The Warner

Every man worth the name
has a yellow snake in his soul,
seated as on a throne, saying
if he cries: I want to!: No!


Lock eyes with the fixed gaze
of Nixies or Satyresses, says
the Tooth: Think of your duty!


Make children, or plant trees,
polish verses, or marble frieze,
the Tooth says: Tonight, where will you be?


Whatever he likes to consider
theres never a moment passing
a man cant hear the warning
of that insufferable Viper.

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

Litanies Of Satan

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

Evening Twilight

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

What Will You Say Tonight, Poor Lonely Soul

Charles Baudelaire, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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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

Fortune

One must have courage as strong
As Sisyphus', lifting this weight!
Though the heart for the work may be great,
Time is fleeting, and Art is so long!

Far from the tombs of the brave
Toward a churchyard obscure and apart,
Like a muffled drum, my heart
Beats a funeral march to the grave.

But sleeping lies many a gem
In dark, unfathomed caves,
Far from the probes of men;

And many a flower waves
And wastes its sweet perfumes
In desert solitudes.

Charles Baudelaire

The Voice

I was the height of a folio, my bed just
backed on the bookcases sombre Babel,
everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust
jumbled together: novel, science, fable.


Two voices spoke to me. One, firmly, slyly,
said: The Earths a cake filled with sweetness:
I can give you (and your pleasure will be
endless!) an appetite of comparable vastness.


The other said: Come! Come voyage in dream,
beyond the known, beyond the possible!
And that one sang like the ocean breeze,
phantom, from who knows where, its wail


caressing the ear, and yet still frightening.
You I answered: Yes! Gentle voice! My
wound and what, Id call my fatality, begins
alas, from then. From behind the scenery


of vast existence, in voids without light,

Charles Baudelaire

Heautontimoroumenos

for J.G.F.

I'll strike you without rage or hate
The way a butcher strikes his block,
The way that Moses smote the rock!
So that your eyes may irrigate

My dry Sahara, I'll allow
The tears to flow of your distress.
Desire, that hope embellishes,
Will swim along the overflow

As ships set out for voyaging,
And like a drum that beats the charge
In my infatuated heart
The echoes of your sobs will ring!

But am I not a false accord
Within the holy symphony,
Thanks to voracious Irony
Who gnaws on me and shakes me hard?

She's in my voice, in all I do!
Her poison flows in all my veins!
I am the looking-glass of pain
Where she regards herself, the shrew!

I am the wound, and rapier!
I am the cheek, I am the ...

Charles Baudelaire

Benediction

When, by an edict of the powers supreme,
The Poet in this bored world comes to be,
His daunted mother, eager to blaspheme,
Rages to God, who looks down piteously:

'Rather than have this mockery to nurse
Why not a nest of snakes for me to bear!
And may that night of fleeting lust be cursed,
When I conceived my penance, unaware!

Since from all women you chose me to shame,
To be disgusting to my grieving spouse,
And since I can't just drop into the flames
Like an old love-note, this misshapen mouse,

1'1l turn your hate that overburdens me
Toward the damned agent of your spiteful doom,
And I will twist this miserable tree
So its infected buds will never bloom!'

She swallows thus her hatred's foaming spit
And, never grasping the divine ...

Charles Baudelaire

Landscape

So as to write my eclogues in the purest verse
I wish to lay me down, like the astrologers,
Next to the sky, and hear in reverie the hymns
Of all the neighbouring belfries, carried on the wind.
My two hands to my chin, up in my attic room,
I'll see the atelier singing a babbled tune;
The chimney-pipes, the steeples, all the city's masts,
The great, inspiring skies, magnificent and vast.

How sweet it is to see, across the misty gloom,
A star born in the blue, a lamp lit in a room,
Rivers of chimney smoke, rising in purplish streams,
The pale of glow of the moon, transfiguring the scene.
I will look out on springs and summers, autumn's show,
And when the winter comes, in monotone of snow,
I'll lock up all the doors and shutters neat and tight,
And build a fairy...

Charles Baudelaire