Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/Music

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Poems and Baudelaire Flowers
by Charles Baudelaire, translated by John Collings Squire
2672909Poems and Baudelaire FlowersJohn Collings SquireCharles Baudelaire

MUSIC

Oft Music, as it were some moving mighty sea,
Bears me toward my pale
Star: in clear space, or ’neath a vaporous canopy
On-floating, I set sail.


With heaving chest which strains forward, and lungs outblown,
I climb the ridgèd steeps
Of those high-pilèd clouds which ’thwart the night are thrown,
Veiling its starry deeps.


I suffer all the throes, within my quivering form,
Of a great ship in pain,
Now a soft wind, and now the writhings of a storm

Upon the vasty main
Rock me: at other times a death-like calm, the bare
Mirror of my despair.