Charles Baudelaire
Correspondances (Translated)
Nature’s a shrine where living columns stand
And now and then breathe a confounded phrase,
Man wanders there amid a forestland
Of symbols, followed by their intimate gaze.
As long-drawn echoes blent from far away
together into dark deep unison,
As vast as night and like the light of day,
colors, sounds and perfumes respond as one.
There are scents fresh as flesh of any child,
Meadow-green, mellow as an oboe tone,
- and others: rich, corrupt, triumphant, wild
expanding like the infinite alone
like ambers, musks and orient frankincense
that sing the ecstasies of soul and sense.