Classic Poem

By Charles Baudelaire
Freely Translated

Wherever he may be, whether on sea or land,
Beneath a sun of white, under a clime of flame,
Servant of Jesus Christ, in Cythera's harlot-band,
Croesus glittering in gold, beggarman without fame:

City or country-dweller, vagabond, sedentary,
Whether his little brain run light or actively,
Man everywhere submits to terror's evil fairy:
And never looks aloft but with a trembling eye.

Above is heaven's cellar-roof that chokes;
A ceiling lit for comic-opera jokes
Staged where each actor treads on bloody soil:
The fear of libertines: the hermit's hope;
The sky, that black lid of that pot of soup
Where mankind, vast, infinitesimal, boil!