La Beauté

fair as a dream in stone I loom afar
— mortals! — with dazzling breast where, bruised in turn
all poets fall in silence, doomed to burn
with love eternal as the atoms are.

white as a swan I throne with heart of snow
in azure space, a sphynx that none divine,
no hateful motion mars my lovely line,
nor tears nor laughter shall I ever know.

and poets, lured by this magnificence
— this grandeur proud as Parian monuments —
toil all their days like martyrs in a spell;

lovers bewitched are they, for I possess
pure mirrors harbouring worlds of loveliness:
my wide, wide eyes where fires eternal dwell!

— Lewis Piaget Shanks,

Baudelaire,

Flowers of Evil (New York: Ives Washburn, 1931)