Autumn Sonnet (Charles Baudelaire)

(swedish version)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~CHARLES BAUDELAIRE:
Autumn Sonnet~~~~~
~~~~~(from "Les Fleurs du Mal
(Flowers of Evil)".)~~~~~
~~
I) You ask me with eyes transparent and clear:
"Bizarre lover, tell me what you found
with me?"-Say nothing, just be beautiful, dear!
I can see innocence, unspoiled nature only in animal's bound,
~~
II) o rocking woman who knows how to reassure anguish clandestine,
and will not show you my heart's hidden pains,
it's nightblack legend which's been carved in with flames.
I hate the passion, and the thought makes the sickness mine.
(...and the thought makes the sickness mine!)
~~
III) But let us gently love. From out of his ambush draws
a gloomy god of love his bow; well I know
all that it has to offer, his old battery:
~~
IV) crime, fear, lunacy! Are not you like me,
o Marguerite, a sun for the clearblue autumnday to be,
my faded pale pearl, o so white and cool and frosty?
(...o so white and cool and frosty!)
~~~~~~~by Charles Baudelaire in 1857.~~~~~
~~~~~~~Rendered by Lord Parzifal Mid-Feb 1997.~~~~~


Be well,
LordParzifal