Flowers of Evil - Charles Baudelaire (guided reading books TXT) 📗

The Flowers of Evil

 

by Charles Baudelaire

 

Translated Into

English Verse

By Cyril Scott

 

London

 

Elkin Mathews, Vigo Street

MCMIX

Dedicated To Arthur Symons

CONTENTS

Benediction

 

Echoes

 

The Sick Muse

 

The Venal Muse

 

The Evil Monk

 

The Enemy

 

Ill-Luck

 

Interior Life

 

Man and the Sea

 

Beauty

 

The Ideal

 

The Giantess

 

Hymnto Beauty

 

Exotic Perfume

 

La Chevelure

 

Sonnet XXVIII

 

Posthumous Remorse

 

The Balcony

 

The Possessed One

 

Semper Eadem

 

All Entire

 

Sonnet XLIII

 

The Living Torch

 

The Spiritual Dawn

 

Evening Harmony

 

Overcast Sky

 

Invitation to a Journey

 

“Causerie”

 

Autumn Song

 

Sisina

 

To a Creolean Lady

 

Moesta et Errabunda

 

The Ghost

 

Autumn Song

 

Sadness of the Moon-Goddess

 

Cats

 

Owls

 

Music

 

The Joyous Defunct

 

The Broken Bell

 

Spleen

 

Obsession

 

Magnetic Horror

 

The Lid

 

Bertha’s Eyes

 

The Set of the Romantic Sun

 

Meditation

 

To a Passer-by

 

Illusionary Love

 

Mists and Rains

 

The Wine of Lovers

 

Condemned Women

 

The Death of the Lovers

 

The Death of the Poor

 

Benediction

 

When by the changeless Power of a Supreme Decree

The poet issues forth upon this sorry sphere,

His mother, horrified, and full of blasphemy,

Uplifts her voice to God, who takes compassion on her.

 

“Ah, why did I not bear a serpent’s nest entire,

Instead of bringing forth this hideous Child of Doom!

Oh cursed be that transient night of vain desire

When I conceived my expiation in my womb!”

 

“Yet since among all women thou hast chosen me

To be the degradation of my jaded mate,

And since I cannot like a love-leaf wantonly

Consign this stunted monster to the glowing grate,”

 

“I’ll cause thine overwhelming hatred to rebound

Upon the cursed tool of thy most wicked spite.

Forsooth, the branches of this wretched tree I’ll wound

And rob its pestilential blossoms of their might!”

 

So thus, she giveth vent unto her foaming ire,

And knowing not the changeless statutes of all times,

Herself, amid the flames of hell, prepares the pyre;

The consecrated penance of maternal crimes.

 

Yet ‘fieath th’ invisible shelter of an Angel’s wing

This sunlight-loving infant disinherited,

Exhales from all he eats and drinks, and everything

The ever sweet ambrosia and the nectar red.

 

He trifles with the winds and with the clouds that glide,

About the way unto the Cross, he loves to sing,

The spirit on his pilgrimage; that faithful guide,

Oft weeps to see him joyful like a bird of Spring.

 

All those that he would cherish shrink from him with fear,

And some that waxen bold by his tranquility,

Endeavour hard some grievance from his heart to tear,

And make on him the trial of their ferocity.

 

Within the bread and wine outspread for his repast

To mingle dust and dirty spittle they essay,

And everything he touches, forth they slyly cast,

Or scourge themselves, if e’er their feet betrod his way.

 

His wife goes round proclaiming in the crowded quads

“Since he can find my body beauteous to behold,

Why not perform the office of those ancient gods

And like unto them, redeck myself with shining gold?”

 

“I’ll bathe myself with incense, spikenard and myrrh,

With genuflexions, delicate viandes and wine,

To see, in jest, if from a heart, that loves me dear,

I cannot filch away the hommages divine.”

 

“And when of these impious jokes at length I tire,

My frail but mighty hands, around his breast entwined,

With nails, like harpies’ nails, shall cunningly conspire

The hidden path unto his feeble heart to find.”

 

“And like a youngling bird that trembles in its nest,

I’ll pluck his heart right out; within its own blood drowned,

And finally to satiate my favourite beast,

I’ll throw it with intense disdain upon the ground!”

 

Towards the Heavens where he sees the sacred grail

The poet calmly stretches forth his pious arms,

Whereon 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 ado’rning 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 to-day,

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 handy work 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 the blood of our bodies, increases and thrives!

 

Man and the Sea

 

Free man! the sea is to thee ever dear!

The sea is thy mirror, thou regardest thy soul

In its mighteous waves that unendingly roll,

And thy spirit is yet not a chasm less drear.

 

Thou delight’st to plunge deep in thine image down;

Thou tak’st it with eyes and with arms in embrace,

And at times thine own inward voice would’st efface

With the sound of its savage ungovernable moan.

 

You are both of you, sombre, secretive and deep :

Oh mortal, thy depths are foraye unexplored,

Oh sea no one knoweth thy dazzling hoard,

You both are so jealous your secrets to keep!

 

And endless ages have wandered by,

Yet still without pity or mercy you fight,

So mighty in plunder and death your delight :

Oh wrestlers! so constant in enmity!

 

Beauty

 

I arn lovely, O mortals, like a dream of stone,

And my bosom, where each one gets bruised in turn,

To inspire the love of a poet is prone,

Like matter eternally silent and stern.

 

As an unfathomed sphinx, enthroned by the Nile,

My heart a swan’s whiteness with granite combines,

And I hate every movement, displacing the lines,

And never I weep and never I smile.

 

The poets in front of mine attitudes fine

(Which the proudest of monuments seem to implant),

To studies profound all their moments assign,

 

For I have all these docile swains to enchant

Two mirrors, which Beauty in all things ignite :

Mine eyes, my large eyes, of eternal Light!

 

The Ideal

 

It could ne’er be those beauties of ivory vignettes;

The varied display of a worthless age,

Nor puppet-like figures with castoncts,

That ever an heart like mine could engage.

 

I leave to Gavarni, that poet of chlorosis,

His hospital-beauties in troups that whirl,

For I cannot discover amid his pale roses

A flower to resemble my scarlet ideal.

 

Since, what for this fathomless heart I require

Is Lady Macbeth you! in crime so dire;

An AEschylus dream transposed from the South

 

Or thee, oh great “Night” of Michael-Angelo born,

Who so calmly thy limbs in strange posture hath drawn,

Whose allurements are framed for a Titan’s mouth.

 

The Giantess

 

I should have loved erewhile when Heaven conceived

Each day, some child abnormal and obscene,

Beside a maiden giantess to have lived,

Like a luxurious cat at the feet of a queen;

 

To see her body flowering with her soul,

And grow, unchained, in awe-inspiring art,

Within the mists across her eyes that stole

To divine the fires entombed within her heart.

 

And oft to scramble