Love poems for Saint Valentine's Day

As Valentine's Day approaches, the Pure France team shares some love poems by French poets.

To a passerby, Charles Baudelaire

The noisy street was sceaming around me. Long, thin, in deep mourning, majestic pain, A woman passed, with a sumptuous hand Lifting, swinging scallop and hem; Agile and noble, with its statuesque leg.

Me, I was drinking, tense like an extravagant, In his eye, livid sky where the hurricane germinates, The sweetness that fascinates and the pleasure that kills. A flash... then night! - Fleeting Beauty Whose gaze made me suddenly reborn, Will I see you only in eternity? Elsewhere, very far from here ! too late ! maybe never! Because I don't know where you're fleeing, you don't know where I'm going, O you whom I would have loved, O you who knew it!

To my beloved, Paul Verlaine

I know everything, even myself. I don't know anything, even about you. I am the unconscious and I love I don't know who, even me! But I don't ignore anyone. And that whoever, I'm there To speak to him if, in the conch From his ear, this hole! He wants me to slip him This word or a word And if he wanted us to f*** him A sailor's compliment. I am of this century and of all The decadences and I am This pilgrim who, by the roads. And freezes me and anneals me. And without fear or green death Nor de la vie en rose, I have For answer to such cheerful talk, Sad or nothing at all: M...

To the beloved woman, Renée Vivien

When you came, with thoughtful steps, in the mist, The sky mingled crystal and bronze with gold. Your body guessed itself, uncertain undulation, Softer than the wave and fresher than the foam. The summer evening seemed like an oriental dream Of rose and sandalwood. I was shaking. Long pale religious lilies Were dying in your hands, like cold candles. Their expiring perfumes escaped from your fingers In the swooning breath of supreme anguish. Of your bright clothes were exhaled in turn agony and love. I felt a shiver on my silent lips The sweetness and dread of your first kiss. Under your steps, I heard the lyres break By shouting to the sky the proud boredom of poets Among floods of languidly diminishing sounds, Blonde, you appeared to me. And the spirit thirsty for the eternal, for the impossible, From infinity, I wanted to modulate widely A hymn of magic and wonder. But the stanza rose stuttering and painful, Naive reflection, childish echo, bumpy flight, Towards your Divinity.