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Charles Baudelaire - Punishment of Pride/Châtiment de l’orgueil

Punishment of Pride


In those old times wherein Theology
Flourished with greater sap and energy,
A celebrated doctor — so they say —
Having stirred many careless hearts one day
Down to their dullest depths, and having shown
Strange pathways leading to the heavenly throne —
Tracks he himself had never journeyed on
(Whereby maybe pure spirits alone had gone) —
Frenzied and swollen by the devilish pride,
Like to a man who has climbed too high, outcried:
"Ah, little Jesus, I have lifted thee!
But had I willed to assault thy dignity,
Thy shame had matched they present fame, and lo!
Thou wouldst be but a wretched embryo!"

Straightway his reason left him; that keen mind,
Sunbright before, was darkened and made blind;
All chaos whirled within that intellect
Erewhile a shrine with all fair gems bedeckt,
Beneath whose roof such pomp had shone so bright;
He was possessed by silence and thick night
As is a cellar when its key is lost…
Thenceforth he was a brute beast; when he crossed
The fields at times, not seeing any thing,
Knowing not if it were winter or green spring,
Useless, repulsive, vile, he made a mock
For infants, a mere children's laughing-stock.