THE EYES OF BEAUTY
by: Charles Baudelaire
 OU are
a sky of autumn, pale and rose;
- But all the sea of sadness in my blood
- Surges, and ebbing, leaves my lips morose,
- Salt with the memory of the bitter flood.
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- In vain your hand glides my faint bosom o'er,
- That which you seek, beloved, is desecrate
- By woman's tooth and talon; ah, no more
- Seek in me for a heart which those dogs ate.
-
- It is a ruin where the jackals rest,
- And rend and tear and glut themselves and slay--
- A perfume swims about your naked breast!
-
- Beauty, hard scourge of spirits, have your way!
- With flame-like eyes that at bright feasts have flared
- Burn up these tatters that the beasts have spared!
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'The Eyes of Beauty' 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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