The Death of Lovers

The Death of Lovers / La Mort des amants by Charles Baudelaire, translated by Frank Pearce Sturm

NOTE: No. 121 in the 1861 edition of "The Flowers of Evil" / "Les Fleurs du mal". Translated by F. P. Sturm (1879 - 1942), published 1905. Source: The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire with an Introductory Preface by James Huneker, 1919.

The Death of Lovers


There shall be couches whence faint odours rise,
Divans like sepulchres, deep and profound;
Strange flowers that bloomed beneath diviner skies
The death-bed of our love shall breathe around.

And guarding their last embers till the end,
Our hearts shall be the torches of the shrine,
And their two leaping flames shall fade and blend
In the twin mirrors of your soul and mine.

And through the eve of rose and mystic blue
A beam of love shall pass from me to you,
Like a long sigh charged with a last farewell;

And later still an angel, flinging wide
The gates, shall bring to life with joyful spell
The tarnished mirrors and the flames that died.

The note on the translation:

This is a translation and has a separate copyright status from the original text. The license for the translation applies to this edition only.
Original:	This work published before January 1, 1923 is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Translation:	This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1923. The author died in 1942, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 60 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.