Explore "A Former Life" by Charles Pierre Baudelaire on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Long since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, / By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, / Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows, / Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired.
The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies / Mingled its music, turbulent and rich, / Solemn and mystic, with the colours which / The setting sun reflected in my eyes.
And there I lived amid voluptuous calms, / In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave, / Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave,
Who fanned my languid brow with waving palms. / They were my slaves -- the only care they had / To know what secret grief had made me sad.