The Poetry Corner

The Giantess

By Charles Baudelaire

In times when madcap Nature in her verve Conceived each day a hatch of monstrous spawn, I might have lived near some young giantess, Like a voluptuous cat before a queen To watch her body tlower with her soul, And grow up freely in her dreadful play; To guess about a passion's sombre tlame Bom in the mists that swim within her eyes. At leisure to explore her mighty forms; To climb the slopes of her enormous knees, And sometimes, when the summer's tainted suns Had lain her out across the countryside, To drowse in nonchalance below her breast, Like a calm village in the mountain's shade.