I've posted this before but it's time again to post this poem by Charles Baudelaire. It is... appropriate, shall we say.
The Clock ("L'Horloge")
The Clock! a sinister, impassive god
Whose threatening finger says to us: 'Remember!
Soon in your anguished heart, as in a target,
Quivering shafts of Grief will plant themselves;
Vaporous Joy glides over the horizon
The way a slyphid flits into the wings;
Each instant eats a piece of the delight
A man is granted for his earthly season.
Three thousand and six hundred times an hour
The Second sighs, Remember! - Suddenly
That droning insect Now says: I am Past
And I have sucked your life into my nostril!
Esto memor! Remember! Souviens-toi!
(My metal throat speaks out in every language)
Don't let the minutes, prodigal, be wasted-
They are the ore you must refine for gold!
Remember, Time is greedy at the game
And wins on every roll! perfectly legal.
The day runs down; the night comes on: remember!
The water-clock bleeds into the abyss.
Soon sounds the hour when Chance the heavenly,
When Virtue the august, eternal virgin,
When even (oh! your last retreat) Repentance,
Will tell you: Die old coward! it's too late!'
The Clock ("L'Horloge")
The Clock! a sinister, impassive god
Whose threatening finger says to us: 'Remember!
Soon in your anguished heart, as in a target,
Quivering shafts of Grief will plant themselves;
Vaporous Joy glides over the horizon
The way a slyphid flits into the wings;
Each instant eats a piece of the delight
A man is granted for his earthly season.
Three thousand and six hundred times an hour
The Second sighs, Remember! - Suddenly
That droning insect Now says: I am Past
And I have sucked your life into my nostril!
Esto memor! Remember! Souviens-toi!
(My metal throat speaks out in every language)
Don't let the minutes, prodigal, be wasted-
They are the ore you must refine for gold!
Remember, Time is greedy at the game
And wins on every roll! perfectly legal.
The day runs down; the night comes on: remember!
The water-clock bleeds into the abyss.
Soon sounds the hour when Chance the heavenly,
When Virtue the august, eternal virgin,
When even (oh! your last retreat) Repentance,
Will tell you: Die old coward! it's too late!'
3 Comments:
I like 'the Second sighs'. Makes me wonder what the Hour does, or the Month etc. I could suggest something twee and alliterative but I actually think they all sigh, just with different intensities. So (for example) the Hour would give out one of those sharp exhalations that bi-focaled old people make when there's too much noise in the public library, the Month an almost-groan of the kind heard from the back of community halls during fractious council gatherings.
Jeez... way to get me to stop reading blogs and write some thesis...
all of a sudden I feel in a terrible rush.
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