Spleen by Charles Baudelaire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHnIak7l3o8
Baudelaire’s famous poem from Flowers of Evil turned into a chanson by Léo Ferré, from a recital given in 1969. The Fench text and multiple English translations may be found here; I’ve appended the translation by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which may or may not be the best (I don’t know French), but is certainly the most song-like.
When the low, heavy sky weighs like the giant lid
Of a great pot upon the spirit crushed by care,
And from the whole horizon encircling us is shed
A day blacker than night, and thicker with despair;When Earth becomes a dungeon, where the timid bat
Called Confidence, against the damp and slippery walls
Goes beating his blind wings, goes feebly bumping at
The rotted, moldy ceiling, and the plaster falls;When, dark and dropping straight, the long lines of the rain
Like prison-bars outside the window cage us in;
And silently, about the caught and helpless brain,
We feel the spider walk, and test the web, and spin;Then all the bells at once ring out in furious clang,
Bombarding heaven with howling, horrible to hear,
Like lost and wandering souls, that whine in shrill harangue
Their obstinate complaints to an unlistening ear.— And a long line of hearses, with neither dirge nor drums,
Begins to cross my soul. Weeping, with steps that lag,
Hope walks in chains; and Anguish, after long wars, becomes
Tyrant at last, and plants on me his inky flag.
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Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.
