BEAUTY
by: Charles Baudelaire
- AM
as lovely as a dream in stone,
- And this my heart where each finds death in turn,
- Inspires the poet with a love as lone
- As clay eternal and as taciturn.
-
- Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows,
- My throne is in the heaven's azure deep;
- I hate all movements that disturb my pose,
- I smile not ever, neither do I weep.
-
- Before my monumental attitudes,
- That breathe a soul into the plastic arts,
- My poets pray in austere studious moods,
-
- For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts,
- Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies,
- The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.
'Beauty' is reprinted from The
Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James Huneker.
New York: Brentano's, 1919. |
MORE POEMS BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE |
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