ECHOES
by: Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
- n Nature's temple, living columns rise,
- Which oftentimes give tongue to words subdued,
- And Man traverses this symbolic wood,
- Which looks at him with half familiar eyes,
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- Like lingering echoes, which afar confound
- Themselves in deep and sombre unity,
- As vast as Night, and like transplendency,
- The scents and colours to each other respond.
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- And scents there are, like infant's flesh as chaste,
- As sweet as oboes, and as meadows fair,
- And others, proud, corrupted, rich and vast,
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- Which have the expansion of infinity,
- Like amber, musk and frankincense and myrrh,
- That sing the soul's and senses' ecstasy.
"Echoes" is reprinted from The Flowers of Evil. Charles Baudelaire. London: Elkin Mathews, 1909. |
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