Misty Sky

A vapour seems to hide your face from view;
Your mystic eye (is it green, grey, or blue?)
Tender by turns, dreamy or merciless,
Reflects the heavens' pallid indolence.

You call to mind white, mild, enshrouded days
That make enchanted hearts dissolve away,
When, agitated by a twisting ache,
The taut nerves call the spirit to awake.

Sometimes you're like horizons set aglow
By suns in rainy seasons here below...
Like you superb, a watery countryside
That rays enflame out of a misty sky!

O weather! woman! - both seduce me so!
Will I adore as well your frost and snow,
And will I draw from winter's ruthless vice
Pleasures more keen than iron or than ice?

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 Flawed Bell

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

A Voyage To Cythera

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

The Owls

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

La servante au grand coeur dont vous étiez jalouse

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

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Clouded Sky

One would say your gaze was a misted screen:
your strange eyes (are they blue, grey or green?)
changeable, tender, dreamy, cruel, and again
echoing the indolence and pallor of heaven.

You bring me those blank days, mild and hazy,
that melt bewitched hearts into weeping,
when twisted, stirred by some unknown hurt,
our over-stretched nerves mock the numbed spirit.

Often you resemble the loveliest horizons
lit by the suns of foggy seasons....
how splendid you are, a dew-wet country,
inflamed by the rays of a misted sky!

O dangerous woman, o seductive glow,
will I someday adore your frost and snow,
and learn to draw, from implacable winter
sharp-edged as steel or ice, new pleasure?

Charles Baudelaire

Mist And Rain

Late autumns, winters, spring-times steeped in mud,
anaesthetizing seasons! You I praise, and love
for so enveloping my heart and brain
in vaporous shrouds, in sepulchres of rain.


In this vast landscape where chill south winds play,
where long nights hoarsen the shrill weather-vane,
it opens wide its ravens wings, my soul,
freer than in times of mild renewal.


Nothings sweeter to my heart, full of sorrows,
on which the hoar-frost fell in some past time,
O pallid seasons, queens of our clime,


than the changeless look of your pale shadows,
except, two by two, to lay our grief to rest
in some moonless night, on a perilous bed.

Charles Baudelaire

Mists And Rains

Autumn's last days, winters and mud-soaked spring
I praise the stupefaction that you bring
By so enveloping my heart and brain
In shroud of vapours, tomb of mist and rain.

In this great flatness where the chill winds course,
Where through the nights the weather-cock grows hoarse,
My soul, more than in springtime's tepid sky,
Will open out her raven's wings to fly.

O blankest seasons, queens of all my praise,
Nothing is sweet to the funereal breast
That has been steeped in frost and wintriness

But the continuous face of your pale shades
- Except we two, where moonlight never creeps
Daring in bed to put our griefs to sleep.

Charles Baudelaire

Landscape

In order to write my chaste verses Ill lie
like an astrologer near to the sky
and, by the bell-towers, listen in dream
to their solemn hymns on the air-stream.
Hands on chin, from my attics height
Ill see the workshops of song and light,
the gutters, the belfries those masts of the city,
the vast skies that yield dreams of eternity

It is sweet to see stars being born in the blue,
through the mists, the lamps at the windows, too,
the rivers of smoke climbing the firmament,
and the moon pouring out her pale enchantment.
Ill see the springs, summers, autumns glow,
and when winter brings the monotonous snow
Ill close all my doors and shutters tight
and build palaces of faery in the night.
Then Ill dream of blue-wet horizons,
weeping fountains of ...

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

Elevation

Above the ponds, beyond the valleys,
The woods, the mountains, the clouds, the seas,
Farther than the sun, the distant breeze,
The spheres that wilt to infinity

My spirit, you move with agility
And, like a good swimmer who swoons in the wave
You groove the depths immensity gave,
The inexpressible and male ecstasy.

>From this miasma of waste,
You will be purified in superior air
And drink a pure and divine liqueur,
A clear fire to replace the limpid space

Behind this boredom and fatigue, this vast chagrin
Whose weight moves the mists of existence,
Happy is he who vigorously fans the senses
Toward serene and luminous fields - wincing!

The one whose thoughts are like skylarks taken wing
Across the heavens mornings in full flight

Charles Baudelaire