The Happy Corpse

In a rich land, fertile, replete with snails
I'd like to dig myself a spacious pit
Where I might spread at leisure myoid bones
And sleep unnoticed, like a shark at sea.

I hate both testaments and epitaphs;
Sooner than beg remembrance from the world
I would, alive, invite the hungry crows
To bleed my tainted carcass inch by inch.

O worms! dark playmates minus ear or eye,
Prepare to meet a free and happy corpse;
Droll philosophies, children of rottenness,

Go then along my ruin guiltlessly,
And say if any torture still exists
For this old soulless corpse, dead with the dead!

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

Letter to Sainte-Beuve

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

The Irreparable

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Obsession

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Elevation

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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

A Carcass

Remember, my love, the object we saw
That beautiful morning in June:
By a bend in the path a carcass reclined
On a bed sown with pebbles and stones;

Her legs were spread out like a lecherous whore,
Sweating out poisonous fumes,
Who opened in slick invitational style
Her stinking and festering womb.

The sun on this rottenness focused its rays
To cook the cadaver till done,
And render to Nature a hundredfold gift
Of all she'd united in one.

And the sky cast an eye on this marvellous meat
As over the flowers in bloom.
The stench was so wretched that there on the grass
You nearly collapsed in a swoon.

The flies buzzed and droned on these bowels of filth
Where an army of maggots arose,
Which flowed with a liquid and thickening stre...

Charles Baudelaire

A Rotting Carcase

My soul, do you remember the object we saw
on what was a fine summers day:
at the paths far corner, a shameful corpse
on the gravel-bed, darkly lay,

legs in the air, like a lecherous woman,
burning and oozing with poisons,
revealing, with nonchalance, cynicism,
the belly ripe with its exhalations.

The sun shone down on that rot and mould,
as if to grill it completely,
and render to Nature a hundredfold
what shed once joined so sweetly:

and the sky gazed at that noble carcass,
like a flower, now blossoming.
The stench was so great, that there, on the grass,
you almost considered fainting.

The flies buzzed away on its putrid belly,
from which black battalions slid,
larvae, that flowed in thickening liquid
the length of t...

Charles Baudelaire

Burial

If on some woebegone night
A generous Christian soul
Behind an old garbage-dump, might
Drop your proud corpse in a hole,

When the chaste stars are nodding their heads
And closing their eyes to the earth,
There the spider will weave her web,
While the viper is giving birth;

You will listen the whole long year
Above your cursed bones
To wolvish howls, and then

To starving witches' moans,
Frolics of dirty old men,
Plottings of black racketeers.

Charles Baudelaire

Spleen

More memories than if I'd lived a thousand years!

A giant chest of drawers, stuffed to the full
With balance sheets, love letters, lawsuits, verse
Romances, locks of hair rolled in receipts,
Hides fewer secrets than my sullen skull.
It is a pyramid, a giant vault
Holding more corpses than a common grave.
I am a graveyard hated by the moon
Where like remorse the long worms crawl, and turn
Attention to the dearest of my dead.
I am a dusty boudoir where are heaped
Yesterday's fashions, and where withered roses,
Pale pastels, and faded old Bouchers,
Alone, breathe perfume from an opened flask.

Nothing is longer than the limping days
When under heavy snowflakes of the years,
Ennui, the fruit of dulling lassitude,
Takes on the size of immortality.

Charles Baudelaire

The Digging Skeleton

I


In the anatomical plates
displayed on the dusty quays
where many a dry book sleeps
mummified, as in ancient days,


drawings to which the gravity
and skill of some past artist,
despite the gloomy subject
have communicated beauty,


youll see, and it renders those
gruesome mysteries more complete,
flayed men, and skeletons posed,
farm-hands, digging the soil at their feet.



II


Peasants, dour and resigned,
convicts pressed from the grave,
whats the strange harvest, say,
for which you hack the ground,


bending your backbones there,
flexing each fleshless sinew,
what farmers barn must you
labour to fill with such care?


Do you seek to show  by tha...

Charles Baudelaire

Skeletons Digging

I.

In anatomical designs
That hang about these dusty quays
Where books' cadavers lie and sleep
Like mummies of the ancient times,

Drawings of which the gravity
And the engraver's knowing hand,
Although the theme be less than grand,
Communicate an artistry,

One sees, which renders more intense
The horror and the mystery,
Like field-hands working wearily
Some skeletons and skinless men.


II.

Out of the land you're digging there,
Obedient and woeful drones,
With all the effort of your bones,
Of all your muscles, stripped and bare,

Say, what strange harvest do you farm,
Convicts from the charnel house,
And what contractor hired you out
To fill what farmer's empty barn?

Do you (our dreadfu...

Charles Baudelaire