The Blind

Consider them, my soul, they are a fright!
Like mannequins, vaguely ridiculous,
Peculiar, terrible somnambulists,
Beaming - who can say where - their eyes of night.

These orbs, in which a spark is never seen,
As if in looking far and wide stay raised
On high; they never seem to cast their gaze
Down to the street, head hung, as in a dream.

Thus they traverse the blackness of their days,
Kin to the silence of eternity.
o city! while you laugh and roar and play,

Mad with your lusts to point of cruelty,
Look at me! dragging, dazed more than their kind.
What in the Skies can these men hope to find?

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 Snake That Dances

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Destruction

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

A Voyage To Cythera

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

My Earlier Life

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

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Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Seven Old Man

City of swarming, city full of dreams
Where ghosts in daylight tug the stroller's sleeve!
Mysteries everywhere run like the sap
That fills this great colossus' conduits.

One morning, while along the sombre street
The houses, rendered taller by the mist,
Seemed to be towering wharves at riverside,
And while (our stage-set like the actor's soul)

A dirty yellow steam filled all the space,
I followed, with a hero's iron nerve
To set against my spirit's lassitude,
The district streets shaken by rumbling carts.

Then, an old man whose yellowed rags
Were imitations of the rainy sky,
At whose sight charity might have poured down,
Without the evil glitter in his eyes,

Appeared quite suddenly to me. I'd say
His eye was steeped in gall; his gl...

Charles Baudelaire

Gaming

In faded chairs, the pale old courtesans,
Eyebrows painted, eye of fatal calm,
Smirking, and letting drop from skinny ears
Those jingling sounds of metal and of stone;

Around green cloth, the faces without lips,
Lips without colour over toothless jaws,
And fingers twisted by infernal fires,
Digging in pockets, or in panting breast;

Under the filthy ceilings, chandeliers
And lamps of oil doling out their glow
Over the brilliant poets' gloomy brows,
Who come to squander here their bloody sweat;

This is the black tableau that in my dream
I see unroll before my prescient eye.
There in an idle corner of that den
I see myself-cold, mute, and envying,

Envious of these men's tenacious lust,
The morbid gaiety of these old whores,
Traff...

Charles Baudelaire

The Seven Old Men

Ant-like city, city full of dreams,
where the passer-by, at dawn, meets the spectre!
Mysteries everywhere are the sap that streams
through the narrow veins of this great ogre.


One morning, when, on the dreary street,
the buildings all seemed heightened, cold
a swollen rivers banks carved out to greet,
(their stage-set mirroring an actors soul),


the dirty yellow fog that flooded space,
arguing with my already weary soul,
steeling my nerves like a hero, I paced
suburbs shaken by the carts drum-roll.


Suddenly, an old man in rags, their yellow
mirroring the colour of the rain-filled sky,
whose looks alone prompted alms to flow,
except for the evil glittering of his eye,


appeared. Youd have thought his eyeballs

Charles Baudelaire

The Seven Old Men

O swarming city, city full of dreams,
Where in a full day the spectre walks and speaks;
Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins
My story flows as flows the rising sap.

One morn, disputing with my tired soul,
And like a hero stiffening all my nerves,
I trod a suburb shaken by the jar
Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified
The houses either side of that sad street,
So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood
Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist,
Unclean and yellow, inundated space
A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul.
Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags
Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks
Should have brought alms in floods upon his head,
Without the misery gleaming in his eye,
Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed

Charles Baudelaire

The Game

Old courtesans in washed-out armchairs,
pale, eyebrows blacked, eyes tender, fatal,
simpering still, and from their skinny ears
loosing their waterfalls of stone and metal:


Round the green baize, faces without lips,
lips without blood, jaws without the rest,
clawed fingers that the hellish fever grips,
fumbling an empty pocket, heaving breast:


below soiled ceilings, rows of pallid lights,
and huge candelabras shed their glimmer,
across the brooding brows of famous poets:
here its their blood and sweat they squander:


this the dark tableau of nocturnal dream
my clairvoyant eye once watched unfold.
In an angle of that silent lair, I leaned
hard on my elbows, envious, mute, and cold,


yes, envying that crews ten...

Charles Baudelaire

The Living Flame

They pass before me, these Eyes full of light,
Eyes made magnetic by some angel wise;
The holy brothers pass before my sight,
And cast their diamond fires in my dim eyes.

They keep me from all sin and error grave,
They set me in the path whence Beauty came;
They are my servants, and I am their slave,
And all my soul obeys the living flame.

Beautiful Eyes that gleam with mystic light
As candles lighted at full noon; the sun
Dims not your flame phantastical and bright.

You sing the dawn; they celebrate life done;
Marching you chaunt my soul's awakening hymn,
Stars that no sun has ever made grow dim!

Charles Baudelaire