The Enemy

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Title:     The Enemy
Author: Charles Baudelaire [More Titles by Baudelaire]

Translator: Cyril Scott

My childhood was nought but a ravaging storm,
Enlivened at times by a brilliant sun;
The rain and the winds wrought such havoc and harm
That of buds on my plot there remains hardly one.

Behold now the Fall of ideas I have reached,
And the shovel and rake one must therefore resume,
In collecting the turf, inundated and breached,
Where the waters dug trenches as deep as a tomb.

And yet these new blossoms, for which I craved,
Will they find in this earth--like a shore that is laved--
The mystical fuel which vigour imparts?

Oh misery!--Time devours our lives,
And the enemy black, which consumeth our hearts
On the blood of our bodies, increases and thrives!

[The end]
Charles Baudelaire's poem: Enemy

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