Autumn Song, Poem by Charles Baudelaire

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

Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness;
Farewell, vivid brightness of our too-short summers!
I already hear the dead thuds
Of the wood echoing on the courtyard pavement.

All winter will return to my being: anger,
Hate, shudders, horror, hard and forced labor,
And, like the sun in its polar hell,
My heart will be nothing but a red and frozen block.

Shivering, I listen to each log that falls;
The scaffold they build has no duller echo.
My mind is like the tower that succumbs
Under the blows of the tireless and heavy battering ram.

It seems to me, lulled by this monotonous shock,
That somewhere a coffin is being nailed in great haste.
For whom? – It was summer yesterday; now it is autumn!
This mysterious sound rings like a departure.
II

I love the greenish light of your long eyes,
Sweet beauty, but today everything is bitter to me,
And nothing, neither your love, nor the boudoir, nor the hearth,
Is worth the sun shining on the sea.

And yet love me, tender heart! be a mother,
Even for an ungrateful man, even for a wicked one;
Mistress or sister, be the fleeting sweetness
Of a glorious autumn or a setting sun.

Short task! The tomb awaits; it is greedy!
Ah! let me, my forehead resting on your knees,
Taste, regretting the white and torrid summer,
The yellow and soft ray of late season!

Charles Baudelaire

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