THE ENEMY
by: Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
- y childhood was nought but a ravaging storm,
- Enlivened at times by a brilliant sun;
- The rain and the winds wrought such havoc and harm
- That of buds on my plot there remains hardly one.
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- Behold now the Fall of ideas I have reached,
- And the shovel and rake one must therefore resume,
- In collecting the turf, inundated and breached,
- Where the waters dug trenches as deep as a tomb.
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- And yet these new blossoms, for which I craved,
- Will they find in this earthlike a shore that is laved
- The mystical fuel which vigour imparts?
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- Oh misery!Time devours our lives,
- And the enemy black, which consumeth our hearts
- On the blood of our bodies, increases and thrives!
"The Enemy" is reprinted from The Flowers of Evil. Charles Baudelaire. London: Elkin Mathews, 1909. |
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