Fin de Siècle

Fin de Siècle - Charles Baudelaire

Death of Lovers

We shall have beds suffused with faint perfumes,
We'll have divans that are as deep as graves,
And on the mantelpiece outlandish blooms
That blossomed for us in our better days.

Using their final warmth to view together,
Our two hearts will blaze our, great beacon fires,
Like double flames reflecting one another
In both our minds, mirrors of twin desires.

One evening, mystical in rose and blue,
A final gleam will pass between us two,
A sob that bears the weight of long farewell;

And afterward an Angel, opening wide
With faith and joy the doorways of the cell,
Lights tarnished mirrors and the flames that died

Discourse

Your rose-clear beauty is an autumn sky!
But seas of sadness swelled in me have spilt
Upon my lips; The tide has left to dry
The pungent traces of its bitter silt.

Your fingers stroke my heart in vain, because
That place you seek, dear friend, is torn apart
By women's talons and ferocious jaws.
Seek it no more; the beasts devoured my heart.

My heart's a place tarnished by the crowd;
They murder here, they riot here, they swill!
Around your nude breast swims a perfumed cloud!…

O Beauty, scourge of souls, this is your will!
And with your eyes of flame, brilliant as feasts,
Incinerate the shreds left by the beasts!

Sorrows of the Moon

Tonight the moon dreams in a deeper languidness,
And, like a beauty on her cushions, lies at rest;
While drifting off to sleep, a tentative caress
Seeks, with a gentle hand, the contour of her breast;

As on a crest above her silken avalanche,
Dying, she yields herself to an unending swoon
And sees a pallid vision everywhere she'd glance,
In the azure sky where blossoms have been strewn.

When sometimes, in her weariness, upon our sphere
She might permit herself to shed a furtive tear,,
A poet of great piety, a foe of sleep,

Catches in the hollow of his hand that tear,
An opal fragment, iridescent as a star;
Within his heart, far from the sun, it's buried deep.

The Rebel

An Angel struck in fury like an eagle's claw
He seized the miscreant's forelock in a solid hand,
And shaking him he said, "You shall obey the law!
(Because I am your Angel, hear me?) I command!

"Know now that you must learn to love - with no grimace -
The poor, the evil ones, the gnarled, those dazed of eye,
In order to prepare for Jesus, when he'll pass,
A fine, triumphal carpet of your charity.

"For such is Love! Before your heart and feelings cloy,
Kindle, to God's great glory, once again your joy;
That is the true, the lasting ecstasy to choose!"

My word! The Angel chastened him he loved, his fist,
That of a giant, torturing the poor accursed;
But always the condemned one answered: "I refuse!"