The Albatross

By Charles Baudelaire

Sometimes, to entertain themselves, the men of the crew
Lure upon deck an unlucky albatross, one of those vast
Birds of the sea that follow unwearied the voyage through,
Flying in slow and elegant circles above the mast.

No sooner have they disentangled him from their nets
Than this aerial colossus, shorn of his pride,
Goes hobbling pitiably across the planks and lets
His great wings hang like heavy, useless oars at his side.

How droll is the poor floundering creature, how limp and weak —
He, but a moment past so lordly, flying in state!
They tease him: One of them tries to stick a pipe in his beak;
Another mimics with laughter his odd lurching gait.

The Poet is like that wild inheritor of the cloud,
A rider of storms, above the range of arrows and slings;
Exiled on earth, at bay amid the jeering crowd,
He cannot walk for his unmanageable wings.

To a Girl from Malabar

Your feet are finer than your hands, and bigger
Your haunch than plumpest white ones are. Your figure
Is to a pensive artist dear and fresh.
Your velvet eyes are darker than your flesh.
In hot blue lands, where your God gave you being,
Your task, lighting your master's pipe, and seeing
The jars well filled with lymph, the flasks with scent,
Or switching the mosquitoes — there you went,
When dawn sang through the rustling planes, to buy
Plantains or pineapples from the nearby
Bazaar. All day, at will, barefoot you passed
Humming old unknown tunes: and when at last
The sun went down, bright red, across the flat,
You flung your body on the wicker mat;
And full of humming birds, your floating dream
Was gay and flowery as you always seem.

How, happy child, did you come here to France,
This overpeopled land, by what mischance,
When to your tamarinds you bade adieu
Confiding in the sailors of the crew?
But now half-clothed in muslin frail and thin,
While frost and sleet assail your shivering skin,
With brutal corsets prisoning you fast,
How you must long for the old, carefree past!
Now you must glean your dinners from the mud
And sell the perfumes of your flesh and blood,
In our foul mists, with pensive eye still straying
To catch a glimpse of phantom palm trees swaying.

To a Woman Passing By

The deafening road around me roared.
Tall, slim, in deep mourning, making majestic grief,
A woman passed, lifting and swinging
With a pompous gesture the ornamental hem of her garment,

Swift and noble, with statuesque limb.
As for me, I drank, twitching like an old roué,
From her eye, livid sky where the hurricane is born,
The softness that fascinates and the pleasure that kills,

A gleam... then night! O fleeting beauty,
Your glance has given me sudden rebirth,
Shall I see you again only in eternity?

Somewhere else, very far from here! Too late! Perhaps never!
For I do not know where you flee, nor you where I am going,
O you whom I would have loved, O you who knew it!