What A Pair of Eyes Can Promise
by Charles Baudelaire
I love, pale one, your lifted eyebrows bridging
Twin darknesses of flowing depth.
But however deep they are, they carry me
Another way than that of death.

Your eyes, doubly echoing your hair's darkness --That leaping, running mane -- Your eyes, though languidly, instruct me : "Poet And connoisseur of love made plain, If you desire fulfilment of the promise, The ecstasy that is your trade, You can confirm the truth, from thigh to navel, Of all that we have said.

You will find my white breasts heavy
With the weight of their rough, bronze coins,
And, under a soft as velvet, rounded belly,
Poised between ambered loins,
A fleece, not golden, but for richness sister
To that hair with darkness bright.
Supple and springing -- and as boundless
As a deep, starless night !"