A FORMER LIFE
by: Charles Baudelaire
- ONG
since, I lived beneath vast porticoes,
- By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired,
- Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows,
- Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired.
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- The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies
- Mingled its music, turbulent and rich,
- Solemn and mystic, with the colours which
- The setting sun reflected in my eyes.
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- And there I lived amid voluptuous calms,
- In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave,
- Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave,
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- Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms.
- They were my slaves--the only care they had
- To know what secret grief had made me sad.
'A Former Life' is reprinted from
The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James
Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919. |
MORE POEMS BY CHARLES BAUDELAIRE |
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