some feeble attempts at translation:




La Beauté
by Charles Baudelaire





I am beautiful, O mortals! as a dream stone
And my breast, where everyone was bruised in turn,
Is made to inspire love for the poet.
Eternal and mute as matter.
I sit in the sky like a sphinx

I combine a snowheart to the whiteness of swans;
I hate all movement that disturbs the lines
As to my emotion
I neither laugh nor cry

Poets, before my poses, that I steal
from the proudest masterpieces
study will eat up your days

For I, to entertain the docile lovers,
have pure mirrors to change these things to beauty
my eyes, my eyes wide in the endless light.



La Mort des Amants
by Charles Baudelaire







We shall have a bed of light scents,
sofas as deep tombs,
strange flowers on shelves,
birthed for us under a sweeter sky.

Employing their last hot season in this world,
Our two hearts will be torches,
Which will reflect the light
into our two minds, these twin mirrors.
As evening will play rose and mystic blue,

We shall exchange a flash of lightning,
As a long sob bloated with goodbyes;
and later an Angel will open doors,
Will come to revive, dutiful and happy,
The tarnished mirrors and the dead fire.


.................


dissatisfaction has led me down this path. seems like most translations are stilted,
and actually repress the Poet. He was the first Modernist, I should like to see him kept so...