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AVE ATQUE VALE. A Poem by A. C. Swinburne

PREFACE

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. A study by F. P. Sturm

POEMS IN PROSE. Translated by Arthur Symons

The Favours of the Moon Which is True? "L'Invitation au Voyage" The Eyes of the Poor Windows Crowds The Cake Evening Twilight "Anywhere Out of the World" A Heroic Death Be Drunken Epilogue

POEMS IN PROSE. Translated by Joseph T. Shipley

Dedication A Jester The Dog and the Vial The Wild Woman and the Coquette The Old Mountebank The Clock A Hemisphere in a Tress The Plaything of the Poor The Gifts of the Fairies Solitude Projects The Lovely Dorothea The Counterfeit The Generous Player The Rope Callings A Thoroughbred The Mirror The Harbor Mistresses' Portraits Soup and the Clouds The Loss of a Halo Mademoiselle Bistoury Let us Flay the Poor Good Dogs

LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE. Translated by F. P. Sturm

Every Man His Chimaera Venus and the Fool Already! The Double Chamber At One o'Clock in the Morning The Confiteor of the Artist The Thyrsus The Marksman The Shooting-range and the Cemetery The Desire to Paint The Glass-vendor The Widows The Temptations; or, Eros, Plutos, and Glory

THE FLOWERS OF EVIL. Translated by F. P. Sturm

The Dance of Death The Beacons The Sadness of the Moon The Balcony The Sick Muse The Venal Muse The Evil Monk The Temptation The Irreparable A Former Life Don Juan in Hades The Living Flame Correspondences The Flask Reversibility The Eyes of Beauty Sonnet of Autumn The Remorse of the Dead The Ghost To a Madonna The Sky Spleen The Owls Bien Loin d'Ici Contemplation To a Brown Beggar-maid The Swan The Seven Old Men The Little Old Women A Madrigal of Sorrow Mist and Rain Sunset The Corpse An Allegory The Accursed La Beatrice The Soul of Wine The Wine of Lovers The Death of Lovers The Death of the Poor Gypsies Travelling Franciscae Meae Laudes A Landscape The Voyage

THE FLOWERS OF EVIL. Translated by W. J. Robertson

THREE POEMS FROM BAUDELAIRE. Translated by Richard Herne Shepherd

A Carcass Weeping and Wandering Lesbos

INTIMATE PAPERS FROM THE UNPUBLISHED WORKS OF BAUDELAIRE. Translated by Joseph T. Shipley

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Rockets My Heart Laid Bare

FLOWERS OF EVIL

AVE ATQUE VALE

Nous devrions pourtant lui porter quelques fleurs; Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont de grandes douleurs, Et quand Octobre souffle, ?mondeur des vieux arbres, Son vent m?lancolique a l'entour de leurs marbres, Certe, ils doivent trouver les vivants bien ingrats. Les Fleurs du Mal

Shall I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel, Brother, on this that was the veil of thee? Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea, Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel, Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave, Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve? Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before, Half-faded fiery blossoms, pale with heat And full of bitter summer, but more sweet To thee than gleanings of a northern shore Trod by no tropic feet?

For always thee the fervid languid glories Allured of heavier suns in mightier skies; Thine ears knew all the wandering watery sighs Where the sea sobs round Lesbian promontories, The barren kiss of piteous wave to wave That knows not where is that Leucadian grave Which hides too deep the supreme head of song. Ah, salt and sterile as her kisses were, The wild sea winds her and the green gulfs bear Hither and thither, and vex and work her wrong, Blind gods that cannot spare.

Thou sawest, in thine old singing season, brother, Secrets and sorrows unbeheld of us: Fierce loves, and lovely leaf-buds poisonous, Bare to thy subtler eye, but for none other Blowing by night in some unbreathed-in clime; The hidden harvest of luxurious time, Sin without shape, and pleasure without speech; And where strange dreams in a tumultuous sleep Make the shut eyes of stricken spirits weep; And with each face thou sawest the shadow on each, Seeing as men sow men reap.

O sleepless heart and sombre soul unsleeping, That were athirst for sleep and no more life And no more love, for peace and no more strife! Now the dim gods of death have in their keeping Spirit and body and all the springs of song, Is it well now where love can do not wrong, Where stingless pleasure has no foam or fang Behind the unopening closure of her lips? It is not well where soul from body slips And flesh from bone divides without a pang As dew from flower-bell drips.

It is enough; the end and the beginning Are one thing to thee, who are past the end. O hand unclasped of unbeholden friend, For thee no fruits to pluck, no palms for winning, No triumph and no labor and no lust, Only dead yew-leaves and a little dust. O quiet eyes wherein the light saith nought, Whereto the day is dumb, nor any night With obscure finger silences your sight, Nor in your speech the sudden soul speaks thought, Sleep, and have sleep for light.

Now all strange hours and all strange loves are over, Dreams and desires and sombre songs and sweet, Hast thou found place at the great knees and feet Of some pale Titan-woman like a lover, Such as thy vision here solicited, Under the shadow of her fair vast head, The deep division of prodigious breasts, The solemn slope of mighty limbs asleep, The weight of awful tresses that still keep The savor and shade of old-world pine-forests Where the wet hill-winds weep?

Hast thou found any likeness for thy vision? O gardener of strange flowers, what bud, what bloom, Hast thou found sown, what gathered in the gloom? What of despair, of rapture, of derision, What of life is there, what of ill or good? Are the fruits gray like dust or bright like blood? Does the dim ground grow any seed of ours, The faint fields quicken any terrene root, In low lands where the sun and moon are mute And all the stars keep silence? Are there flowers At all, or any fruit?

Alas, but though my flying song flies after, O sweet strange elder singer, thy more fleet Singing, and footprints of thy fleeter feet, Some dim derision of mysterious laughter From the blind tongueless warders of the dead, Some gainless glimpse of Proserpine's veiled head, Some little sound of unregarded tears Wept by effaced unprofitable eyes, And from pale mouths some cadence of dead sighs-- These only, these the hearkening spirit hears, Sees only such things rise.

Thou art far too far for wings of words to follow, Far too far off for thought or any prayer. What ails us with thee, who art wind and air? What ails us gazing where all seen is hollow? Yet with some fancy, yet with some desire, Dreams pursue death as winds a flying fire, Our dreams pursue our dead and do not find. Still, and more swift than they, the thin flame flies, The low light fails us in elusive skies, Still the foiled earnest ear is deaf, and blind Are still the eluded eyes.

Not thee, O never thee, in all time's changes, Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul, The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll I lay my hand on, and not death estranges My spirit from communion of thy song-- These memories and these melodies that throng Veiled porches of a Muse funereal-- These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold As though a hand were in my hand to hold, Or through mine ears a mourning musical Of many mourners rolled.

I among these, I also, in such station As when the pyre was charred, and piled the sods, And offering to the dead made, and their gods, The old mourners had, standing to make libation, I stand, and to the gods and to the dead Do reverence without prayer or praise, and shed Offering to these unknown, the gods of gloom, And what of honey and spice my seedlands bear, And what I may of fruits in this chilled air, And lay, Orestes-like, across the tomb A curl of severed hair.

But by no hand nor any treason stricken, Not like the low-lying head of Him, the King, The flame that made of Troy a ruinous thing, Thou liest and on this dust no tears could quicken There fall no tears like theirs that all men hear Fall tear by sweet imperishable tear Down the opening leaves of holy poet's pages. Thee not Orestes, not Electra mourns; But bending us-ward with memorial urns The most high Muses that fulfil all ages Weep, and our God's heart yearns.

For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often Among us darkling here the lord of light Makes manifest his music and his might In hearts that open and in lips that soften With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine. Thy lips indeed he touched with bitter wine, And nourished them indeed with bitter bread; Yet surely from his hand thy soul's food came, The fire that scarred thy spirit at his flame Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed Who feeds our hearts with fame.

Therefore he too now at thy soul's sunsetting, God of all suns and songs, he too bends down To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting. Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art, Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart, Mourns thee of many his children the last dead, And hallows with strange tears and alien sighs Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes, And over thine irrevocable head Sheds light from the under skies.

And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean, And stains with tears her changing bosom chill; That obscure Venus of the hollow hill, That thing transformed which was the Cytherean, With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine Long since, and face no more called Erycine A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god. Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell Did she, a sad and second prey, compel Into the footless places once more trod, And shadows hot from hell.

And now no sacred staff shall break in blossom, No choral salutation lure to light A spirit with perfume and sweet night And love's tired eyes and hands and barren bosom. There is no help for these things; none to mend, And none to mar; not all our songs, O friend, Will make death clear or make life durable. Howbeit with rose and ivy and wild vine And with wild notes about this dust of thine At least I fill the place where white dreams dwell And wreathe an unseen shrine.

Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live And to give thanks is good, and to forgive. Out of the mystic and the mournful garden Where all day through thine hands in barren braid Wove the sick flowers of secrecy and shade, Green buds of sorrow and sin, and remnants gray, Sweet-smelling, pale with poison, sanguine-hearted, Passions that sprang from sleep and thoughts that started, Shall death not bring us all as thee one day Among the days departed?

For thee, O now a silent soul, my brother, Take at my hands this garland, and farewell. Thin is the leaf, and chill the wintry smell, And chill the solemn earth, a fatal mother, With sadder than the Niobean womb, And in the hollow of her breasts a tomb. Content thee, howsoe'er, whose days are done: There lies not any troublous thing before, Nor sight nor sound to war against thee more, For whom all winds are quiet as the sun, All waters as the shore.

PREFACE In presenting to the American public this collection in English of perhaps the most influential French poet of the last seventy years, I consider it essential to explain the conditions under which the work has been done.

Baudelaire has written poems that will, in all likelihood, live while poetry is used as a medium of expression, and the great influence that he has exercised on English and continental literature is mainly due to the particular quality of his style, his way of feeling or his method of thought. He is a master of analytical power, and in his highest ecstasy of emotional expression, this power can readily be recognized. In his own quotation he gave forth his philosophy on this point:

"The more art would aim at being philosophically clear, the more will it degrade itself and return to the childish hieroglyphic: on the other hand, the more art detaches itself from teaching, the more will it attain to pure disinterested beauty.... Poetry, under pain of death or decay, cannot assimilate Herself to science or ethics. She has not Truth for object, she has only Herself." What appears at first glance in the preceding phrases to be a contradiction is really a confirmation of Baudelaire's conception of the highest understanding of aesthetic principle. Baudelaire's ideal beauty is tempered with mystery and sadness, the real too, but never the commonplace.

No poet has brought so many new ideas in sensation into a literary style. Intellectually he is all sensation, though he seldom degenerates into abstract sentimentality. This sum totality of the power of absorbing external sensation is Baudelaire. From the effect of his objectivity his art expresses itself as if solely subjective. This condition of mind and art makes him most difficult to translate into another language, in particular, English.

There are few interesting or valuable essays on the mind and art of Baudelaire in English, but the reader will find the following critical appreciations to be of inestimable use in the study of the poet:

"The Influence of Baudelaire": G. Turquet-Milnes ; "The Baudelaire Legend": James Huneker ; and Th?ophile Gautier's essay on Baudelaire, of which an excellent English translation has been made by Prof. Sumichrast.

I think that this anthology will give the reader an intelligent understanding of the mind and art of a very great French poet.

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