INTERIOR LIFE
by: Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
- long while I dwelt beneath vast porticoes,
- While the ocean-suns bathed with a thousand fires,
- And which with their great and majestic spires,
- At eventide looked like basaltic grottoes.
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- The billows, in rolling depictured the skies,
- And mingled, in solemn and mystical strain,
- The all-mighteous chords of their luscious refrain
- With the sun-set's colours reflexed in mine eyes.
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- It is there that I lived in exalted calm,
- In the midst of the azure, the splendour, the waves,
- While pregnant with perfumes, naked slaves
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- Refreshed my forehead with branches of palm,
- Whose gentle and only care was to know
- The secret that caused me to languish so.
"Interior Life" is reprinted from The Flowers of Evil. Charles Baudelaire. London: Elkin Mathews, 1909. |
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