BEAUTY
by: Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
- am lovely, O mortals, like a dream of stone,
- And my bosom, where each one gets bruised in turn,
- To inspire the love of a poet is prone,
- Like matter eternally silent and stern.
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- As an unfathomed sphinx, enthroned by the Nile,
- My heart a swan's whiteness with granite combines,
- And I hate every movement, displacing the lines,
- And never I weep and never I smile.
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- The poets in front of mine attitudes fine
- (Which the proudest of monuments seem to implant),
- To studies profound all their moments assign,
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- For I have all these docile swains to enchant
- Two mirrors, which Beauty in all things ignite:
- Mine eyes, my large eyes, of eternal Light!
"Beauty" is reprinted from The Flowers of Evil. Charles Baudelaire. London: Elkin Mathews, 1909. |
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