This web site doesn't display advertising. Please consider making a donation.
The Invitation to the Voyage
Free texts and images.
| The Flowers of Evil ~ The Invitation to the Voyage written by Charles Baudelaire |
| Translation A. S. Kline |
- My sister, my child
- imagine, exiled,
- The sweetness, of being there, we two!
- To live and to sigh,
- to love and to die,
- In the land that mirrors you!
- The misted haze
- of its clouded days
- Has the same charm to my mind,
- as mysterious,
- as your traiterous
- Eyes, behind glittering blinds.
- There everything’s order and beauty,
- calm, voluptuousness, and luxury.
- The surface gleams
- are polished it seems,
- Through the years, to grace our room.
- The rarest flowers
- mix, with fragrant showers,
- The vague, amber perfume.
- The dark, painted halls,
- the deep mirrored walls,
- With Eastern splendour hung,
- all secretly speak,
- To the soul, its discrete,
- Sweet, native tongue.
- There, everything’s order and beauty,
- calm, voluptuousness and luxury.
- See, down the canals,
- the sleeping vessels,
- Those nomads, their white sails furled:
- Now, to accomplish
- your every wish,
- They come from the ends of the world.
- — The deep sunsets
- surround the west,
- The canals, the city, entire,
- with blue-violet and gold;
- And the Earth grows cold
- In an incandescent fire.
- There, everything’s order and beauty,
- calm, voluptuousness and luxury.
| This work is published here under the Creative Commons   license and can be reproduced if non-commercial.
|
