VENUS AND THE FOOL

Charles Pierre Baudelaire

1852

How admirable the day! The vast park swoons beneath the burning eye of
the sun, as youth beneath the lordship of love.

There is no rumour of the universal ecstasy of all things. The waters
themselves are as though drifting into sleep. Very different from the
festivals of humanity, here is a silent revel.

It seems as though an ever-waning light makes all objects glimmer more
and more, as though the excited flowers burn with a desire to rival the
blue of the sky by the vividness of their colours; as though the heat,
making perfumes visible, drives them in vapour towards their star.

Yet, in the midst of this universal joy, I have perceived one afflicted
thing.

At the feet of a colossal Venus, one of those motley fools, those
willing clowns whose business it is to bring laughter upon kings when
weariness or remorse possesses them, lies wrapped in his gaudy and
ridiculous garments, coined with his cap and bells, huddled against the
pedestal, and raises towards the goddess his eyes filled with tears.

And his eyes say: "I am the last and most alone of all mortals, inferior
to the meanest of animals in that I am denied either love or friendship.
Yet I am made, even I, for the understanding and enjoyment of immortal
Beauty. O Goddess, have pity upon my sadness and my frenzy."

The implacable Venus gazed into I know not what distances with her
marble eyes.

End of title

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