Flowers of Evil

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The Flowers of Evil
by Charles Baudelaire
Translated Into
English Verse
By Cyril Scott
London
Elkin Mathews, Vigo Street
MCMIX
Dedicated To Arthur Symons
CONTENTS
Benediction
Echoes
The Sick Muse
The Venal Muse
The Evil Monk
The Enemy
Ill-Luck
Interior Life
Man and the Sea
Beauty

The Ideal
The Giantess
Hymnto Beauty
Exotic Perfume
La Chevelure
Sonnet XXVIII
Posthumous Remorse
The Balcony
The Possessed One
Semper Eadem
All Entire
Sonnet XLIII
The Living Torch
The Spiritual Dawn
Evening Harmony
Overcast Sky
Invitation to a Journey
"Causerie"
Autumn Song
Sisina

To a Creolean Lady
Moesta et Errabunda
The Ghost
Autumn Song
Sadness of the Moon-Goddess
Cats
Owls
Music
The Joyous Defunct
The Broken Bell
Spleen
Obsession
Magnetic Horror
The Lid
Bertha's Eyes
The Set of the Romantic Sun
Meditation
To a Passer-by
Illusionary Love
Mists and Rains

The Wine of Lovers
Condemned Women
The Death of the Lovers
The Death of the Poor
Benediction
When by the changeless Power of a Supreme Decree
The poet issues
forth upon this sorry sphere,
His mother, horrified, and full of
blasphemy,
Uplifts her voice to God, who takes compassion on her.
"Ah, why did I not bear a serpent's nest entire,
Instead of bringing
forth this hideous Child of Doom!
Oh cursed be that transient night of
vain desire
When I conceived my expiation in my womb!"
"Yet since among all women thou hast chosen me
To be the
degradation of my jaded mate,
And since I cannot like a love-leaf
wantonly
Consign this stunted monster to the glowing grate,"
"I'll cause thine overwhelming hatred to rebound
Upon the cursed
tool of thy most wicked spite.
Forsooth, the branches of this wretched
tree I'll wound
And rob its pestilential blossoms of their might!"
So thus, she giveth vent unto her foaming ire,
And knowing not the
changeless statutes of all times,
Herself, amid the flames of hell,
prepares the pyre;
The consecrated penance of maternal crimes.
Yet 'fieath th' invisible shelter of an Angel's wing
This
sunlight-loving infant disinherited,
Exhales from all he eats and
drinks, and everything
The ever sweet ambrosia and the nectar red.
He trifles with the winds and with the clouds that glide,
About the
way unto the Cross, he loves to sing,
The spirit on his pilgrimage;

that faithful guide,
Oft weeps to see him joyful like a bird of Spring.
All those that he would cherish shrink from him with fear,
And some
that waxen bold by his tranquility,
Endeavour hard some grievance
from his heart to tear,
And make on him the trial of their ferocity.
Within the bread and wine outspread for his repast
To mingle dust
and dirty spittle they essay,
And everything he touches, forth they
slyly cast,
Or scourge themselves, if e'er their feet betrod his way.
His wife goes round proclaiming in the crowded quads
"Since he can
find my body beauteous to behold,
Why not perform the office of
those ancient gods
And like unto them, redeck myself with shining
gold?"
"I'll bathe myself with incense, spikenard and myrrh,
With
genuflexions, delicate viandes and wine,
To see, in jest, if from a
heart, that loves me dear,
I cannot filch away the hommages divine."
"And when of these impious jokes at length I tire,
My frail but
mighty hands, around his breast entwined,
With nails, like harpies'
nails, shall cunningly conspire
The hidden path unto his feeble heart
to find."
"And like a youngling bird that trembles in its nest,
I'll pluck his heart
right out; within its own blood drowned, And finally to satiate my
favourite beast,
I'll throw it with intense disdain upon the ground!"
Towards the Heavens where he sees the sacred grail
The poet calmly
stretches forth his pious arms,
Whereon the lightenings from his lucid
spirit veil
The sight of the infuriated mob that swarms.
"Oh blest be thou, Almighty who bestowest pain,
Like some divine
redress for our infirmities,
And like the most refreshing and the
purest rain,
To sanctify the strong, for saintly ecstasies."

"I know that for the poet thou wilt grant a chair,
Among the Sainted
Legion and the Blissful ones,
That of the endless feast thou wilt
accord his share
To him, of Virtues, Dominations and of Thrones."
"I know, that Sorrow is that nobleness alone,
Which never may
corrupted be by hell nor curse,
I know, in order to enwreathe my
mystic crown
I must inspire the ages and the universe."
"And yet the buried jewels of Palmyra old,
The undiscovered metals
and the pearly sea
Of gems, that unto me you show could never hold

Beside this diadem of blinding brilliancy."
"For it shall be engendered from the purest fire
Of rays primeval,
from the holy hearth amassed,
Of which the eyes of Mortals, in their
sheen entire,
Are but the tarnished mirrors, sad and overcast!"
Echoes
In Nature's temple, living columns rise,
Which oftentimes give
tongue to words subdued,
And Man traverses this symbolic wood,

Which looks at him with half familiar eyes
Like lingering echoes, which afar confound
Themselves in deep and
sombre unity,
As vast as Night, and like transplendency,
The scents
and