Poems and Baudelaire Flowers/The Sadness of the Moon

by Charles Baudelaire

THE SADNESS OF THE MOON

This evening the Moon dreams more languidly,
Like a beauty who on many cushions rests,
And with her light hand fondles lingeringly,
Before she sleeps, the slope of her sweet breasts.


On her soft satined avalanches’ height
Dying, she laps herself for hours and hours
In long, long swoons, and gazes at the white
Visions which rise athwart the blue-like flowers.


When sometimes in her perfect indolence
She lets a furtive tear steal gently thence,
Some pious poet, a lone, sleepless one,


Takes in his hollowed hand this gem, shot through,
Like an opal stone, with gleams of every hue,
And in his heart’s depths hides it from the sun.