An Allegory by Charles Pierre Baudelaire — Read

Here is a woman, richly clad and fair, / Who in her wine dips her long, heavy hair; / Love's claws, and that sharp poison which is sin, / Are dulled against the granite of her skin. / Death she defies, Debauch she smiles upon, / For their sharp scythe-like talons every one / Pass by her in their all-destructive play; / Leaving her beauty till a later day. / Goddess she walks; sultana in her leisure; / She has Mohammed's faith that heaven is pleasure, / And bids all men forget the world's alarms / Upon her breast, between her open arms. / She knows, and she believes, this sterile maid, / Without whom the world's onward dream would fade, / That bodily beauty is the supreme gift / Which may from every sin the terror lift. / Hell she ignores, and Purgatory defies; / And when black Night shall roll before her eyes, / She will look straight in Death's grim face forlorn, / Without remorse or hate -- as one new born.