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Baudelaire: LA MUSIQUE

Music often carries me like a sea!
                Toward my pale star,
Beneath a hazy vault or in a vast ether,
                I set sail.

My chest forward and my lungs
                Swelling with the flax,
 I climb the backs of mounting waves
                Veiled by the night ;

I feel vibrating in me all the passions
               Of a suffering vessel ; the good
Wind, the tempest and its convulsions

                Cradling me over
An immense gulf. Other times a dead calm,
                Great mirror of my despair!