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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Le Flacon (The Perfume Flask)</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">II est de forts parfums pour qui toute matière<br>Est poreuse. On dirait qu'ils pénètrent le verre.<br>En ouvrant un coffret venu de l'Orient<br>Dont la serrure grince et rechigne en criant,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ou dans une maison déserte quelque armoire<br>Pleine de l'âcre odeur des temps, poudreuse et noire,<br>Parfois on trouve un vieux flacon qui se souvient,<br>D'où jaillit toute vive une âme qui revient.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Mille pensers dormaient, chrysalides funèbres,<br>Frémissant doucement dans les lourdes ténèbres,<br>Qui dégagent leur aile et prennent leur essor,<br>Teintés d'azur, glacés de rose, lamés d'or.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Voilà le souvenir enivrant qui voltige<br>Dans l'air troublé; les yeux se ferment; le Vertige<br>Saisit l'âme vaincue et la pousse à deux mains<br>Vers un gouffre obscurci de miasmes humains;</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">II la terrasse au bord d'un gouffre séculaire,<br>Où, Lazare odorant déchirant son suaire,<br>Se meut dans son réveil le cadavre spectral<br>D'un vieil amour ranci, charmant et sépulcral.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ainsi, quand je serai perdu dans la mémoire<br>Des hommes, dans le coin d'une sinistre armoire<br>Quand on m'aura jeté, vieux flacon désolé,<br>Décrépit, poudreux, sale, abject, visqueux, fêlé,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Je serai ton cercueil, aimable pestilence!<br>Le témoin de ta force et de ta virulence,<br>Cher poison préparé par les anges! liqueur<br>Qui me ronge, ô la vie et la mort de mon coeur!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The Perfume Flask</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There are strong perfumes for which all matter<br>Is porous. One would say they go through glass.<br>On opening a coffer that has come from the East,<br>Whose creaking lock resists and grates,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Or in a deserted house, some cabinet <br>Full of the Past's acrid odor, dusty and black, <br>Sometimes one finds an antique phial which remembers, <br>Whence gushes forth a living soul returned to life.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Many thoughts were sleeping, death-like chrysalides, <br>Quivering softly in the heavy shadows, <br>That free their wings and rise in flight, <br>Tinged with azure, glazed with rose, spangled with gold.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That is the bewitching souvenir which flutters <br>In the troubled air; the eyes close; Dizziness <br>Seizes the vanquished soul, pushes it with both hands <br>Toward a darkened abyss of human pollution:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He throws it down at the edge of an ancient abyss, <br>Where, like stinking Lazarus tearing wide his shroud, <br>There moves as it wakes up, the ghostly cadaver <br>Of a rancid old love, charming and sepulchral.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Thus, when I'll be lost to the memory<br>Of men, when I shall be tossed into the corner<br>Of a dismal wardrobe, a desolate old phial,<br>Decrepit, cracked, slimy, dirty, dusty, abject,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Delightful pestilence! I shall be your coffin,<br>The witness of your strength and of your virulence,<br>Beloved poison prepared by the angels! Liqueur<br>That consumes me, O the life and death of my heart!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>— Translated by William Aggeler</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The Flask </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Perfumes there are which through all things can pass<br>And make all matter porous, even glass;<br>Old coffers from the Orient brought, whose locks<br>Grind sullenly when opening the box,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Or, in an empty house, some ancient chest, <br>Where time and dust and gloom were long compressed, <br>May yield a flask where memory survives, <br>And a soul flashes into future lives.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A thousand thoughts, funereal larvae, laid <br>Shuddering softly under palls of shade, <br>May suddenly their soaring wings unfold, <br>Stained azure, glazed with rose, or filmed with gold.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Intoxicating memory now flies <br>Into the dusk, and makes us close our eyes: <br>Vertigo draws the spirit which it grips <br>Towards some dark miasma of eclipse:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Beside an ancient pit he makes her fall, <br>Where Lazarus, sweet-scented, tears his pall <br>And wakes the spectral corpse of some now-cold, <br>Rancid, sepulchral love he knew of old.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So when I'm lost to human memory, thrown<br>In some old gloomy chest to fie alone,<br>A poor decrepit flask, cracked, abject, crusty<br>With dirt, opaque and sticky, damp and dusty,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I'll be your pall and shroud, beloved pest! <br>The witness of your venom, and its test, <br>Dear poison, angel-brewed with deadly art — <br>Life, death, and dear corrosion of my heart.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>— Translated by Roy Campbell</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The Perfume Flask</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">All matter becomes porous to certain scents; they pass<br>Through everything; it seems they even go through glass.<br>When opening some old trunk brought home from the far east,<br>That scolds, feeling the key turned and the lid released — </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Some wardrobe, in a house long uninhabited, <br>Full of the powdery odors of moments that are dead — <br>At times, distinct as ever, an old flask will emit <br>Its perfume; and a soul comes back to live in it.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Dormant as chrysalides, a thousand thoughts that lie <br>In the thick shadows, pulsing imperceptibly, <br>Now stir, now struggle forth; now their cramped wings unfold, <br>Tinted with azure, lustred with rose, sheeted with gold!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Oh, memories, how you rise and soar, and hover there!<br>The eyes close; dizziness, in the moth-darkened air,<br>Seizes the drunken soul, and thrusts it toward the verge — <br>Where mistily all human miasmas float and merge — </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Of a primeval gulf; and drops it to the ground, <br>There, where, like Lazarus rising, his grave-clothes half unwound, <br>And odorous, a cadaver from its sleep has stirred: <br>An old and rancid love, charming and long-interred.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Thus, when I shall be lost from sight, thus when all men<br>Forget me, in the dark and dusty corner then<br>Of that most sinister cupboard where the living pile<br>The dead — when, an old flask, cracked, sticky, abject, vile,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I lie at length — still, still, sweet pestilence of my heart, <br>As to what power thou hast, how virulent thou art, <br>I shall bear witness; safe shall thy dear poison be! <br>Thou vitriol of the gods I thou death and life of me!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>— Translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Le Flacon</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">so keen some fragrances, they freely pass<br>all barriers. they would pierce a wall of glass.<br>unlatch a coffer from the Orient<br>whose creaking hinge will scarcely grant consent,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">or cupboard in an empty house, where murk,<br>sharp smells and cobwebs of a century lurk,<br>thou'lt find perhaps a flask that holds a host<br>of memories, free perchance a living ghost.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">crushed in the gloom a thousand keepsakes lay<br>like coffined larvae there, which, quivering, grey,<br>released at last arise on soaring wing,<br>rose-flushed or azure, golden, glittering,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">and swirling memories mount, to thrill and tease<br>our closing eyes; we reel in murk, as these<br>grapple amain and hurl the quailing soul<br>down to a Pit where human odours roll</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">and fell it on the brink that waits for all,<br>where, bursting, Lazarus-like, its rotted pall,<br>stirs and awakes the spectral visage of<br>a charming, fusty, weird, forgotten love.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">so when Oblivion blots my memory dim,<br>and in a corner of a cupboard grim<br>I like cast off, a sorry flask and old,<br>crackled and dusty, viscous, green with mould,</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I'll be thy coffin, lovely pestilence!<br>I'll prove thy power and thy virulence,<br>dear poison brewed by angels! dulcet fire<br>I've drunk, my life, my death, my heart's desire!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=354464" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>— Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Charles+Baudelaire">Charles Baudelaire</a></strong></div>