Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE SWAN; TO VICTOR HUGO, by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Andromache, I think of you! - this small river Last Line: Of captives, of the conquered! . . . Of many others more! Subject(s): Birds; Mythology - Classical; Swans | ||||||||
I Andromache, I think of you! -This small river, Poor sad mirror where formerly shone The immense majesty of your widow's sorrows, This deceptive Simois, increased by your tears, Suddenly has fecundated my fertile memory As I crossed the new-built Carrousel. -The old Paris is no more (the form of a city Changes more quickly, alas! than the heart of a mortal); I see only in mind all this camp of hutments, This heap of roughed-out capitals and shafts, The grasses, the large stone blocks greened by puddle-water, And, shining in the windows, the jumbled bric-a-brac. There at one time was set down a menagerie; There I saw one morning, at the hour when Work Awakens under cold and clear skies, when the street-cleaning Pushes a gloomy hurricane into the silent air, A swan which had escaped from his cage, And rubbing the dry pavement with his webbed feet, He dragged his white plumage on the rough ground. Opening his beak beside a dry gutter, He bathed his wings nervously in the dust, And, heart full of his happy natal lake, said: "Water, when then will you rain down? When will you strike, thunderbolt?" I see this unhappy being, strange and fatal myth, Towards the sky at times, towards the ironic, cruelly blue sky, Straining his hungering head on a convulsive neck, Like the man written of by Ovid, As if he spoke reproaches to God! II Paris changes, but nothing in my melancholy Has strired! new palaces, scaffoldings, stones, Old quarters of the city, all becomes allegory for me, And my loved memories are heavier than rocks. So before this Louvre an image oppresses me; I think of my great swan, with his mad gestures, Ridiculous and sublime, like the exiled, And gnawed by a truceless desire! and then I think of you, Andromache, fallen from the arms of a great husband, A low chattel, under the hand of the superb Pyrrhus, Bent in ecstasy beside an empty tomb; Widow of Hector, alas! and wife of Helenus. I think of the negress, emaciated and consumptive, Stamping in the mud, and seeking with haggard glance The absent coconut palms of superb Africa Behind the immense walling of the fog; Of whoever has lost what never can be refound, Never! never! of those who drink deep of tears And suck the breasts of that kindly she-wolf, Sorrow! Of starveling orphans drying up like flowers! Thus in the forest where my mind exiles itself An old Memory sounds a full blast on the horn! I think of the sailors forgotten on an island, Of captives, of the conquered! . . . of many others more! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LOVE THE WILD SWAN by ROBINSON JEFFERS FLIGHT OF SWANS by ROBINSON JEFFERS TO A WILD SWAN by HENRY MEADE BLAND A STRAW SWAN UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE by DENISE LEVERTOV LEDA RECONSIDERED by MONA VAN DUYN A VOYAGE TO CYTHERA by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE |
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