INVITATION TO A JOURNEY
by: Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
- y sister, my dear
- Consider how fair,
- Together to live it would be!
- Down yonder to fly
- To love, till we die,
- In the land which resembles thee.
- Those suns that rise
- 'Neath erratic skies,
- No charm could be like unto theirs
- So strange and divine,
- Like those eyes of thine
- Which glow in the midst of their tears.
-
- There, all is order and loveliness,
- Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
-
- The tables and chairs,
- Polished bright by the years,
- Would decorate sweetly our rooms,
- And the rarest of flowers
- Would twine round our bowers
- And mingle their amber perfumes:
- The ceilings arrayed,
- And the mirrors inlaid,
- This Eastern splendour among,
- Would furtively steal
- O'er our souls, and appeal
- With its tranquillous native tongue.
-
- There, all is order and loveliness,
- Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
-
- In the harbours, peep,
- At the vessels asleep
- (Their humour is always to roam),
- Yet it is but to grant
- Thy smallest want
- From the ends of the earth that they come,
- The sunsets beam
- Upon meadow and stream,
- And upon the city entire
- 'Neath a violet crest,
- The world sinks to rest,
- Illumed by a golden fire.
-
- There, all is order and loveliness,
- Luxury, calm and voluptuousness.
"Invitation to a Journey" is reprinted from The Flowers of Evil. Charles Baudelaire. London: Elkin Mathews, 1909. |
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