, commanding lamps. It was the time when dreams of lust and swarming heat

In evening as the sun goes down She twists and dances mindlessly Life, in her brash effrontery.

I beg your pity, You, my only love; My fallen heart lies in a deep abyss, A universe of leaden heaviness,

Cent fois d'j' le soleil avait jailli, radieux ou attrist', de cette cuve immense de la mer dont les bords ne se laissent qu'' peine apercevoir; cent fois il s''tait replong', 'tincelant ou morose, dans

The Fiend is at my side without a rest; He swirls around me like a subtle breeze; I swallow him, and burning fills my breast,

When Juan sought the subterranean flood, And paid his obolus on the Stygian shore, Charon, the proud and sombre beggar, stood

Tranquil as a sage and gentle as one who's cursed. I said: I love you, oh my beauty, my charmer many a time

for F.N. Do you, as I do, know a zesty grief, And is it said of you, 'curious man!'

Two warriors have grappled, and their arms Have flecked the air with blood and flashing steel. These frolics, this mad clanking, these alarms

Sweet evening comes, friend of the criminal, Like an accomplice with a light footfall; The sky shuts on itself as though a tomb,

Above the ponds, beyond the valleys, The woods, the mountains, the clouds, the seas, Farther than the sun, the distant breeze,

With quiet heart, I climbed the hill, from which one can see, the city, complete, hospitals, brothels, purgatory, hell,

Here's the criminal's friend, delightful evening: come like an accomplice, with a wolf's loping: slowly the sky's vast vault hides each feature,

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 Chimera 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.

When with closed eyes in autumn's eves of gold I breathe the burning odours of your breast, Before my eyes the hills of happy rest

This is the sanctuary where the prettified young lady, calm, and always ready,

Like pensive cattle, lying on the sands, they turn their eyes towards the sea's far hills, and, feet searching each other's, touching hands,

Off in a perfumed land bathed gently by the sun, Under a palm tree's shade tinged with a crimson trace, A place where indolence drops on the eyes like rain,

One must have courage as strong As Sisyphus', lifting this weight! Though the heart for the work may be great,

In faded chairs, the pale old courtesans, Eyebrows painted, eye of fatal calm, Smirking, and letting drop from skinny ears

That tribe of prophets with the burning eyes Is on the road, their babies on their backs, Who satisfy their appetite attacks

Voici venir les temps o vibrant sur sa tige Chaque fleur s'vapore ainsi qu'un encensoir; Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir;

Now those days arrive when, stem throbbing, each flower sheds its fragrance like a censer: sounds and scents twine in the evening air:

O fleece, billowing even down the neck! O locks! 0 perfume charged with nonchalance! What ecstasy! To people our dark room

for J.G.F. I'll strike you without rage or hate The way a butcher strikes his block,

De ce ciel bizarre et livide, Tourment' comme ton destin, Quels pensers dans ton 'me vide

To the too-dear, to the too-beautiful, who fills my heart with clarity, to the angel, to the immortal idol,

O Beauty! do you visit from the sky Or the abyss? infernal and divine, Your gaze bestows both kindnesses and crimes,

Viens-tu du ciel profond ou sors-tu de l'ab'me O Beaut'? ton regard, infernal et divin, Verse confus'ment le bienfait et le crime,

I give to you these verses, that if in Some future time my name lands happily To bring brief pleasure to humanity,

I have not forgotten our little white retreat Where we were neighbors to the town of busy streets; Our plaster Venus and Pomona barely could

I love the naked ages long ago When statues were gilded by Apollo, When men and women of agility

I love the thought of ancient, naked days When Phoebus gilded statues with his rays. Then women, men in their agility

I love you as I love the night's high vault O silent one, 0 sorrow's lachrymal, And love you more because you flee from me,

It was in her white skirts that he loved to see her run straight through the branches and leaves, gracefully, but still gauche, and hiding her leg from the light,

To bear a weight that cannot be borne, Sisyphus, even you aren't that strong, Although your heart cannot be torn

Higher there, higher, far from the ways, from the farms and the valleys, beyond the trees, beyond the hills and the grasses' haze,

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."

My sister, my child Imagine how sweet To live there as lovers do!

I've not forgotten, near to the town, our white house, small but alone: its Pomona of plaster, its Venus of old

I adore you, the nocturnal vault's likeness, o vast taciturnity, o vase of sadness: I love you, my beauty, the more you flee,

Souvent, pour s'amuser, les hommes d''quipage Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers, Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,

The great-hearted servant of whom you were jealous, sleeping her sleep in the humble grass, shouldn't we take her a few flowers?

Lovers of whores don't care, happy, calm and replete: But my arms are incomplete,

So as to write my eclogues in the purest verse I wish to lay me down, like the astrologers, Next to the sky, and hear in reverie the hymns

In order to write my chaste verses I'll lie like an astrologer near to the sky and, by the bell-towers, listen in dream

Mother of Roman games and Greek delights, Lesbos, where kisses languorous or glad, As hot as suns, or watermelon-fresh,

On the old oak benches, more shiny and polished than links of a chain that were, each day, burnished rubbed by our human flesh, we, still un-bearded,

O Angel, the most brilliant and most wise, A God betrayed by fate, deprived of praise, Satan, take pity on my misery!

Free man, you'll love the ocean endlessly! It is your mirror, you observe your soul In how its billows endlessly unroll

Late autumns, winters, spring-times steeped in mud, anaesthetizing seasons! You I praise, and love for so enveloping my heart and brain

Autumn's last days, winters and mud-soaked spring I praise the stupefaction that you bring By so enveloping my heart and brain

A vapour seems to hide your face from view; Your mystic eye (is it green, grey, or blue?) Tender by turns, dreamy or merciless,

Agatha, tell me, could your heart take flight From this black city, from this filthy sea Off to some other sea, where splendour might

You are a lovely autumn sky, rose-clear! But sadness is flowing in me like the sea, And leaves on my sullen lip, as it disappears,

Reveille was sounding on barrack-squares, and the wind of dawn blew on lighted stairs. It was the hour when a swarm of evil visions

Music doth uplift me like a sea Towards my planet pale, Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinity

I've been home a long time among the vast porticos, Which the mariner sun has tinged with a million fires, Whose grandest pillars, upright, majestic and cold

Is it not pleasant, now we are tired, and tarnished, like other men, to search for those fires in the furthest East, where, again, we might see

Great forests you frighten me, like vast cathedrals: You roar like an organ, and in our condemned souls, aisles of eternal mourning, where past death-rattles

The poet in his cell, unkempt and sick, who crushes underfoot a manuscript, measures, with a gaze that horror has inflamed,

Under black yew-trees, in the shade, The owls have kept themselves apart; Like strange divinities, they dart

Quand, les deux yeux ferm's, en un soir chaud d'automne, Je respire l'odeur de ton sein chaleureux, Je vois se d'rouler des rivages heureux

for Constantin Guys Of this strange, awe-inspiring scene Such as on earth one never sees,

An Old Colophon Passion sits on the skull Of Humanity,

Wine can invest the most disgusting hole With wonders to our eyes, And make the fabled porticoes arise

With new chords I'll sing your praises, Little shoot, because you dally In the heart's sweet solitude.

When in brave days of old, Theology Flourished with utmost sap and energy, A celebrated doctor, it is said,

When, sullen beauty, you will sleep and have As resting place a fine black marble tomb, When for a boudoir in your manor-home

Angel of gaiety, have you tasted grief? Shame and remorse and sobs and weary spite, And the vague terrors of the fearful night

Singular goddess, brown as night, and wild, Perfumed of fine tobacco smoke and musk, Work of some Faust, some wizard of the dusk,

You said, there grows within you some strange gloom, A sea rising on rock, why is it so? When once your heart has brought its harvest home

Picture Diana decked out for the chase, Charging through forests, beating brush aside, Drunk with the action, wind around her face,

I. In anatomical designs That hang about these dusty quays

Although your wayward brows Give you a curious air Angelic not at all,

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 despise

The moon tonight dreams vacantly, as if She were a beauty cushioned at her rest Who strokes with wandering hand her lifting

More memories than if I'd lived a thousand years! A giant chest of drawers, stuffed to the full With balance sheets, love letters, lawsuits, verse

I might as well be king of rainy lands Wealthy and young, but impotent and old, Who scorns the troupe of tutors at his feet

Pluvi'se, irrit' contre la ville enti're, De son urne ' grands flots verse un froid t'n'breux Aux p'les habitants du voisin cimeti're

J'ai plus de souvenirs que si j'avais mille ans. Un gros meuble ' tiroirs encombr' de bilans, De vers, de billets doux, de proc's, de romances,

Je suis comme le roi d'un pays pluvieux, Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant tr's-vieux, Qui, de ses pr'cepteurs m'prisant les courbettes,

Quand le ciel bas et lourd p'se comme un couvercle Sur l'esprit g'missant en proie aux longs ennuis, Et que de l'horizon embrassant tout le cercle

What, then, has God to say of cursing heresies, Which rise up like a flood at precious angels' feet? A self-indulgent tyrant, stuffed with wine and meat,

'From that sky livid, bizarre as your tortured destiny, what thoughts fill your empty heart,

That kind heart you were jealous of, my nurse Who sleeps her sleep beneath the humble turf, I'd like to give her flowers, wouldn't you?

Often, to amuse themselves, the crew of the ship Would fell an albatross, the largest of sea birds, Indolent companions of their trip

One man lights you with his ardour one decks you in mourning, Nature! What says to the first: 'A Sepulchre!'

On the great walls of ancient cloisters were nailed Murals displaying Truth the saint, Whose effect, reheating the pious entrails

Other of memories, mistress of mistresses, O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire, Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses,

Ubens, oblivious garden of indolence, Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love, Where life flows forth in troubled opulence,

Consider them, my soul, they are a fright! Like mannequins, vaguely ridiculous, Peculiar, terrible somnambulists,

Hate is the cask of the Dana'des; Vengeance, distraught, has red and brawny arms, With which she hurls into her empty dark

I. A cat is strolling through my mind Acting as though he owned the place,

Come, my fine cat, to my amorous heart; Please let your claws be concealed. And let me plunge into your beautiful eyes,

The Clock! a sinister, impassive god Whose threatening finger says to us: 'Remember! Soon in your anguished heart, as in a target,

How penetrating is the end of an autumn day! Ah, yes, penetrating enough to be painful even; for there are certain delicious sensations whose vagueness does not prevent them from being intense; and none more keen than the perception of the Infinite. He has a great delight who drowns his gaze in the immensity of sky and sea. Solitude, silence, the incomparable chastity of the azure a little sail trembling upon the horizon, by its very littleness and isolation imitating my irremediable existence the melodious monotone of the surge all these things thinking through me and I through them (for in the grandeur of the reverie the Ego is swiftly lost); they think, I say, but musically and picturesquely, without quibbles, without syllogisms, without deductions. These thoughts, as they arise in me or spring forth from external objects, soon become always too intense. The energy working within pleasure creates an uneasiness, a positive suffering. My nerves are too tense to give other than clamouring and dolorous vibrations.

How bittersweet it is on winter nights To hear old recollections raise themselves Around the flickering fire's wisps of light

Carrying bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves, Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves With all the careless and high-stepping grace,

How I adore, dear indolent, Your lovely body, when Like silken cloth it shimmers

How many times must I jingle my little bells And kiss your ugly forehead, shabby substitute? How many, 0 my quiver, spears and bolts to lose

We will have beds imbued with mildest scent, And couches, deep as tombs, in which to lie, Flowers around us, strange and opulent,

It is death that consoles and allows us to live. Alas! that life's end should be all of our hope; It goes to our heads like a powerful drink,

Unhappy perhaps is the man, but happy the artist, who is torn with this desire. I burn to paint a certain woman who has appeared to me so rarely, and so swiftly fled away, like some beautiful, regrettable thing the traveller must leave behind him in the night. It is already long since I saw her. She is beautiful, and more than beautiful: she is overpowering. The colour black preponderates in her; all that she inspires is nocturnal and profound.

I In the anatomical plates displayed on the dusty quays

A chamber that is like a reverie; a chamber truly spiritual, where the stagnant atmosphere is lightly touched with rose and blue. There the soul bathes itself in indolence made odorous with regret and desire. There is some sense of the twilight, of things tinged with blue and rose: a dream of delight during an eclipse. The shape of the furniture is elongated, low, languishing; one would think it endowed with the somnambulistic vitality of plants and minerals. The tapestries speak an inarticulate language, like the flowers, the skies, the dropping suns.

Above the valleys, over rills and meres, Above the mountains, woods, the oceans, clouds, Beyond the sun, past all ethereal bounds,

My youth was nothing but a black storm Crossed now and then by brilliant suns. The thunder and the rain so ravage the shores

The ancient cloisters on their lofty walls Had holy Truth in painted frescoes shown, And, seeing these, the pious in those halls

You are a sky of autumn, pale and rose; But all the sea of sadness in my blood Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose,

There are some powerful odours that can pass Out of the stoppard flagon; even glass To them is porous. Oft when some old box

It's bitter, yet sweet, on wintry nights, near to the fire that crackles and fumes, listening while, far-off, slow memories rise

Sometimes it seems my blood spurts out in gobs As if it were a fountain's pulsing sobs; I clearly hear it mutter as it goes,

Old courtesans in washed-out armchairs, pale, eyebrows blacked, eyes 'tender', 'fatal', simpering still, and from their skinny ears

Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove I will return to thy alcove, And glide upon the night to thee,

In times when madcap Nature in her verve Conceived each day a hatch of monstrous spawn, I might have lived near some young giantess,

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.

There are some natures purely contemplative and antipathetic to action, who nevertheless, under a mysterious and inexplicable impulse, sometimes act with a rapidity of which they would have believed themselves incapable. Such a one is he who, fearing to find some new vexation awaiting him at his lodgings, prowls about in a cowardly fashion before the door without daring to enter; such a one is he who keeps a letter fifteen days without opening it, or only makes up his mind at the end of six months to undertake a journey that has been a necessity for a year past. Such beings sometimes feel themselves precipitately thrust towards action, like an arrow from a bow. The novelist and the physician, who profess to know all things, yet cannot explain whence comes this sudden and delirious energy to indolent and voluptuous souls; nor how, incapable of accomplishing the simplest and most necessary things, they are at some certain moment of time possessed by a superabundant hardihood which enables them to execute the most absurd and even the most dangerous acts. One of my friends, the most harmless dreamer that ever lived, at one time set fire to a forest, in order to ascertain, as he said, whether the flames take hold with the easiness that is commonly affirmed. His experiment failed ten times running, on the eleventh it succeeded only too well.

In a rich land, fertile, replete with snails I'd like to dig myself a spacious pit Where I might spread at leisure myoid bones

Now it is nearly time when, quivering on its stem, Each flower, like a censer, sprinkles out its scent; Sounds and perfumes are mingling in the evening air;

O fleece, billowing down to the shoulders! O curls! O perfume charged with languor! Ecstasy! To populate love's dark alcove,

It will not be these beauties of vignettes, Poor products of a worthless century, Feet in half-boots, fingers in castanets,

Do you know, as I do, delicious sadness and make others say of you: 'Strange man!' I was dying. In my soul, singular illness,

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

I. A Being, a Form, an Idea Having fallen from out of the blue

How can we kill the long, the old Remorse That lives, writhes, twists itself And mines us as the worm devours the dead,

Can we suppress the old Remorse Who bends our heart beneath his stroke, Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse,

My sweetheart was naked, knowing my desire, she wore only her tinkling jewellery, whose splendour yields her the rich conquering fire

Whatever place he goes, on land or sea, under a sky on fire, or a polar sun, servant of Jesus, follower of Cytherea,

O you, the most knowing, and loveliest of Angels, a god fate betrayed, deprived of praises, O Satan, take pity on my long misery!

for Victor Hugo I. In sinuous coils of the old capitals

They pass before me, these Eyes full of light, Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise; The holy brothers pass before my sight,

They march ahead, those brilliant Eyes in you A master Angel doubtless magnetized; They march, those holy twins, my brothers too,

When I watch you go by, in all your indolence, To sound of instruments within the echoing hall Suspending your appeal of lingering harmony,

This morning how grand is the space! Without bridle or spurs, in our haste Let us set out by horseback on wine,

As the carriage traversed the wood he bade the driver draw up in the neighbourhood of a shooting gallery, saying that he would like to have a few shots to kill time. Is not the slaying of the monster Time the most ordinary and legitimate occupation of man? So he gallantly offered his hand to his dear, adorable, and execrable wife; the mysterious woman to whom he owed so many pleasures, so many pains, and perhaps also a great part of his genius. Several bullets went wide of the proposed mark, one of them flew far into the heavens, and as the charming creature laughed deliriously, mocking the clumsiness of her husband, he turned to her brusquely and said: "Observe that doll yonder, to the right, with its nose in the air, and with so haughty an appearance. Very well, dear angel, I will imagine to myself that it is you!"

Allegorical Statue in the Style of the Renaissance for Ernest Christophe, sculptor Let us observe this prize, of Tuscan charm;

Twisting and writhing like a snake on fiery sands, Kneading her breast against her corset's metal bands, The woman, meanwhile, from her mouth of strawberry

Oh moon our fathers worshipped, their love discreet, from the blue country's heights where the bright seraglio, the stars in their sweet dress, go treading after you,

My wife is dead and I am free! And I can guzzle all I want. When I came home without a cent

Under the overhanging yews, The dark owls sit in solemn state, Like stranger gods; by twos and twos

I am a writer's pipe; you see In looking at my dusky face, Complexion of the Kaffir race,

Wine can clothe the most sordid hole in miraculous luxury, and let many a fabulous portico float free

The sun is wrapped within a pall of mist, Moon of my life! enshroud yourself like him; Sleep, damp your fires; be silent, dim,

Often, beneath a street lamp's reddish light, Where wind torments the glass and flame by night, Where mankind swarms in stormy turbulence

Man, with which to pay his ransom, has two fields of deep rich earth, which he must dig and bring to birth,

O shadowy Beauty mine, when thou shalt sleep In the deep heart of a black marble tomb; When thou for mansion and for bower shalt keep

The Moon more indolently dreams to-night Than a fair woman on her couch at rest, Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,

City of swarming, city full of dreams Where ghosts in daylight tug the stroller's sleeve! Mysteries everywhere run like the sap

O swarming city, city full of dreams, Where in a full day the spectre walks and speaks; Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins

Ant-like city, city full of dreams, where the passer-by, at dawn, meets the spectre! Mysteries everywhere are the sap that streams

"Cemetery View Inn" "A queer sign," said our traveller to himself; "but it raises a thirst! Certainly the keeper -o f this inn appreciates Horace and the poet pupils of Epicurus. Perhaps he even apprehends the profound philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton, or some emblem of life's brevity." He entered: drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs; and slowly smoked a cigar. Then, his phantasy driving him, he went down into the cemetery, where the grass was so tall and inviting; so brilliant in the sunshine. The light and heat, indeed, were so furiously intense that one had said the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon the corruption beneath.

Poor Muse, alas, what ails thee, then, to-day? Thy hollow eyes with midnight visions burn, Upon thy brow in alternation play,

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,

How I love to watch, dear indolence, like a bright shimmer, of fabric, the skin of your elegant

A handsome woman's tantalizing gaze Gliding our way as softly as the beam The sinuous moon sends out in silver sheen

One night, from bottles, sang the soul of wine: '0 misfit man, I send you for your good Out of the glass and wax where I'm confined,

When white and ruby dawn among the rakes Breaks in, she's with the harrying Ideal, And by some strange retributive appeal

O soft enchantress, let me tell the truth Of all the beauties decking out your youth! I'll paint the charms for you to see

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?

Through all the district's length, where from the shacks Hang shutters for concealing secret acts, When shafts of sunlight strike with doubled heat

How beautiful a new sun is when it rises, flashing out its greeting, like an explosion! Happy, whoever hails with sweet emotion

Andromache, I think of you! The stream, The poor, sad mirror where in bygone days Shone all the majesty of your widowed grief,

Dull soul, to whom the battle once was sweet, Hope, who had spurred your ardour and your fame Will no more ride you! Lie down without shame

The Demon, in my chamber high, This morning came to visit me, And, thinking he would find some fault,

What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a vine-prop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous and fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an astonishing complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender or brilliant lines and colours.

Debauch and Death are a fine, healthy pair Of girls, whose love is prodigal and free. Their virgin wombs, beneath the rags they wear,

You invaded my sorrowful heart Like the sudden stroke of a blade; Bold as a lunatic troupe

Muse of my heart, lover of palaces, When January comes with wind and sleet, During the snowy eve's long weariness,

I was the height of a folio, my bed just backed on the bookcases' sombre Babel, everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust

Pascal had his Void that went with him day and night. Alas! It's all Abyss, action, longing, dream, the Word! And I feel Panic's storm-wind stream

Every man worth the name has a yellow snake in his soul, seated as on a throne, saying

The way her silky garments undulate It seems she's dancing as she walks along, Like serpents that the sacred charmers make

Vauvenargues says that in public gardens there are alleys haunted principally by thwarted ambition, by unfortunate inventors, by aborted glories and broken hearts, and by all those tumultuous and contracted souls in whom the last sighs of the storm mutter yet again, and who thus betake themselves far from the insolent and joyous eyes of the well-to-do. These shadowy retreats are the rendezvous of life's cripples. To such places above all others do the poet and philosopher direct their avid conjectures. They find there an unfailing pasturage, for if there is one place they disdain to visit it is, as I have already hinted, the place of the joy of the rich. A turmoil in the void has no attractions for them. On the contrary they feel themselves irresistibly drawn towards all that' is feeble, ruined, sorrowing, and bereft. An experienced eye is never deceived. In these rigid and dejected lineaments ; in these eyes, wan and hollow, or bright with the last fading gleams of the combat against fate; in these numerous profound wrinkles and in the slow and troubled gait, the eye of experience deciphers unnumbered legends of mistaken devotion, of unrewarded effort, of hunger and cold humbly and silently supported. Have you not at times seen widows sitting on the deserted benches? Poor widows, I mean. Whether in mourning or not they are easily recognised. Moreover, there is always something wanting in the mourning of the poor; a lack of harmony which but renders it the more heart-breaking. It is forced to be niggardly in its show of grief. They are the rich who exhibit a full complement of sorrow.

Old monasteries under steadfast walls Displayed tableaux of holy Verity, Warming the inner men in those cold halls

White maiden with the russet hair, Whose garments, through their holes, declare That poverty is part of you,

In a perfumed land caressed by the sun I found, beneath the trees' crimson canopy, palms from which languor pours on one's

Madonna, mistress, I would build for thee An altar deep in the sad soul of me; And in the darkest corner of my heart,

Pale girl with russet hair, Tatters in what you wear Show us your poverty

Your feet are as slender as hands, your hips, to me, wide enough for the sweetest white girl's envy: to the wise artist your body is sweet and dear,

Around me roared the nearly deafening street. Tall, slim, in mourning, in majestic grief, A woman passed me, with a splendid hand

Your head, your gesture, your air, are lovely, like a lovely landscape: laughter's alive, in your face,

Stupidity and error, avarice and vice, possess our spirits, batten on our flesh, we feed that fond remorse, our guest,

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.

for Maxime du Camp I. The wide-eyed child in love with maps and plans

The prophetic tribe with burning eyes yesterday took to the highway, carrying children slung on their backs, or offering

I once knew a certain Benedicta whose presence filled 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:

What will you say tonight, poor lonely soul, What will you say old withered heart of mine, To the most beautiful, the best, most dear,

You'd entertain the universe in bed, Foul woman; ennui makes you mean of soul. To exercise your jaws at this strange sport