The Ideal

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

They will never be these beauties of vignettes,
Products of a spoiled age, born of a worthless century,
These feet in ankle boots, these fingers made for castanets,
That could satisfy a heart like mine.

I leave to Gavarni, poet of chloroses,
His twittering flock of hospital beauties,
For I cannot find among these pale roses
A flower that resembles my red ideal.

What this heart, deep as an abyss, requires,
Is you, Lady Macbeth, soul powerful in crime,
A dream of Aeschylus hatched in the climate of the south winds,

Or you, great Night, daughter of Michelangelo,
Who peacefully twist in a strange pose
Your charms shaped by the mouths of Titans.

Charles Baudelaire

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