The Cracked Bell

How bittersweet it is on winter nights
To hear old recollections raise themselves
Around the flickering fire's wisps of light
And through the mist, in voices of the bells.

Blessed is the bell of clear and virile throat
Alert and dignified despite his rust,
Who faithfully repeats religion's notes
As an old soldier keeps a watchman's trust.

My spirit, though, is cracked; when as she can
She chants to fill the cool night's emptiness,
Too often can her weakening voice be said

To sound the rattle of a wounded man
Beside a bloody pool, stacked with the dead,
Who cannot budge, and dies in fierce distress!

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

Every Man His Chimera

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Danse macabre

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

The Sadness Of The Moon

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Il aimait à la voir

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

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The Cracked Bell - (Twelve Translations From Charles Baudelaire)

    'Tis bitter-sweet, when winter nights are long,
        To watch, beside the flames which smoke and twist,
    The distant memories which slowly throng,
        Brought by the chime soft-singing through the mist.

    Happy the sturdy, vigorous-throated bell
        Who, spite of age alert and confident,
    Cries hourly, like some strong old sentinel
        Flinging the ready challenge from his tent.

    For me, my soul is cracked; when sick with care,
    She strives with songs to people the cold air
        It happens often that her feeble cries

        Mock the harsh rattle of a man who lies
    Wounded, forgotten, 'neath a mound of slain
    And dies, pinned fast, writhing his limbs in pain.

John Collings Squire, Sir

The Flawed Bell

Its bitter, yet sweet, on wintry nights,
near to the fire that crackles and fumes,
listening while, far-off, slow memories rise
to echoing chimes that ring through the gloom.

Lucky indeed, the loud-tongued bell
still hale and hearty despite its age,
repeating its pious call, true and well,
like an old trooper in the sentrys cage!

My soul is flawed: when, at boredoms sigh,
it would fill the chill night air with its cry,
it often happens that its voice, enfeebled,

thickens like a wounded mans death-rattle
by a lake of blood, vast heaps of the dying,
who ends, without moving, despite his trying.

Charles Baudelaire

The Little Old Women

for Victor Hugo

I.

In sinuous coils of the old capitals
Where even horror weaves a magic spell,
Gripped by my fatal humours, I observe
Singular beings with appalling charms.

These dislocated wrecks were women once,
Were Eponine or Lais! hunchbacked freaks,
Though broken let us love them! they are souls.
Under cold rags, their shredded petticoats,

They creep, lashed by the merciless north wind,
Quake from the riot of an omnibus,
Clasp by their sides like relics of a saint
Embroidered bags of flowery design;

They toddle, every bit like marionettes,
Or drag themselves like wounded animals,
Or dance against their will, poor little bells
That a remorseless demon rings! Worn out

They are, yet they have eyes piercing like...

Charles Baudelaire

The Beacons

Ubens, oblivious garden of indolence,
Pillow of cool flesh where no man dreams of love,
Where life flows forth in troubled opulence,
As airs in heaven and seas in ocean move.

Leonard Da Vinci, sombre and fathomless glass,
Where lovely angels with calm lips that smile,
Heavy with mystery, in the shadow pass,
Among the ice and pines that guard some isle.

Rembrandt, sad hospital that a murmuring fills,
Where one tall crucifix hangs on the walls,
Where every tear-drowned prayer some woe distils,
And one cold, wintry ray obliquely falls.

Strong Michelangelo, a vague far place
Where mingle Christs with pagan Hercules;
Thin phantoms of the great through twilight pace,
And tear their shroud with clenched hands void of ease.

The fighter's anger,...

Charles Baudelaire

Evening Twilight

Heres the criminals friend, delightful evening:
come like an accomplice, with a wolfs loping:
slowly the skys vast vault hides each feature,
and restless man becomes a savage creature.

Evening, sweet evening, desired by him who can say
without his arms proving him a liar: Today
weve worked!  It refreshes, this evening hour,
those spirits that savage miseries devour,
the dedicated scholar with heavy head,
the bowed workman stumbling home to bed.
Yet now unhealthy demons rise again
clumsily, in the air, like busy men,
beat against sheds and arches in their flight.
And among the wind-tormented gas-lights
Prostitution switches on through the streets
opening her passageways like an ant-heap:
weaving her secret tunnels everywhere,
like an enemy pl...

Charles Baudelaire

The Bells

The dangling of bells
...amid faint tingling,
the inspirational nature of their lies
between each peal.

Classical repertoire, then dryness.
Heavy swelter, the green ore
iron casting of the golden bell
clangs into the night.
Its dash against dry stone
a special brand of hideousness.

Naked madness,
the jangle of the noise
torn from the throat of night,
tucked between the rage of sightless villagers;
their torn members
toys of plastic
wedged obscene within the dash of withered bells.

Paul Cameron Brown