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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  Beauty

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Beauty

By Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)

Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard

BEAUTIFUL am I as a dream in stone;

And for my breast, where each falls bruised in turn,

The poet with an endless love must yearn—

Endless as Matter, silent and alone.

A sphinx unguessed, enthroned in azure skies,

White as the swan, my heart is cold as snow;

No hated motion breaks my lines’ pure flow,

Nor tears nor laughter ever dim mine eyes.

Poets, before the attitudes sublime

I seem to steal from proudest monuments,

In austere studies waste the ling’ring time;

For I possess, to charm my lover’s sight,

Mirrors wherein all things are fair and bright—

My eyes, my large eyes of eternal light!