Man And The Sea

Free man, you'll love the ocean endlessly!
It is your mirror, you observe your soul
In how its billows endlessly unroll
Your spirit's bitter depths are there to see.

You plunge in joy to your reflection's core,
With eyes and heart seizing it all along;
Your heart sometimes neglects its proper song
Distracted by the ocean's savage roar.

The two of you are subtle, shadowy:
Man, none has sounded your profound recess;
O sea, none knows the richness of your depths
Since you protect your secrets jealously!

And yet, because you both love death and strife,
You've fought each other through the endless years
With no remorse, without a pitying tear
Relentless brothers, enemies for life!

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

I Give To You These Verses

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

The Stranger

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

The Sunset Of Romanticism

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

The Invitation To The Voyage

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

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At Sea.

As a brave man faces the foe,
Alone against hundreds, and sees Death grin in his teeth,
But, shutting his lips, fights on to the end
Without speech, without hope, without flinching,--
So, silently, grimly, the steamer
Lurches ahead through the night.

A beacon-light far off,
Twinkling across the waves like a star!
But no star in the dark overhead!
The splash of waters at the prow, and the evil light
Of the death-fires flitting like will-o'-the-wisps beneath! And beyond
Silence and night!

I sit by the taffrail,
Alone in the dark and the blown cold mist and the spray,
Feeling myself swept on irresistibly,
Sunk in the night and the sea, and made one with their footfall-less onrush,
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Heautontimoroumenos

for J.G.F.

I'll strike you without rage or hate
The way a butcher strikes his block,
The way that Moses smote the rock!
So that your eyes may irrigate

My dry Sahara, I'll allow
The tears to flow of your distress.
Desire, that hope embellishes,
Will swim along the overflow

As ships set out for voyaging,
And like a drum that beats the charge
In my infatuated heart
The echoes of your sobs will ring!

But am I not a false accord
Within the holy symphony,
Thanks to voracious Irony
Who gnaws on me and shakes me hard?

She's in my voice, in all I do!
Her poison flows in all my veins!
I am the looking-glass of pain
Where she regards herself, the shrew!

I am the wound, and rapier!
I am the cheek, I am the ...

Charles Baudelaire

Composed By The Seashore

What mischief cleaves to unsubdued regret,
How fancy sickens by vague hopes beset;
How baffled projects on the spirit prey,
And fruitless wishes eat the heart away,
The Sailor knows; he best, whose lot is cast
On the relentless sea that holds him fast
On chance dependent, and the fickle star
Of power, through long and melancholy war.
O sad it is, in sight of foreign shores,
Daily to think on old familiar doors,
Hearths loved in childhood, and ancestral floors;
Or, tossed about along a waste of foam,
To ruminate on that delightful home
Which with the dear Betrothed 'was' to come;
Or came and was and is, yet meets the eye
Never but in the world of memory;
Or in a dream recalled, whose smoothest range
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Obsession

Great forests you frighten me, like vast cathedrals:
You roar like an organ, and in our condemned souls,
aisles of eternal mourning, where past death-rattles
sound, the echo of your De Profundis rolls.

I hate you, Ocean! My mind, in your tumultuous main,
sees itself: I hear the vast laughter of your seas,
the bitter laughter of defeated men,
filled with the sound of sobs and blasphemies.

How you would please me without your stars, O Night!
I know the language that their light employs!
Since I search for darkness, nakedness, the Void!

But the shadows themselves seem, to my sight
canvases, where thousands of lost beings, alive,
and with a familiar gaze, leap from my eyes.

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

Ingratitude.

Full on the wave the moonlight weeps,
To quiet its weary breast;
Cruelly cold the mad wave leaps,
With the moonshine on its crest;
Or with scowl, or growl, to the shore it creeps,
And sinks to its selfish rest.

Full on yon man-brute smiles the wife,
To gladden his turbid breast;
Savagely stern he seeks the life
Where he erewhile sought for zest;
With a curse, or worse, he ends the strife,
And sinks to his drunken rest.

Sea! has the moon no charms for thee
That can touch thy cruel breast?
Man! cannot woman's charity
Give ease to thy soul oppressed?
Thou shalt flee, O sea! the moon's witchery,
Till man has his final rest!

Charles Sangster