I Love the Naked Ages Long Ago by Charles Baudelaire

    I love the naked ages long ago
    When statues were gilded by Apollo,
    When men and women of agility
    Could play without lies and anxiety,
    And the sky lovingly caressed their spines,
    As it exercised its noble machine.
    Fertile Cybele, mother of nature, then,
    Would not place on her daughters a burden,
    But, she-wolf sharing her heart with the people,
    Would feed creation from her brown nipples.
    Men, elegant and strong, would have the right
    To be proud to have beauty named their king;
    Virgin fruit free of blemish and cracking,
    Whose flesh smooth and firm would summon a bite!
    The Poet today, when he would convey
    This native grandeur, would not be swept away
    By man free and woman natural,
    But would feel darkness envelop his soul
    Before this black tableau full of loathing.
    O malformed monsters crying for clothing!
    O ludicrous heads! Torsos needing disguise!
    O poor writhing bodies of every wrong size,
    Children that the god of the Useful swaths
    In the language of bronze and brass!
    And women, alas! You shadow your heredity,
    You gnaw nourishment from debauchery,
    A virgin holds maternal lechery
    And all the horrors of fecundity!

    We have, it is true, corrupt nations,
    Beauty unknown to the radiant ancients:
    Faces that gnaw through the heart's cankers,
    And talk with the cool beauty of languor;
    But these inventions of our backward muses
    Are never hindered in their morbid uses
    Of the old for profound homage to youth,
    To the young saint, the sweet air, the simple truth,
    To the eye as limpid as the water current,
    To spread out over all, insouciant
    Like the blue sky, the birds and the flowers,
    Its perfumes, its songs and its sweet fervors.

A Martyr by Charles Baudelaire

    Surrounded by flasks, and by spangled lames,
    All matter of sumptuous goods,
    Marble sculptures, fine paintings, and perfumed peignoirs
    That trail in voluptuous folds,

    In a room like a greenhouse, both stuffy and warm,
    An atmosphere heavy with death,
    Where arrangements of flowers encoffined in glass
    Exhale their ultimate breath,

    A headless cadaver spills out like a stream
    On a pillow adorning the bed,
    A flow of red blood, which the linen drinks up
    With a thirsty meadow's greed.

    Like pale apprehensions born in the dark,
    And that enchain the eyes,
    The head - the pile of its ebony mane
    With precious jewels entwined

    On the night table, like a ranunculus
    Reposes; and a gaze,
    Mindless and vague and as black as the dusk
    Escapes from the pallid face.

    On the bed the nude torso displays without shame
    And most lasciviously,
    The secret magnificence, fatal allure,
    Of its nature's artistry;

    On the leg, a pink stocking adorned with gold clocks
    Remains like a souvenir;
    The garter, a diamond-blazing eye,
    Hurls a glance that is cold and severe.

    The singular aspect of this solitude,
    Like the portrait hung above
    With eyes as enticing as languorous pose,
    Reveals an unspeakable love,

    Perverse entertainments and culpable joys
    Full of devilish intimacies,
    Which would make the dark angels swarm with delight
    In the folds of the draperies;

    And yet, to notice the elegant lines
    Of the shoulder lean and lithe,
    The haunch a bit pointed, the turn of the waist,
    Like a snake aroused to strike,

    She is still in her youth! Did her sickness of soul
    And her senses gnawed by ennui
    Open to her that depraved pack of lusts
    And encourage them willingly?

    That intractable man whom alive you could not,
    Despite so much love, satisfy,
    Did he there, on your still and amenable corpse,
    His appetite gratify?

    Tell me, cadaver! and by your stiff hair
    Raising with feverous hand,
    Terrible head, did he paste on your teeth
    His kisses again and again?

    Far away from the world, from the taunts of the mob,
    Far from the prying police,
    Strange creature, within your mysterious tomb
    I bid you to sleep in peace.

    Your bridegroom may roam, but the image of you
    Stands by him wherever he rests;
    As much as you, doubtless, the man will be true,
    And faithful even till death.