THE SKY

by: Charles Baudelaire

HERE'ER he be, on water or on land,

Under pale suns or climes that flames enfold;

One of Christ's own, or of Cythera's band,

Shadowy beggar or Crœsus rich with gold;

 

Citizen, peasant, student, tramp; whate'er

His little brain may be, alive or dead;

Man knows the fear of mystery everywhere,

And peeps, with trembling glances, overhead.

 

The heaven above? A strangling cavern wall;

The lighted ceiling of a music-hall

Where every actor treads a bloody soil--

 

The hermit's hope; the terror of the sot;

The sky: the black lid of the mighty pot

Where the vast human generations boil!

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