Dream Of A Curious Man

for F.N.

Do you, as I do, know a zesty grief,
And is it said of you, 'curious man!'
I dreamed of dying; in my spirit's heat
Desire and horror mixed, a strange mischance;

Anguish and ardent hope were tightly knit;
The more the fatal glass was drained of sand
The more I suffered, and I savoured it;
My heart pulled out of the familiar, and

I was a child, eager to see a play,
Hating the curtain standing in the way...
At last the chilling verity came on:

Yes, I was dead, and in the dreadful dawn
Was wrapped. And what! That's all there is to tell?
The screen was raised, and I was waiting still.

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.

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English

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The Inquisitive Mans Dream

Do you know, as I do, delicious sadness
and make others say of you: Strange man!
I was dying. In my soul, singular illness,
desire and horror were mingled as one:

anguish and living hope, no factious bile.
The more the fatal sand ran out, the more
acute, delicious my torment: my heart entire
was tearing itself away from the world I saw.

I was like a child eager for the spectacle,
hating the curtain as one hates an obstacle
at last the truth was chillingly revealed:

Id died without surprise, dreadful morning
enveloped me. Was this all there was to see?
The curtain had risen, and I was still waiting.

Charles Baudelaire

Semper Eadem

You said, there grows within you some strange gloom,
A sea rising on rock, why is it so?
When once your heart has brought its harvest home
Life is an evil! (secret all men know),

A simple sorrow, not mysterious,
And, like your joy, it sparkles for us all.
So, lovely one, be not so curious!
And even though your voice is sweet, be still!

Be quiet silly girl! Soul of delight!
Mouth of the childish laugh! More, still, than Life
Death holds us often in the subtlest ways.

So let my heart be lost within a lie,
As in a sweet dream, plunge into your eyes
And sleep a long time in your lashes' shade.

Charles Baudelaire

The Death-Dream

Who, now, put dreams into thy slumbering mind?
Who, with bright Fear's lean taper, crossed a hand
Athwart its beam, and stooping, truth maligned,
Spake so thy spirit speech should understand,
And with a dread "He's dead!" awaked a peal
Of frenzied bells along the vacant ways
Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal,
Like dawn distraught upon unhappy days,
To prove nought, nothing? Was it Time's large voice
Out of the inscrutable future whispered so?
Or but the horror of a little noise
Earth wakes at dead of night? Or does Love know
When his sweet wings weary and droop, and even
In sleep cries audibly a shrill remorse?
Or, haply, was it I who out of dream
Stole but a little where shadows course,
Called back to thee across the eternal stream?

Walter De La Mare

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

The Voice

I was the height of a folio, my bed just
backed on the bookcases sombre Babel,
everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust
jumbled together: novel, science, fable.


Two voices spoke to me. One, firmly, slyly,
said: The Earths a cake filled with sweetness:
I can give you (and your pleasure will be
endless!) an appetite of comparable vastness.


The other said: Come! Come voyage in dream,
beyond the known, beyond the possible!
And that one sang like the ocean breeze,
phantom, from who knows where, its wail


caressing the ear, and yet still frightening.
You I answered: Yes! Gentle voice! My
wound and what, Id call my fatality, begins
alas, from then. From behind the scenery


of vast existence, in voids without light,

Charles Baudelaire

To A Woman Passing By

Around me roared the nearly deafening street.
Tall, slim, in mourning, in majestic grief,
A woman passed me, with a splendid hand
Lifting and swinging her festoon and hem;

Nimble and stately, statuesque ofleg.
I, shaking like an addict, from her eye,
Black sky, spawner of hurricanes, drank in
Sweetness that fascinates, pleasure that kills.

One lightning flash... then night! Sweet fugitive
Whose glance has made me suddenly reborn,
Will we not meet again this side of death?

Far from this place! too late! never perhaps!
Neither one knowing where the other goes,
O you I might have loved, as well you know!

Charles Baudelaire