Semper Eadem

The Flowers of Evil ~ Semper Eadem written by Charles Baudelaire translated by A. S. Kline

Semper eadem.

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‘Where does it come from,’you ask, ‘this strange sadness,
that climbs, like the sea, over black, bare stone ?’
— When our heart has once reaped the harvest,
life is an evil. That’s known,

as the simplest of miseries, and nothing mysterious,
and seen by everyone, like your ecstasy.
Stop searching, you, beauty, so curious !
And, though your voice is sweet, sit, silently !

Be quiet, fool ! Ever-ravished soul !
Lips of childish laughter ! Often, more than the whole
of Life, Death grips us, with subtle ties we have made.

Let me, let my heart, then, be drunk on its lies,
plunge as into a beautiful dream, into your eyes,
and, forever, sleep, in your eyelids’shade.