THE SADNESS OF THE MOON
by: Charles Baudelaire
 HE Moon
more indolently dreams to-night
- Than a fair woman on her couch at rest,
- Caressing, with a hand distraught and light,
- Before she sleeps, the contour of her breast.
-
- Upon her silken avalanche of down,
- Dying she breathes a long and swooning sigh;
- And watches the white visions past her flown,
- Which rise like blossoms to the azure sky.
-
- And when, at times, wrapped in her languor deep,
- Earthward she lets a furtive tear-drop flow,
- Some pious poet, enemy of sleep,
-
- Takes in his hollow hand the tear of snow
- Whence gleams of iris and of opal start,
- And hides it from the Sun, deep in his heart.
|
'The Sadness of the Moon' is reprinted
from The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire.
Ed. James Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919. |
MORE POEMS BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE |
|
