CORRESPONDENCES

by: Charles Baudelaire

      N Nature's temple living pillars rise,
      And words are murmured none have understood,
      And man must wander through a tangled wood
      Of symbols watching him with friendly eyes.
       
      As long-drawn echoes heard far-off and dim
      Mingle to one deep sound and fade away;
      Vast as the night and brilliant as the day,
      Colour and sound and perfume speak to him.
       
      Some perfumes are as fragrant as a child,
      Sweet as the sound of hautboys, meadow-green;
      Others, corrupted, rich, exultant, wild,
       
      Have all the expansion of things infinite:
      As amber, incense, musk, and benzoin,
      Which sing the sense's and the soul's delight.

'Correspondences' is reprinted from The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919.

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