The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire Part 7

New palaces, and scaffoldings, and blocks, And suburbs old, are symbols all to me Whose memories are as heavy as a stone.

And so, before the Louvre, to vex my soul, The image came of my majestic swan With his mad gestures, foolish and sublime, As of an exile whom one great desire Gnaws with no truce. And then I thought of you, Andromache! torn from your hero's arms; Beneath the hand of Pyrrhus in his pride;

Bent o'er an empty tomb in ecstasy; Widow of Hector--wife of Helenus!

And of the negress, wan and phthisical, Tramping the mud, and with her haggard eyes Seeking beyond the mighty walls of fog The absent palm-trees of proud Africa; Of all who lose that which they never find; Of all who drink of tears; all whom grey grief Gives suck to as the kindly wolf gave suck; Of meagre orphans who like blossoms fade.

And one old Memory like a crying horn Sounds through the forest where my soul is lost....

I think of sailors on some isle forgotten; Of captives; vanquished ... and of many more.

THE SEVEN OLD MEN.

O swarming city, city full of dreams, Where in full day the spectre walks and speaks; Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins My story flows as flows the rising sap.

One morn, disputing with my tired soul, And like a hero stiffening all my nerves, I trod a suburb shaken by the jar Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified The houses either side of that sad street, So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist, Unclean and yellow, inundated s.p.a.ce-- A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul.

Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks Should have brought alms in floods upon his head, Without the misery gleaming in his eye, Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed To have been washed with gall; the bitter frost Sharpened his glance; and from his chin a beard Sword-stiff and ragged, Judas-like stuck forth.

He was not bent but broken: his backbone Made a so true right angle with his legs, That, as he walked, the tapping stick which gave The finish to the picture, made him seem Like some infirm and stumbling quadruped Or a three-legged Jew. Through snow and mud He walked with troubled and uncertain gait, As though his sabots trod upon the dead, Indifferent and hostile to the world.

His double followed him: tatters and stick And back and eye and beard, all were the same; Out of the same h.e.l.l, indistinguishable, These centenarian twins, these spectres odd, Trod the same pace toward some end unknown.

To what fell complot was I then exposed!

Humiliated by what evil chance?

For as the minutes one by one went by Seven times I saw this sinister old man Repeat his image there before my eyes!

Let him who smiles at my inquietude, Who never trembled at a fear like mine, Know that in their decrepitude's despite These seven old hideous monsters had the mien Of beings immortal.

Then, I thought, must I, Undying, contemplate the awful eighth; Inexorable, fatal, and ironic double; Disgusting Phoenix, father of himself And his own son! In terror then I turned My back upon the infernal band, and fled To my own place, and closed my door; distraught And like a drunkard who sees all things twice, With feverish troubled spirit, chilly and sick, Wounded by mystery and absurdity!

In vain my reason tried to cross the bar, The whirling storm but drove her back again; And my soul tossed, and tossed, an outworn wreck, Mastless, upon a monstrous, sh.o.r.eless sea.

THE LITTLE OLD WOMEN.

Deep in the tortuous folds of ancient towns, Where all, even horror, to enchantment turns, I watch, obedient to my fatal mood, For the decrepit, strange and charming beings, The dislocated monsters that of old Were lovely women--Las or Eponine!

Hunchbacked and broken, crooked though they be, Let us still love them, for they still have souls.

They creep along wrapped in their chilly rags, Beneath the whipping of the wicked wind, They tremble when an omnibus rolls by, And at their sides, a relic of the past, A little flower-embroidered satchel hangs.

They trot about, most like to marionettes; They drag themselves, as does a wounded beast; Or dance unwillingly as a clapping bell Where hangs and swings a demon without pity.

Though they be broken they have piercing eyes, That s.h.i.+ne like pools where water sleeps at night; The astonished and divine eyes of a child Who laughs at all that glitters in the world.

Have you not seen that most old women's shrouds Are little like the shroud of a dead child?

Wise Death, in token of his happy whim, Wraps old and young in one enfolding sheet.

And when I see a phantom, frail and wan, Traverse the swarming picture that is Paris, It ever seems as though the delicate thing Trod with soft steps towards a cradle new.

And then I wonder, seeing the twisted form, How many times must workmen change the shape Of boxes where at length such limbs are laid?

These eyes are wells brimmed with a million tears; Crucibles where the cooling metal pales-- Mysterious eyes that are strong charms to him Whose life-long nurse has been austere Disaster.

II.

The love-sick vestal of the old "Frasciti"; Priestess of Thalia, alas! whose name Only the prompter knows and he is dead; Bygone celebrities that in bygone days The Tivoli o'ershadowed in their bloom; All charm me; yet among these beings frail Three, turning pain to honey-sweetness, said To the Devotion that had lent them wings: "Lift me, O powerful Hippogriffe, to the skies"-- One by her country to despair was driven; One by her husband overwhelmed with grief; One wounded by her child, Madonna-like; Each could have made a river with her tears.

III.

Oft have I followed one of these old women, One among others, when the falling sun Reddened the heavens with a crimson wound-- Pensive, apart, she rested on a bench To hear the brazen music of the band, Played by the soldiers in the public park To pour some courage into citizens' hearts, On golden eves when all the world revives.

Proud and erect she drank the music in, The lively and the warlike call to arms; Her eyes blinked like an ancient eagle's eyes; Her forehead seemed to await the laurel crown!

IV.

Thus you do wander, uncomplaining Stoics, Through all the chaos of the living town: Mothers with bleeding hearts, saints, courtesans, Whose names of yore were on the lips of all; Who were all glory and all grace, and now None know you; and the brutish drunkard stops, Insulting you with his derisive love; And cowardly urchins call behind your back.

Ashamed of living, withered shadows all, With fear-bowed backs you creep beside the walls, And none salute you, destined to loneliness!

Refuse of Time ripe for Eternity!

But I, who watch you tenderly afar, With unquiet eyes on your uncertain steps, As though I were your father, I--O wonder!-- Unknown to you taste secret, hidden joy.

I see your maiden pa.s.sions bud and bloom, Sombre or luminous, and your lost days Unroll before me while my heart enjoys All your old vices, and my soul expands To all the virtues that have once been yours.

Ruined! and my sisters! O congenerate hearts, Octogenarian Eves o'er whom is stretched G.o.d's awful claw, where will you be to-morrow?

A MADRIGAL OF SORROW.

What do I care though you be wise?

Be sad, be beautiful; your tears But add one more charm to your eyes, As streams to valleys where they rise; And fairer every flower appears

After the storm. I love you most When joy has fled your brow downcast; When your heart is in horror lost, And o'er your present like a ghost Floats the dark shadow of the past.

I love you when the teardrop flows, Hotter than blood, from your large eye; When I would hush you to repose Your heavy pain breaks forth and grows Into a loud and tortured cry.

And then, voluptuousness divine!

Delicious ritual and profound!

I drink in every sob like wine, And dream that in your deep heart s.h.i.+ne The pearls wherein your eyes were drowned.

I know your heart, which overflows With outworn loves long cast aside, Still like a furnace flames and glows, And you within your breast enclose A d.a.m.ned soul's unbending pride;

But till your dreams without release Reflect the leaping flames of h.e.l.l; Till in a nightmare without cease You dream of poison to bring peace, And love cold steel and powder well;

And tremble at each opened door, And feel for every man distrust, And shudder at the striking hour-- Till then you have not felt the power Of Irresistible Disgust.

My queen, my slave, whose love is fear, When you awaken shuddering, Until that awful hour be here, You cannot say at midnight drear: "I am your equal, O my King!"

THE IDEAL.