Explore "Robed in a Silken Robe" by Charles Pierre Baudelaire on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Robed in a silken robe that shines and shakes, / She seems to dance whene'er she treads the sod, / Like the long serpent that a fakir makes / Dance to the waving cadence of a rod.
As the sad sand upon the desert's verge, / Insensible to mortal grief and strife; / As the long weeds that float among the surge, / She folds indifference round her budding life.
Her eyes are carved of minerals pure and cold, / And in her strange symbolic nature where / An angel mingles with the sphinx of old,
Where all is gold and steel and light and air, / For ever, like a vain star, unafraid / Shines the cold hauteur of the sterile maid.