Spleen (IV)

Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle

Sur l'esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,

Et que de l'horizon embrassant tout le cercle

II nous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits;

Quand la terre est changée en un cachot humide,

Où l'Espérance, comme une chauve-souris,

S'en va battant les murs de son aile timide

Et se cognant la tête à des plafonds pourris;

Quand la pluie étalant ses immenses traînées

D'une vaste prison imite les barreaux,

Et qu'un peuple muet d'infâmes araignées

Vient tendre ses filets au fond de nos cerveaux,

Des cloches tout à coup sautent avec furie

Et lancent vers le ciel un affreux hurlement,

Ainsi que des esprits errants et sans patrie

Qui se mettent à geindre opiniâtrement.

— Et de longs corbillards, sans tambours ni musique,

Défilent lentement dans mon âme; l'Espoir,

Vaincu, pleure, et l'Angoisse atroce, despotique,

Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir.

Spleen

When the low, heavy sky weighs like a lid

On the groaning spirit, victim of long ennui,

And from the all-encircling horizon

Spreads over us a day gloomier than the night;

When the earth is changed into a humid dungeon,

In which Hope like a bat

Goes beating the walls with her timid wings

And knocking her head against the rotten ceiling;

When the rain stretching out its endless train

Imitates the bars of a vast prison

And a silent horde of loathsome spiders

Comes to spin their webs in the depths of our brains,

All at once the bells leap with rage

And hurl a frightful roar at heaven,

Even as wandering spirits with no country

Burst into a stubborn, whimpering cry.

— And without drums or music, long hearses

Pass by slowly in my soul; Hope, vanquished,

Weeps, and atrocious, despotic Anguish

On my bowed skull plants her black flag.

— Translated by William Aggeler

Spleen

When the cold heavy sky weighs like a lid

On spirits whom eternal boredom grips,

And the wide ring of the horizon's hid

In daytime darker than the night's eclipse:

When the world seems a dungeon, damp and small,

Where hope flies like a bat, in circles reeling,

Beating his timid wings against the wall

And dashing out his brains against the ceiling:

When trawling rains have made their steel-grey fibres

Look like the grilles of some tremendous jail,

And a whole nation of disgusting spiders

Over our brains their dusty cobwebs trail:

Suddenly bells are fiercely clanged about

And hurl a fearsome howl into the sky

Like spirits from their country hunted out

Who've nothing else to do but shriek and cry —

Then long processions without fifes or drums

Wind slowly through my soul. Hope, weeping, bows

To conquest. And atrocious Anguish comes

To plant his black flag on my drooping brows.

— Translated by Roy Campbell

When the Low, Heavy Sky

When the low, heavy sky weighs like the giant lid

Of a great pot upon the spirit crushed by care,

And from the whole horizon encircling us is shed

A day blacker than night, and thicker with despair;

When Earth becomes a dungeon, where the timid bat

Called Confidence, against the damp and slippery walls

Goes beating his blind wings, goes feebly bumping at

The rotted, moldy ceiling, and the plaster falls;

When, dark and dropping straight, the long lines of the rain

Like prison-bars outside the window cage us in;

And silently, about the caught and helpless brain,

We feel the spider walk, and test the web, and spin;

Then all the bells at once ring out in furious clang,

Bombarding heaven with howling, horrible to hear,

Like lost and wandering souls, that whine in shrill harangue

Their obstinate complaints to an unlistening ear.

— And a long line of hearses, with neither dirge nor drums,

Begins to cross my soul. Weeping, with steps that lag,

Hope walks in chains; and Anguish, after long wars, becomes

Tyrant at last, and plants on me his inky flag.

— Translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Spleen

when low skies weightier than a coffin-lid

cast on the moaning soul their weary blight,

and from the whole horizon's murky grid

its grey light drips more dismal than the night;

when earth's a dungeon damp whose chill appals,

in which — a fluttering bat — my Hope, alone

buffets with timid wing the mouldering walls

and beats her head against the dome of stone;

when close as prison-bars, from overhead,

the clouds let fall the curtain of the rains,

and voiceless hordes of spiders come, to spread

their infamous cobwebs through our darkened brains,

explosively the bells begin to ring,

hurling their frightful clangour toward the sky,

as homeless spirits lost and wandering

might raise their indefatigable cry;

and ancient hearses through my soul advance

muffled and slow; my Hope, now pitiful,

weeps her defeat, and conquering Anguish plants

his great black banner on my cowering skull.

— Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks

Spleen

When the low and heavy sky presses like a lid

On the groaning heart a prey to slow cares,

And when from a horizon holding the whole orb

There is cast at us a dark sky more sad than night;

When earth is changed to a damp dungeon,

Where Hope, like a bat,

Flees beating the walls with its timorous wings,

And knocking its head on the rotting ceilings;

When the rain spreads out vast trails

Like the bars of a huge prison,

And when, like sordid spiders, silent people stretch

Threads to the depths of our brains,

Suddenly the bells jump furiously

And hurl to the sky a horrible shriek,

Like some wandering landless spirits

Starting an obstinate complaint.

— And long hearses, with no drums, no music,

File slowly through my soul: Hope,

Conquered, cries, and despotic atrocious Agony

Plants on my bent skull its flag of black.

— Translated by Geoffrey Wagner

"Spleen (IV)" first appeared in the 1868 posthumous edition of Baudelaire's Collected Poetry.