Obsession
by
Charles Baudelaire
You forests, like cathedrals, are my dread: You
roar like organs. Our curst hearts, like cells Where death forever rattles
on the bed, Echo your de Profudis as it sweels. My spirit hates
you, Ocean ! sees, and loathes Its tumults in your own. Of men defeated
The bitter laugh, that's full of sobs and oaths, Is in your own tremendously
repeated. How you would please me, Night ! without your stars Which
speak a foreign dialect, that jars On one who seeks the void, the black,
the bare. Yet even your darkest shade a canvas forms Whereon my
eye must multiply in swarms Familiar looks of shapes no longer there.
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