Explore "Beauty" by Charles Pierre Baudelaire on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I am as lovely as a dream in stone, / And this my heart where each finds death in turn, / Inspires the poet with a love as lone / As clay eternal and as taciturn.
Swan-white of heart, a sphinx no mortal knows, / My throne is in the heaven's azure deep; / I hate all movements that disturb my pose, / I smile not ever, neither do I weep.
Before my monumental attitudes, / That breathe a soul into the plastic arts, / My poets pray in austere studious moods,
For I, to fold enchantment round their hearts, / Have pools of light where beauty flames and dies, / The placid mirrors of my luminous eyes.