In the Park by Charles Pierre Baudelaire — Read

This dense hard ground I tread / These iron bars that ripple past, / Will they unshaken stand when I am dead / And my deep thoughts outlast?

Is it my spirit slips, / Falls, like this leaf I kick aside; / This firmness that I feel about my lips, / Is it but empty pride?

Mute knowledge conquers me; / I contemplate them as they are, / Faint earth and shadowy bars that shake and flee, / Less hard, more transient far

Than those unbodied hues / The sunset flings on the calm river; / And, as I look, a swiftness thrills my shoes / And my hands with empire quiver.

Now light the ground I tread, / I walk not now but rather float; / Clear but unreal is the scene outspread, / Pitiful, thin, remote.

Poor vapour is the grass, / So frail the trees and railings seem, / That, did I sweep my hand around, 'twould pass / Through them, as in a dream.

Godlike I fear no changes; / Shatter the world with thunders loud, / Still would I ray-like flit about the ranges / Of dark and ruddy cloud.