Poetry and Quotations

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The Voice

My cot was next the library, a Babel
Where fiction jostled science, myth and fable.
Greek dust with Roman ash there met the sight.
And I was but a folio in height
When two Voices addressed me. "Earth's a cake,"
Said one, "and full of sweetness. I can make
Your appetite to its proportions equal
Forever and forever without sequel."
Another said "Come, rove in dreams, with me,
Past knowledge, thought or possibility."
That voice sang like the wind along the shore
And, though caressing, frightened me the more.
I answered "O sweet Voice!" and from that date
Could never name my sorrow or my fate.
Behind the giant scenery of this life
I see strange worlds: with my own self at strife,
Ecstatic victim of my second sight,
I trail huge snakes, that at my ankles bite.
And like an ancient prophet, from that time,
I've loved the desert, found the sea sublime;
I've wept at festivals and laughed at wakes:
And found in sourest wines a sweet that slakes;
Falsehoods for facts I love to swallow whole,
And often fall, star-gazing, in a hole.
But the Voice cheers — "Keep dreaming. It's a rule
No sage can dream such beauty as a fool."

Poem by Charles Baudelaire
Translation by Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

Charles Baudelaire Poems

À une Malabaraise - translation (To a Malabar Woman)
La Mort des Amants - translation (The Death of Lovers)
Le Vampire - translation (The Vampire)