Some lines from "Benediction"

Baudelaire's poetry has been in my mind quite a bit for the past week or so. These lines from "Benediction" are ones I frequently come back to when I read his poems (though sometimes some of the other lines from this poem are painful for me to read):

"Pourtant, sous la tutelle invisible d'un Ange,
L'Enfant déshérité s'enivre de soleil
Et dans tout ce qu'il boit et dans tout ce qu'il mange
Retrouve l'ambroisie et le nectar vermeil.

II joue avec le vent, cause avec le nuage,
Et s'enivre en chantant du chemin de la croix;
Et l'Esprit qui le suit dans son pèlerinage
Pleure de le voir gai comme un oiseau des bois."


(Yet under an Angel's unseen tutelage
the outcast child, enchanted by the sun,
will recognize in all he eats and drinks
golden ambrosia and nectar of gods.

With wind for playmate and with clouds for nurse,
he sings the very stations of his cross -
the Spirit who attends his pilgrimage
weeps to see him happy as a bird.

Translation by Richard Howard)