Il aimait à la voir

It was in her white skirts that he loved to see
her run straight through the branches and leaves, gracefully,
but still gauche, and hiding her leg from the light,
when she tore her dress, on the briars, in her flight.

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

The Cat

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Afternoon Song

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Sympathetic Horror

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.

To A Creole Lady

In a perfumed land caressed by the sun
I found, beneath the trees crimson canopy,
palms from which languor pours on ones
eyes, the veiled charms of a Creole lady.


Her hue pale, but warm, a dark-haired enchantress,
she shows in her necks poise the noblest of manners:
slender and tall, she strides by like a huntress,
tranquil her smile, her eyes full of assurance.


If you traveled, my Lady, to the land of true glory,
the banks of the Seine, or green Loire, a Beauty
worthy of gracing the manors of olden days,


youd inspire, among arbours shadowy secrets,
a thousand sonnets in the hearts of the poets,
whom, more than your blacks, your vast eyes would enslave.

Charles Baudelaire

Je nai pas oublié, voisine de la ville

Ive not forgotten, near to the town,
our white house, small but alone:
its Pomona of plaster, its Venus of old
hiding nude limbs in the meagre grove,
and the sun, superb, at evening, streaming,
behind the glass, where its sheaves were bursting,
a huge eye in a curious heaven, present
to gaze at our meal, lengthy and silent,
spreading its beautiful candle glimmer
on the frugal cloth and the rough curtain.

Charles Baudelaire

La servante au grand coeur dont vous étiez jalouse

The great-hearted servant of whom you were jealous,
sleeping her sleep in the humble grass,
shouldnt we take her a few flowers?
The dead, the poor dead, have griefs like ours,
and when October sighs, clipper of trees,
round their marble tombs, with its mournful breeze,
they must find the living, ungratefully, wed,
snug in sleep, to the warmth of their bed,
while they, devoured by dark reflection,
without bedfellow, or sweet conversation,
old skeletons riddled with worms, deep frozen,
feel the winter snows trickling round them,
and the years flow by without kin or friend
to replace the wreaths at their railings end.

If some night, when the logs whistle and flare,
seeing her sitting calm, in that chair,
if on a December night, cold and blue,
I might...

Charles Baudelaire

Je tadore à légal de la voûte nocturne

I adore you, the nocturnal vaults likeness,
o vast taciturnity, o vase of sadness:
I love you, my beauty, the more you flee,
grace of my nights, the more you seem,
to multiply distances, ah ironically,
that bar my arms from the blue immensity.

I advance to the attack, climb to the assault
like a swarm of worms attacking a corpse,
and I cherish, o creature cruel, and implacable,
your coldness that makes you, for me, more beautiful!

Charles Baudelaire

To She Who Is Too Light-Hearted

Your head, your gesture, your air,
are lovely, like a lovely landscape:
laughters alive, in your face,
a fresh breeze in a clear atmosphere.

The dour passer-by you brush past there,
is dazzled by health in flight,
flashing like a brilliant light
from your arms and shoulders.

The resounding colours
with which you sprinkle your dress,
inspire the spirits of poets
with thoughts of dancing flowers.

Those wild clothes are the emblem
of your brightly-hued mind:
madcap by whom Im terrified,
I hate you, and love you, the same!

Sometimes in a lovely garden
where I trailed my listlessness,
Ive felt the sunlight sear my breast
like some ironic weapon:

and Springs green presence
brought such humiliation
Ive ...

Charles Baudelaire

The Lover's Wish.

("Si j'étais la feuille.")

[XXII., September, 1828.]


Oh! were I the leaf that the wind of the West,
His course through the forest uncaring;
To sleep on the gale or the wave's placid breast
In a pendulous cradle is bearing.

All fresh with the morn's balmy kiss would I haste,
As the dewdrops upon me were glancing;
When Aurora sets out on the roseate waste,
And round her the breezes are dancing.

On the pinions of air I would fly, I would rush
Thro' the glens and the valleys to quiver;
Past the mountain ravine, past the grove's dreamy hush,
And the murmuring fall of the river.

By the darkening hollow and bramble-bush lane,
To catch the sweet breath of the roses;
Past the land would I speed, where the sand-driven plain

Victor-Marie Hugo