Le Poison, Poem by Charles Baudelaire

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

Wine can clothe the most sordid hovel
In a miraculous luxury,
And make more than one fabulous portico rise
In the gold of its red vapor,
Like a setting sun in a nebulous sky.

Opium magnifies what has no bounds,
Lengthens the limitless,
Deepens time, digs into pleasure,
And with dark and dismal delights
Fills the soul beyond its capacity.

All that is not worth the poison that flows
From your eyes, from your green eyes,
Lakes where my soul trembles and sees itself inverted…
My dreams come in throngs
To quench their thirst in these bitter gulfs.

All that is not worth the terrible prodigy
Of your saliva that bites,
That plunges my remorseless soul into oblivion,
And, carrying vertigo along,
Rolls it, fainting, to the shores of death!

Charles Baudelaire

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