MUSIC

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by Charles Baudelaire, translated to English by John Collings Squire

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.

 
Blossoms of Evil (1857)
by Charles Baudelaire - Translated by John Collings Squire


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