To a Passerby, Poem by Charles Baudelaire

Poem by Charles Baudelaire Collection The Flowers of EvilThemes LovePeriod 19th century

The deafening street was howling around me.
Tall, slender, in deep mourning, majestic grief,
a woman passed, with a sumptuous hand
lifting, swinging the festoon and the hem;

agile and noble, with her statue’s leg.
I, I drank, tense as an eccentric,
from her eye, livid sky where the hurricane germinates,
the sweetness that fascinates and the pleasure that kills.

A flash… then the night! — Fleeting beauty
whose gaze suddenly made me reborn,
shall I see you again only in eternity?

Elsewhere, far from here! too late! never perhaps!
For I do not know where you flee, you do not know where I go,
O you whom I would have loved, O you who knew it!

Charles Baudelaire

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-to-a-passerby-charles-baudelaire/