I was the height of a folio, my bed just
backed on the bookcases- sombre Babel,
everything, Latin ashes, Greek dust
jumbled together: novel, science, fable.
Two voices spoke to me. One, firmly, slyly,
said: -The Earth-s a cake filled with sweetness:
I can give you (and your pleasure will be
endless!) an appetite of comparable vastness.-
The other said: -Come! Come voyage in dream,
beyond the known, beyond the possible!-
And that one sang like the ocean breeze,
phantom, from who knows where, its wail
caressing the ear, and yet still frightening.
You I answered: -Yes! Gentle voice!- My
wound and what, I-d call my fatality, begins
alas, from then. From behind the scenery
of vast existence, in voids without light,
I see the strangest worlds distinctly:
ecstatic victim of my second sight,
snakes follow me striking at my feet.
Since then, like the prophets, I greet
the desert and the sea with tenderness:
I laugh at funerals, I cry at feasts,
wine tastes smooth that-s full of bitterness:
and, eyes on the sky, I fall into holes,
and frequently I take facts for lies.
But -Keep your dreams!- the Voice consoles,
-Madmen have sweeter ones than the wise!-
The Voice
Charles Baudelaire
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Poem topics: dream, light, ocean, sea, sky, together, pleasure, gentle, earth, wise, voyage, laugh, endless, dust, follow, desert, voice, I love you, I miss you, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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