“The Jewels
My darling was naked, and, knowing my heart, she had kept on only her sounding jewels, whose rich array gave her the all-conquering look that the slaves of the Moors have in their happier times.
When, as it moves, it throws out its sharp, mocking sound, that glittering world of metal and stone ravishes me into ecstasy, and I love to distraction things where sounds is mingled with light.
She was lying there, then, and letting herself be loved, and from her vantage point on the couch she smiled happily at my love, deep and gentle as the sea, as it rose towards her as if to its cliff.
Her eyes fixed on me like a tamed tiger’s, with a dreamy, vague look she tried out new poses, and the combination of candour and lubricity lent a new charm to her various shapes.
And her arm and her leg, and her thigh and her hips, smooth as oil, undulating like a swan, passed before my eyes, all seeing and serene; and her belly and her breasts, those clusters of my vine.
Thrust forward, more tempting than the Angels of evil, to trouble the state of rest my soul had entered, and to displace it from the crystal rock where, calm and alone, it had seated itself.
I felt I was seeing, by some device, the haunches of Antiope joined to the torso of beardless youth, so strongly did her waist set off her pelvis. On that wild, brown skin the make-up was wonderful!
And the lamp having died down at last, as the fire alone lit up the chamber, every time it heaved a flaming sigh, it flooded with blood that amber-coloured skin”.[1]
[1] Baudelaire C. P. Selected Poems, C. Clark 1995 Penguin Classics, Clays ltd, St Ives Plc pages 151,2 and 153.
