Mist and Rain

By Ch.Baudelaire

O Autumns, Winters, Springs! Seasons of mire!
Soul-drowsing times! I love you. Take my praise
For shrouding thus my heart and brain entire
In a vague tomb and winding-sheet of haze.

Through the long nights when the south-wester swings
The rusty vanes that shriek upon the towers,
My soul can fully stretch its raven wings
More easily than in the warmer hours.

Nothing is sweeter to funereal hearts
On whom the frost of ages has been laid —
Wan seasons, when you queen it round these parts, —

Than the eternal sight of your pale shade:
Unless on moonless midnights, pair by pair,
To lull, upon chance beds, our hearts' despair.

The Unforeseen

Harpagon watching over his dying father;
Mused, looking at those lips that were already white:
"It seems to me we have in the attic
A sufficient number of old boards?"

CélimËne coos and says: "My heart is kind,
And naturally enough, God made me very fair."
— Her heart, a shriveled heart like a ham smoked and seared,
At the eternal flame!

A smoky journalist who thinks he is a light
Says to the poor wretch he has plunged into darkness:
"Where do you see him, this creator of beauty,
This Knight-errant whom you extol?"

I know better than anyone, a sensualist
Who yawns night and day, and laments and weeps,
Repeating, the impotent fop: "Of course, I wish
To be virtuous in an hour!"

The clock in turn says in a low voice: "He is ripe,
The damned one! In vain do I warn the stinking flesh.
Man is blind and deaf, fragile as a wall
That is the home of gnawing insects!"

And then appears Someone all had denied,
Who proud and mocking says: "From my ciboriurn
You have communicated rather frequently,
I think, at the joyous black Mass?

Each of you has made a shrine for me in his heart;
And you have secretly kissed my unclean haunches!
Recognize Satan by his conquering laughter,
Immense and ugly as the world!

Could you have believed, surprised hypocrites,
That one makes fun of the master, that one cheats him,
That it's reasonable to receive two rewards,
To be rich and go to Heaven?

The game must pay the hunter who stands shivering
For a long time on the watch for his prey.
I'm going to take you away through the thickness,
Companions in my gloomy joy,

Through the thickness of the earth and the rock,
Through the unshapen pile of your ashes
Into a palace huge as I, a single block,
That is not fashioned of soft stone;

For it is made of universal Sin,
And contains my pride, my sorrow and my glory!"
But meanwhile, perched on the top of the universe
An Angel sounds the victory

Of those whose hearts say: "Blessed be your whip,
Lord! O Father, blessed be suffering!
My soul in your hands is not an idle plaything
And your prudence is infinite."

The sound of the trumpet is O! so delightful
On the solemn evenings of heavenly harvest,
That it permeates like an ecstasy all those
Whose praises the trumpet sings.