Spleen by Charles Pierre Baudelaire — Read

I'm like some king in whose corrupted veins / Flows aged blood; who rules a land of rains; / Who, young in years, is old in all distress; / Who flees good counsel to find weariness / Among his dogs and playthings, who is stirred / Neither by hunting-hound nor hunting-bird; / Whose weary face emotion moves no more / E'en when his people die before his door. / His favourite Jester's most fantastic wile / Upon that sick, cruel face can raise no smile; / The courtly dames, to whom all kings are good, / Can lighten this young skeleton's dull mood / No more with shameless toilets. In his gloom / Even his lilied bed becomes a tomb. / The sage who takes his gold essays in vain / To purge away the old corrupted strain, / His baths of blood, that in the days of old / The Romans used when their hot blood grew cold, / Will never warm this dead man's bloodless pains, / For green Lethean water fills his veins.