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

class="calibre1">And sounds and scents in the vesper breezes turn;

A melancholy waltz and a drowsiness divine.

 

The flowers evaporate like an incense urn,

The viol vibrates like the wailing of souls that repine.

A melancholy waltz and a drowsiness divine,

The skies like a mosque are beautiful and stern.

 

The viol vibrates like the wailing of souls that repine;

Sweet souls that shrink from chaos vast and etern,

The skies like a mosque are beautiful and stern,

The sunset drowns within its blood-red brine.

 

Sweet souls that shrink from chaos vast and etern,

Essay the wreaths of their faded Past to entwine,

The sunset drowns within its blood-red brine,

Thy thought within me glows like an incense urn.

 

Overcast Sky

 

Meseemeth thy glance, soft enshrouded with dew,

Thy mysterious eyes (are they grey, green or blue?),

Alternately cruel, and tender, and shy,

Reflect both the languor and calm of the sky.

 

Thou recallest those white days with shadows caressed,

Engendering tears from th’ enraptured breast,

When racked by an anguish unfathomed that weeps,

The nerves, too awake, jibe the spirit that sleeps.

 

At times thou art like those horizons divine,

Where the suns of the nebulous seasons decline;

How resplendent art thou O pasturage vast,

Illumed by the beams of a sky overcast!

 

O! dangerous dame oh seductive clime!

As well, will I love both thy snow and thy rime,

And shall I know how from the frosts to entice

Delights that are keener than iron and ice?

 

Invitation to a Journey

 

My sister, my dear

 

Consider how fair,

Together to live it would be!

 

Down yonder to fly

 

To love, till we die,

In the land which resembles thee.

 

Those suns that rise

 

‘Neath erratic skies,

No charm could be like unto theirs

 

So strange and divine,

 

Like those eyes of thine

Which glow in the midst of their tears.

 

There, all is order and loveliness,

Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.

 

The tables and chairs,

Polished bright by the years,

 

Would decorate sweetly our rooms,

And the rarest of flowers

Would twine round our bowers

 

And mingle their amber perfumes.

 

The ceilings arrayed,

 

And the mirrors inlaid,

This Eastern splendour among,

 

Would furtively steal

 

O’er our s&uls, and appeal

With its tranquillous native tongue.

 

There, all is order and loveliness,

Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.

 

In the harbours, peep,

 

At the vessels asleep

(Their humour is always to roam),

 

Yet it is but to grant

 

Thy smallest want

From the ends of the earth that they come,

 

The sunsets beam

 

Upon meadow and stream,

And upon the city entire

 

‘Neath a violet crest,

 

The world sinks to rest,

Illumed by a golden fire.

 

There, all is order and loveliness,

Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.

 

Sisina

 

Imagine Diana in gorgeous array,

How into the forests and thickets she flies,

With her hair in the breezes, and flushed for the fray,

How the very best riders she proudly defies.

 

Have you seen Theroigne, of the blood-thirsty heart,

As an unshod herd to attack he bestirs,

With cheeks all inflamed, playing up to his part,

As he goes, sword in hand, up the royal stairs?

 

And so is Sisina yet this warrior sweet,

Has a soul with compassion and kindness replete,

Inspired by drums and by powder, her sway

 

Knows how to concede to the supplicants’ prayers,

And her bosom, laid waste by the flames, has alway,

For those that are worthy, a fountain of tears.

 

To a Creolean Lady

 

In a country perfumed with the sun’s embrace,

I knew ‘neath a dais of purpled palms,

And branches where idleness weeps o’er one’s face,

A Creolean lady of unknown charms.

 

Her tint, pale and warm this bewitching bride,

Displays a nobly nurtured mien,

Courageous and grand like a huntsman, her stride;

A tranquil smile and eyes serene.

 

If, madam, you’d go to the true land of gain,

By the banks of the verdant Loire or the Seine,

How worthy to garnish some pile of renown.

 

You’d awake in the calm of some shadowy nest,

A thousand songs in the poet’s breast,

That your eyes would inspire far more than your brown.

 

Moesta et Errabunda

 

Oh, Agatha, tell! does thy heart not at times fly away?

Far from the city impure and the lowering sea,

To another ocean that blinds with its dazzling array,

So blue and so clear and profound, like virginity?

Oh, Agatha, tell! does thy heart not at times fly away?

 

The sea, the vast ocean our travail and trouble consoles!

What demon hath gifted the sea with a voice from on high,

To sing us (attuned to an ^Eolus-organ that rolls

Forth a grumbling burden) a lenitive lullabye?

The sea, the vast ocean our travail and trouble consoles!

 

Oh, carry me, waggons, oh, sailing-ships, help me depart!

Far, far, here the dust is quite wet with our showering

tears,

 

Oh, say! it is true that Agatha’s desolate heart,

Proclaimeth, ” Away from remorse, and from crimes, and

from cares,”

Oh, carry me, waggons, oh, sailing ships, help me depart!

 

How distant you seem to be, perfumed Elysian fields!

Wherein there is nothing but sunshine and love and glee;

Where all that one loves is so worthy, and lovingly yields,

And our hearts float about in the purest of ecstasy,

How distant you seem to be, perfumed Elysian fields!

 

But the green paradise of those transient infantile loves,

The strolls, and the songs, and the kisses, and bunches of

flowers,

 

The viols vibrating beyond, in the mountainous groves,

With the chalice of wine and the evening, entwined, in the

bowers,

But the green paradise of those transient infantile loves.

 

That innocent heaven o’erflowing with furtive delight,

Than China or India, is it still further away?

 

Or, could one with pityful prayers bring it back to our

sight?

 

Or yet with a silvery voice o’er the ages convey

That innocent heaven o’erflowing with furtive delight!

 

The Ghost

 

Just like an angel with evil eye,

I shall return to thee silently,

Upon thy bower I’ll alight,

With falling shadows of the night

 

With thee, my brownie, I’ll commune,

And give thee kisses cold as the moon,

And with a serpent’s moist embrace,

I’ll crawl around thy resting-place.

 

And when the livid morning falls,

Thou’lt find alone the empty walls,

And till the evening, cold ‘twill be.

 

As others with their tenderness,

Upon thy life and youthfulness,

I’ll reign alone with dread o’er thee.

 

Autumn Song

 

They ask me thy crystalline eyes, so acute,

“Odd lover why am I to thee so dear?”

Be sweet and keep silent, my heart, wrifch is sear,

For all, save the rude and untutored brute,

 

Is loth its infernal depths to reveal,

And its dissolute motto engraven with fire,

Oh charmer! whose arms endless slumber inspire!

I abominate passion and wit makes me ill.

 

So let us love gently. Within his retreat,

Foreboding, Love seeks for his arrows a prey,

I know all the arms of his battle array.

 

Delirium and loathing O pale Marguerite!

Like me, art thou not an autumnal ray,

Alas my so white, my so cold Marguerite!

 

Sadness of the Moon-Goddess

 

To-night the Moon dreams with increased weariness,

Like a beauty stretched forth on a downy heap

Of rugs, while her languorous fingers caress

The contour of her breasts, before falling to sleep.

 

On the satin back of the avalanche soft,

She falls into lingering swoons, as she dies,

While she lifteth her eyes to white visions aloft,

Which like efflorescence float up to the skies.

 

When at times, in her languor, down on to this sphere,

She slyly lets trickle a furtive tear,

A poet, desiring slumber to shun,

 

Takes up this pale tear in the palm of his hand

(The colours of which like an opal blend),

And buries it far from the eyes of the sun.

 

Cats

 

All ardent lovers and all sages prize,

As ripening years incline upon their brows

The mild and mighty cats pride of the house

That like unto them are indolent, stern and wise.

 

The^friends of Learning and of Ecstasy,

They search for silence and the horrors of gloom;

The^devil had used them for his steeds of Doom,

Could he alone have bent their pride to slavery.

 

When musing, they display those outlines chaste,

Of the great sphinxes stretched o’er the sandy waste,

That seem to slumber deep in a dream without end :

 

From out their loins a fountainous furnace flies,

And grains of sparkling gold, as fine as sand,

Bestar the mystic pupils of their eyes.

 

Owls

 

Beneath the shades of sombre yews,

The silent owls sit ranged in rows,

Like ancient idols, strangely pose,

And darting fiery eyes, they muse.

 

Immovable, they sit and gaze,

Until the melancholy hour,

At which the darknesses devour

The faded sunset’s slanting rays.

 

Their attitude, instructs the wise,

That he within this world who flies

From tumult and from merriment;

 

The man allured by a passing face,

 

For ever bears the chastisement

 

Of having wished to change his place.

 

Music

 

Oft Music possesses me like the seas!

 

To my planet pale,

‘Neath a ceiling of mist, in the lofty breeze,

 

I set my sail.

 

With inflated lungs and expanded chest,

 

Like to a sail,

On the backs of the heaped-up billows I rest

 

Which the shadows veil

 

I feel all the anguish within me arise

 

Of a ship in distress;

The tempest, the rain, ‘neath the lowering skies,

 

My body caress:

 

At times, the calm pool or the mirror clear

Of my despair!

 

The Joyous Defunct

 

Where snails abound in a juicy soil,

I will dig for myself a fathomless grave,

Where at leisure mine ancient bones I can coil,

And sleep quite forgotten like a shark ‘neath the wave.

 

I hate every tomb I abominate wills,

And rather than tears from the world to implore,

I would ask of the crows with their vampire bills

To devour every bit of my carcass impure.

 

Oh worms, without eyes, without ears, black friends!

To you a defunct-one, rejoicing, descends,

Enlivened Philosophers offspring of Dung!

 

Without any qualms, o’er my wreckage spread,

And tell if some torment there still can be wrung

For this soul-less old frame that is dead ‘midst the dead!

 

The Broken Bell

 

How sweet and bitter, on a winter night,

Beside the palpitating fire to list,

As, slowly, distant memories alight,

To sounds of chimes that sing across the mist.

 

Oh, happy is that bell with hearty throat,

Which neither age nor time can e’er defeat,

Which faithfully uplifts its pious note,

Like an ag&d soldier on his beat.

 

For me, my soul is cracked, and ‘mid her cares,

Would often fill with her songs the midnight airs;

And oft it chances that her feeble moan

 

Is like the wounded warrior’s fainting groan,

W T ho by a lake of blood, ‘neath bodies slain,

In anguish falls, and never moves again.

 

Spleen

 

The rainy moon of all the world is weary,

And from its urn a gloomy cold pours down,

Upon the pallid inmates of the mortuary,

And on the neighbouring-outskirts of the town.

 

My wasted cat, in searching for a litter,

Bestirs its mangy paws from post to post;

(A poet’s soul that wanders in the gutter,

With the jaded voice of a shiv’ring ghost).

 

The smoking pine-log, while the drone laments,

Accompanies the wheezy pendulum,

The while