Charles Baudelaire

The Balcony
Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses,
O you, all my pleasures! O you, all my learning!
You will remember the joy of caresses,
the sweetness of home and the beauty of evening,
Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses!
On evenings lit by the glow of the ashes
and on the balcony, veiled, rose-coloured, misted,
how gentle your breast was, how good your heart to me!
We have said things meant for eternity,
on evenings lit by the glow of the ashes.
How lovely the light is on sultry evenings!
How deep the void grows! How powerful the heart is!
As I leaned towards you, queen of adored ones
I thought I breathed perfume from your blood’s kiss.
How lovely the light is on sultry evenings!
The night it was thickening and closing around us,
and my eyes in the dark were divining your glance,
and I drank your nectar. Oh sweetness! Oh poison!
your feet held, here, in these fraternal hands.
The night it was thickening and closing around us.
I know how to summon up happiest moments,
and relive my past, there, curled, touching your knees.
What good to search for your languorous beauties
but in your dear body, and your heart so sweet?
I know how to summon up happiest moments!
Those vows, those perfumes, those infinite kisses,
will they be reborn, from gulfs beyond soundings,
as the suns that are young again climb in the sky,
after they’ve passed through the deepest of drownings?
-O vows! O perfumes! O infinite kisses

Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.

Le Gout du Néant
Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte,
L'Espoir, dont l'éperon attisait ton ardeur,
Ne veut plus t'enfourcher! Couche-toi sans pudeur,
Vieux cheval dont le pied à chaque obstacle bute.

Cats
They are alike, prim scholar and perfervid lover:
When comes the season of decay, they both decide
Upon sweet, husky cats to be the household pride;
Cats choose, like them, to sit, and like them, shudder.
Like partisans of carnal dalliance and science,
They search for silence and the shadowings of dread;
Hell well might harness them as horses for the dead,
If it could bend their native proudness in compliance.
In reverie they emulate the noble mood
Of giant sphinxes stretched in depths of solitude
Who seem to slumber in a never-ending dream;
Within their fertile loins a sparkling magic lies;
Finer than any sand are dusts of gold that gleam,
Vague starpoints, in the mystic iris of their eyes.

Correspondences
Nature is a temple whose living colonnades
Breathe forth a mystic speech in fitful sighs;
Man wanders among symbols in those glades
Where all things watch him with familiar eyes.
Like dwindling echoes gathered far away
Into a deep and thronging unison
Huge as the night or as the light of day,
All scents and sounds and colors meet as one.
Perfumes there are as sweet as the oboe's sound,
Green as the prairies, fresh as a child's caress,
- And there are others, rich, corrupt, profound
And of an infinite pervasiveness,
Like myrrh, or musk, or amber, the excite
The ecstasies of sense, the soul's delight.

We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.

There exist only three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the soldier, the poet. To know, to kill, to create.

De Profundis Clamavi
Have pity, You alone whom I adore
From down this black pit where my heart is sped,
A sombre universe ringed round with lead
Where fear and curses the long night explore.
Six months a cold sun hovers overhead;
The other six is night upon this land.
No beast; no stream; no wood; no leaves expand.
The desert Pole is not a waste so dead.
Now in the whole world there's no horror quite
so cold and cruel as this glacial sun,
So like old Chaos as this boundless night;
I envy the least animals that run,
Which can find respite in brute slumber drowned,
So slowly is the skein of time unwound.

Anywhere Out of the World
This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds;
one man would like to
suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health
beside the window.
It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not, and this
question of removal is one
which I discuss incessantly with my soul.
'Tell me, my soul, poor chilled soul, what do you think of going to live in Lisbon? It
must be warm there, and there
you would invigorate yourself like a lizard. This city is on the sea-shore; they say that
it is built of marble
and that the people there have such a hatred of vegetation that they uproot all the
trees. There you have a landscape
that corresponds to your taste! a landscape made of light and mineral, and liquid to
reflect them!'
My soul does not reply.
'Since you are so fond of stillness, coupled with the show of movement, would you like
to settle in Holland,
that beatifying country? Perhaps you would find some diversion in that land whose
image you have so often admired
in the art galleries. What do you think of Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts,
and ships moored at the foot of
houses?'
My soul remains silent.
'Perhaps Batavia attracts you more? There we should find, amongst other things, the
spirit of Europe
married to tropical beauty.'
Not a word. Could my soul be dead?
'Is it then that you have reached such a degree of lethargy that you acquiesce in your
sickness? If so, let us
flee to lands that are analogues of death. I see how it is, poor soul! We shall pack our
trunks for Tornio. Let us go
farther still to the extreme end of the Baltic; or farther still from life, if that is possible;
let us settle at the Pole. There
the sun only grazes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternation of light and darkness
suppresses variety and
increases monotony, that half-nothingness. There we shall be able to take long baths
of darkness, while for our
amusement the aurora borealis shall send us its rose-coloured rays that are like the
reflection of Hell's own
fireworks!'
At last my soul explodes, and wisely cries out to me: 'No matter where! No matter
where! As long as it's out
of the world!'

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.