Sisina

Picture Diana decked out for the chase,
Charging through forests, beating brush aside,
Drunk with the action, wind around her face,
Breast bare, her finest horsemen left behind!

You've seen Theroigne, carnage in her heart,
Rousing the shoeless masses to resist,
Cheek and eye blazing, playing out her part,
Mounting the royal stair, sabre in fist?

Such is Sisina, but the gentle knight
Within her heart can love as well as fight;
Though spurred by powder and by drums, her nerve

Before her suppliants lays arms to earth,
And her flame-ravaged heart keeps in reserve
A well of tears, for those who've proved their worth.

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 Head Of Hair

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

A Carcass

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

The Harmony Of Evening

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Je nai pas oublié, voisine de la ville

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

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Allegory

Picture a beauty, shoulders rich and fine,
Letting her long hair trail into her wine.
Talons of love, the poison tooth of sin
Slip and are dulled against her granite skin.
She laughs at Death and flouts Debauchery;
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Gouge and destroy, still keep a strange regard
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A goddess, or a sultan's regal wife
A faithful Paynim of voluptuous life
Her eyes call mortal beings to the charms
Of ready breasts, between her open arms.
She feels, she knows - this maid, this barren girl
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The gift of body's beauty is sublime
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The Goddess

Who comes? The sentrys warning cry
Rings sharply on the evening air:
Who comes? The challenge: no reply,
Yet something motions there.

A woman, by those graceful folds;
A soldier, by that martial tread:
Advance three paces. Halt! until
Thy name and rank be said.

My name? Her name, in ancient song,
Who fearless from Olympus came:
Look on me! Mortals know me best
In battle and in flame.

Enough! I know that clarion voice;
I know that gleaming eye and helm,
Those crimson lips, and in their dew
The best blood of the realm.

The young, the brave, the good and wise,
Have fallen in thy curst embrace:
The juices of the grapes of wrath
Still stain thy guilty face.

My brother lies in yonder field,
Face downwa...

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Sir Galahad

My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
The hard brands shiver on the steel,
The splinter'd spear-shafts crack and fly,
The horse and rider reel:
They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
And when the tide of combat stands,
Perfume and flowers fall in showers,
That lightly rain from ladies' hands.

How sweet are looks that ladies bend
On whom their favours fall !
For them I battle till the end,
To save from shame and thrall:
But all my heart is drawn above,
My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine:
I never felt the kiss of love,
Nor maiden's hand in mine.
More bounteous aspects on me beam,
Me mightier...

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Femmes Damnées

Like pensive cattle, lying on the sands,
they turn their eyes towards the seas far hills,
and, feet searching each others, touching hands,
know sweet languor and the bitterest thrills.


Some, where the stream babbles, deep in the woods,
their hearts enamoured of long intimacies,
go spelling out the loves of their own girlhoods,
and carving the green bark of young trees.


Others, like Sisters, walk, gravely and slow,
among the rocks, full of apparitions,
where Saint Anthony saw, like lava flows,
the bared crimson breasts of his temptations.


There are those, in the melting candles glimmer,
who in mute hollows of caves still pagan,
call on you to relieve their groaning fever,
O Bacchus, to soothe the remorse of the ancients!
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Beatrice

Through fields of ash, burnt, without verdure,
where I was complaining one day to Nature,
and slowly sharpened the knife of my thought,
as I wandered aimlessly, against my heart,
I saw descend, at noon, on my brow,
a storm-filled and a sinister cloud,
holding a vicious demonic horde,
resembling cruel, and curious dwarfs.
They gazing at me, considering me, as cool
as passers-by admiring a fool,
I heard them laughing and whispering in synch,
exchanging many a nudge and a wink:

 Lets contemplate this caricature,
this Hamlets shadow, echoing his posture,
his indecisive looks, and wild hair.
Its a shame to see that epicure there,
that pauper, that actor on holiday, that droll
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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