Burial

If on some woebegone night
A generous Christian soul
Behind an old garbage-dump, might
Drop your proud corpse in a hole,

When the chaste stars are nodding their heads
And closing their eyes to the earth,
There the spider will weave her web,
While the viper is giving birth;

You will listen the whole long year
Above your cursed bones
To wolvish howls, and then

To starving witches' moans,
Frolics of dirty old men,
Plottings of black racketeers.

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was a renowned French poet, essayist, and art critic born on April 9, 1821, in Paris, France. Best known for his collection of poems Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), Baudelaire profoundly influenced the Symbolist and Modernist movements. He led a controversial life, marked by financial difficulties, substance abuse, and relationships with various women. Despite a relatively short life, dying at the age of 46 on August 31, 1867, his work has had a lasting impact on both French and international literature. Baudelaire's writing is characterized by its exploration of beauty, decadence, and the human condition.

Charles Baudelaire

Congenial Horror

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Hymn To Beauty

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Exotic Perfume

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Day's End

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Happy Corpse

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
And sleep unnoticed, like a shark at sea.

I hate both testaments and epitaphs;
Sooner than beg remembrance from the world
I would, alive, invite the hungry crows
To bleed my tainted carcass inch by inch.

O worms! dark playmates minus ear or eye,
Prepare to meet a free and happy corpse;
Droll philosophies, children of rottenness,

Go then along my ruin guiltlessly,
And say if any torture still exists
For this old soulless corpse, dead with the dead!

Charles Baudelaire

A Martyr

Surrounded by flasks, and by spangled lames,
All matter of sumptuous goods,
Marble sculptures, fine paintings, and perfumed peignoirs
That trail in voluptuous folds,

In a room like a greenhouse, both stuffy and warm,
An atmosphere heavy with death,
Where arrangements of flowers encoffined in glass
Exhale their ultimate breath,

A headless cadaver spills out like a stream
On a pillow adorning the bed,
A flow of red blood, which the linen drinks up
With a thirsty meadow's greed.

Like pale apprehensions born in the dark,
And that enchain the eyes,
The head - the pile of its ebony mane
With precious jewels entwined

On the night table, like a ranunculus
Reposes; and a gaze,
Mindless and vague and as black as the dusk
Escapes fr...

Charles Baudelaire

Skeletons Digging

I.

In anatomical designs
That hang about these dusty quays
Where books' cadavers lie and sleep
Like mummies of the ancient times,

Drawings of which the gravity
And the engraver's knowing hand,
Although the theme be less than grand,
Communicate an artistry,

One sees, which renders more intense
The horror and the mystery,
Like field-hands working wearily
Some skeletons and skinless men.


II.

Out of the land you're digging there,
Obedient and woeful drones,
With all the effort of your bones,
Of all your muscles, stripped and bare,

Say, what strange harvest do you farm,
Convicts from the charnel house,
And what contractor hired you out
To fill what farmer's empty barn?

Do you (our dreadfu...

Charles Baudelaire

A Carcass

Remember, my love, the object we saw
That beautiful morning in June:
By a bend in the path a carcass reclined
On a bed sown with pebbles and stones;

Her legs were spread out like a lecherous whore,
Sweating out poisonous fumes,
Who opened in slick invitational style
Her stinking and festering womb.

The sun on this rottenness focused its rays
To cook the cadaver till done,
And render to Nature a hundredfold gift
Of all she'd united in one.

And the sky cast an eye on this marvellous meat
As over the flowers in bloom.
The stench was so wretched that there on the grass
You nearly collapsed in a swoon.

The flies buzzed and droned on these bowels of filth
Where an army of maggots arose,
Which flowed with a liquid and thickening stre...

Charles Baudelaire

A Rotting Carcase

My soul, do you remember the object we saw
on what was a fine summers day:
at the paths far corner, a shameful corpse
on the gravel-bed, darkly lay,

legs in the air, like a lecherous woman,
burning and oozing with poisons,
revealing, with nonchalance, cynicism,
the belly ripe with its exhalations.

The sun shone down on that rot and mould,
as if to grill it completely,
and render to Nature a hundredfold
what shed once joined so sweetly:

and the sky gazed at that noble carcass,
like a flower, now blossoming.
The stench was so great, that there, on the grass,
you almost considered fainting.

The flies buzzed away on its putrid belly,
from which black battalions slid,
larvae, that flowed in thickening liquid
the length of t...

Charles Baudelaire

The Little Old Women

for Victor Hugo

I.

In sinuous coils of the old capitals
Where even horror weaves a magic spell,
Gripped by my fatal humours, I observe
Singular beings with appalling charms.

These dislocated wrecks were women once,
Were Eponine or Lais! hunchbacked freaks,
Though broken let us love them! they are souls.
Under cold rags, their shredded petticoats,

They creep, lashed by the merciless north wind,
Quake from the riot of an omnibus,
Clasp by their sides like relics of a saint
Embroidered bags of flowery design;

They toddle, every bit like marionettes,
Or drag themselves like wounded animals,
Or dance against their will, poor little bells
That a remorseless demon rings! Worn out

They are, yet they have eyes piercing like...

Charles Baudelaire