Tag: Charles Baudelaire

From Weird Tales, November-December 1941. Listen to Mr Jim Moon‘s great narration of this poem by Charles Baudelaire |MP3|.

Though credited as having been translated by one “Timeus Gaylord” we are reliably informed that this was a pseudonym of Clark Ashton Smith.

The Owls
By Charles Baudelaire, translated by Clark Ashton Smith

In shelter of the vaulted yews,
Like alien gods who shun the world,
The flown owls wait with feathers furled;
Darting red eyes, they dream and muse.

In rows unmoving they remain
Till the sad hour that they remember,
When, treading down the sun’s last ember,
The towering night resumes its reign.

Their attitude will teach the seer
How wise and needful is the fear
Of movement and of travailment;

For shadow-drunken wanderers bear
On all their ways the chastisement
Of having wished to wend elsewhere.

Posted by Jesse Willis