THE FLOWERS OF EVIL. Charles Baudelaire

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СКАЧАТЬ thou thy marbled shoulders then revive

      With nightly rays that through thy shutters peep?

      And – void thy purse and void thy palace – reap

      A golden hoard within some azure hive?

      Thou must, to earn thy daily bread, each night,

      Suspend the censer like an acolyte,

      Te–Deums sing, with sanctimonious ease,

      Or as a famished mountebank, with jokes obscene

      Essay to lull the vulgar rabble’s spleen;

      Thy laughter soaked in tears which no one sees.

      The Evil Monk

      Table of Contents

      The cloisters old, expounded on their walls

      With paintings, the Beatic Verity,

      The which – adorning their religious halls,

      Enriched the frigidness of their Austerity.

      In days when Christian seeds bloomed o’er the land,

      Full many a noble monk unknown today,

      Upon the field of tombs would take his stand,

      Exalting Death in rude and simple way.

      My soul is a tomb where – bad monk that I be-

      I dwell and search its depths from all eternity,

      And nought bedecks the walls of the odious spot.

      Oh sluggard monk! when shall I glean aright

      From the living spectacle of my bitter lot,

      To mold my handywork and mine eyes’ Delight?

      The Enemy

      Table of Contents

      My childhood was nought but a ravaging storm,

      Enlivened at times by a brilliant sun;

      The rain and the winds wrought such havoc and harm

      That of buds on my plot there remains hardly one.

      Behold now the Fall of ideas I have reached,

      And the shovel and rake one must therefore resume,

      In collecting the turf, inundated and breached,

      Where the waters dug trenches as deep as a tomb.

      And yet these new blossoms, for which I craved,

      Will they find in this earth – like a shore that is laved –

      The mystical fuel which vigour imparts?

      Oh misery! – Time devours our lives,

      And the enemy black, which consumeth our hearts

      On the blood of our bodies, increases and thrives!

      Ill Luck

      Table of Contents

      This heavy burden to uplift,

      O Sysiphus, thy pluck is required!

      And even though the heart aspired,

      Art is long and Time is swift.

      Afar from sepulchres renowned,

      To a graveyard, quite apart,

      Like a broken drum, my heart,

      Beats the funeral marches’ sound.

      Many a buried jewel sleeps

      In the long-forgotten deeps,

      Far from mattock and from sound;

      Many a flower wafts aloft

      Its perfumes, like a secret soft,

      Within the solitudes, profound.

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