The Vampyre

You invaded my sorrowful heart
Like the sudden stroke of a blade;
Bold as a lunatic troupe
Of demons in drunken parade,

You in my mortified soul
Made your bed and your domain;
Abhorrence, to whom 1 am bound
As the convict is to the chain,

As the drunkard is to the jug,
As the gambler to the game,
As to the vermin the corpse,
I damn you, out of my shame!

And I prayed to the eager sword
To win my deliverance,
And have asked the perfidious vial
To redeem my cowardice.

Alas! the vial and the sword
Disdainfully said to me;
'You are not worthy to lift
From your wretched slavery,

You fool! if from her command
Our efforts delivered you forth,
Your kisses would waken again
Your vampire lover's corpse!'

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

Reversibility

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Spleen

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

A Phantom II: The Perfume

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Dream Of A Curious Man

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

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The Metamorphoses Of The Vampire

Twisting and writhing like a snake on fiery sands,
Kneading her breast against her corset's metal bands,
The woman, meanwhile, from her mouth of strawberry
Let flow these fragrant words of musky mystery:
'I have the moistest lip, and well 1 know the skill
Within a bed's soft heart, to lose the moral will.
I dry up all your tears on my triumphant bust
And make the old ones laugh like children, in their lust.
I take the place for those who see my naked arts
Of moon and of the sun and all the other stars.
I am, my dear savant, so studied in my charms
That when I stifle men within my ardent arms
Or when I give my breast to their excited bites,
Shy or unrestrained, of passionate delight,
On all those mattresses that swoon in ecstasy
Even helpless angels damn themselves ...

Charles Baudelaire

Condemned Women: Delphine And Hippolyta

Within the dwindling glow of light from languid lamps,
Sunk in the softest cushions soaked with heady scent,
Hippolyta lay dreaming of the thrilling touch
That spread apart the veil of her young innocence.

She searched with troubled eye, afflicted by the storm,
For the once-distant sky of her naivety,
A voyager who turns and looks beyond the wake
To blue horizons which had once been overhead.

The heavy tears that fell from dull and weary eyes,
The broken look, the stupor, the voluptuousness,
Her conquered arms thrown down, surrendered in the field,
All strangely served her still, to show her fragile charm.

Stretched calmly at her feet, joyfully satisfied,
Delphine looked up at her with those compelling eyes
Like a strong animal that oversees her prey,<...

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 Irreparable

Can we suppress the old Remorse
Who bends our heart beneath his stroke,
Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse,
Or as the acorn on the oak?
Can we suppress the old Remorse?

Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell,
May we drown this our ancient foe,
Destructive glutton, gorging well,
Patient as the ants, and slow?
What wine, what philtre, or what spell?

Tell it, enchantress, if you can,
Tell me, with anguish overcast,
Wounded, as a dying man,
Beneath the swift hoofs hurrying past.
Tell it, enchantress, if you can,

To him the wolf already tears
Who sees the carrion pinions wave,
This broken warrior who despairs
To have a cross above his grave--
This wretch the wolf already tears.

Can one illume a leaden sky,
Or tear ap...

Charles Baudelaire

The Irreparable

How can we kill the long, the old Remorse
That lives, writhes, twists itself
And mines us as the worm devours the dead,
The cankerworm the oak?
How can we choke the old, the long Remorse?

And what brew, or what philtre, or what wine
Could drown this enemy,
As deadly as the avid courtesan,
And patient as the ant?
In what brew? in what philtre? in what wine?

Oh, say it if you know, sweet sorceress!
To this my anguished soul,
Like one who's dying, crushed by wounded men,
Stamped, trampled by a horse's hoof.
Oh, say it if you know, sweet sorceress,

To this man whom the wolf already sniffs
And whom the crow surveys,
This broken soldier! Must he then despair
Of having cross and tomb,
This dying man the wolf already sniffs!

Charles Baudelaire

The Murderer's Wine

My wife is dead and I am free!
And I can guzzle all I want.
When I came home without a cent
Her crying knifed the heart in me.

I am as happy as a king;
The air is pure, the sky divine...
We had such sky another time
When first our love was blossoming!

The awful thirst I feel today
Would need, to get it rightly slaked,
All of the wine that it would take
To fill her tomb; - a lot to say:

I threw her in a well, and then
I even pitched some heavy stones
Out of the well-curb on her bones.
0, I'll forget her, if I can!

Naming those vows of tenderness
From which no power can set us free,
To reconcile us, as when we
Loved with a drunken happiness,

One night, along a road I named,
I begged her for a rendezvous.

Charles Baudelaire