Baudelaire on Romanticism

                                                    The Setting of the Romantic Sun

 

 

 

Isn’t the Sun beautiful when everything freshly awakes,

Like a silent implosion exploding in greeting !

And so Happily then are they who with love

Can bid its departure daily, as in a dream !

 

I remember!... I saw everything, flower, source and furrow,

Fainting beneath the eye like a heart which is palpitating…

-        Run towards the horizon, it is late, run quickly,

To catch at least an oblique ray of light!

 

But I pursued the God in vain which was retiring;

Irresistible night was now establishing its empire,

Dark, humid and funerary and full of trembling;

 

An odour of the tomb and of darkness reigned,

And my heavy feet trod on the edge of the swamp

That was peppered with unforeseen toads, mollusc cold.

 

The Persians - an extract- after Aeschylus

 

                                                                           

Chorus :  Lord Donald, teeming West’s would be Master,

                Now trumpets daily his X

                With his Psychopathic Minister of War

                 Whose generals systematically retire,

                  The confidence in their government

                  Unlike the price of gold, plummets

                  Inwardly and as swiftly as a doomed

                 And as expensive as an F 35,

                Un-dazzlingly and as ungodlike

                With Hamster like eyes and candy child

                Looks, all Sugar-Daddied and Epstein

                Stained, calcified in dental horror;

                A laundry list of sailor’s complaints

                Stoking fuel fumes in the Persian Gulf,

                No longer hurtling chariots nor rocket fires

                Of famed Washington, but announcing laundering

                Issues and toiletries before docking in fair Cypress

                While Ares, the real God of War,

                Bulleting all foes to Hell and back,

                And a strait of men in white jackets

                Who’ll face them down?

                With what weapons, and with what tele-screen

                 And battle cries; can they open the Sea?

                Meanwhile Persia’s army – the Persians !

                The unstoppable Persians!.....