Destruction

By Charles Baudelaire 1821–1867 Charles Baudelaire

Translated By C F. Macintyre

At my side the Demon writhes forever,

Swimming around me like impalpable air;

As I breathe, he burns my lungs like fever

And fills me with an eternal guilty desire.

Knowing my love of Art, he snares my senses,

Apearing in woman's most seductive forms,

And, under the sneak's plausible pretenses,

Lips grow accustomed to his lewd love-charms.

He leads me thus, far from the sight of God,

Panting and broken with fatigue into

The wilderness of Ennui, deserted and broad,

And into my bewildered eyes he throws

Visions of festering wounds and filthy clothes,

And all Destruction's bloody retinue.

Biography

Charles Baudelaire is one of the most compelling poets of the nineteenth century. While Baudelaire's contemporary Victor Hugo is generally—and sometimes regretfully—acknowledged as the greatest of nineteenth-century French poets, Baudelaire excels in his unprecedented expression of a complex sensibility and of modern themes within structures of classical rigor and technical artistry. Baudelaire is distinctive in French . . .

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