The great-hearted servant of whom you were jealous

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

The great-hearted servant of whom you were jealous,
And who sleeps her sleep beneath a humble turf,
We should nonetheless bring her a few flowers.
The dead, the poor dead, have great sorrows,
And when October blows, pruner of old trees,
Its melancholy wind around their marbles,
Surely they must find the living very ungrateful,
To sleep, as they do, warmly in their sheets,
While, devoured by dark musings,
Without a bedfellow, without good chats,
Old frozen skeletons worked on by the worm,
They feel the snows of winter dripping down
And the century flowing, without friends or family
Replacing the shreds that hang from their grating.

When the log whistles and sings, if in the evening,
Calm, in the armchair, I saw her sit down,
If, on a blue and cold December night,
I found her crouched in a corner of my room,
Grave, and coming from the depths of her eternal bed
To brood over the grown child with her maternal eye,
What could I answer to that pious soul,
Seeing tears fall from her hollow eyelid?

Charles Baudelaire

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