Autumn…even in winter

Autumn…even in winter

On Friday night, I happened across this beautiful Baudelaire poem whilst hunting for the right one for a friend who had a beautiful baby boy! Congratulations Alison! I hope you manage to get some shuteye!

Winter has swept through in a sudden swooshing swipe of a motion, crushing autumn like the leaves beneath our feet, so here is a lament for summer and a dread of the darkness to come. Tell me if you feel its magic too.

 
Autumn Song by Charles Baudelaire (Penguin classics Selected Poems)
 
i
 
Soon we shall plunge into shadows colds;
Farewell, the brilliance of brief summers gone!
Already I can hear the sad trees felled,
The wood resounding on the courtyard stone.
 
All winter will return into my soul:
Hate, anger, horror, toil, and sudden chill,
And, like the sun in its antarctic hell,
My heart, a red and frozen block, is still.
 
I listen, trembling, to each log that falls;
The scaffold being built echoes less dull.
My spirit broken like a citadel
By heavy battering-rams infallible.
 
I feel, lulled by these blows monotonous,
As if, quickly, a coffin were nailed down.
For whom?- Summer is dead; here autumn is!
This strange sound echoes as for someone gone.
 
ii.
 
I love the greenish light of your long eyes,
Sweet beauty, but today all saddens me,
No love or hearth or boudoir satisfies
My soul like radiant sunshine on the sea.
 
Yet love me, tender heart! A mother be,
Though for a sinner, for a thankless man;
Be mistress, sister, sweetness transitory
Of splendid autumn or of setting sun.
 
Brief task! The grave awaits me, avidly!
O let me on your lap my head incline,
Lament the incandescent summer day,
Savour the golden sweetness of decline.
 
another good one is Mists & Rains- do have a read of it.
 
 
 
 
 


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