<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354549" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>To the Reader</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Folly, depravity, greed, mortal sin<br>Invade our souls and rack our flesh; we feed<br>Our gentle guilt, gracious regrets, that breed<br>Like vermin glutting on foul beggars' skin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our sins are stubborn; our repentance, faint.<br>We take a handsome price for our confession,<br>Happy once more to wallow in transgression,<br>Thinking vile tears will cleanse us of all taint.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">On evil's cushion poised, His Majesty,<br>Satan Thrice-Great, lulls our charmed soul, until<br>He turns to vapor what was once our will:<br>Rich ore, transmuted by his alchemy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He holds the strings that move us, limb by limb!<br>We yield, enthralled, to things repugnant, base;<br>Each day, towards Hell, with slow, unhurried pace,<br>We sink, uncowed, through shadows, stinking, grim.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like some lewd rake with his old worn-out whore,<br>Nibbling her suffering teats, we seize our sly<br>delight, that, like an orange—withered, dry—<br>We squeeze and press for juice that is no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our brains teem with a race of Fiends, who frolic<br>thick as a million gut-worms; with each breath,<br>Our lungs drink deep, suck down a stream of Death—<br>Dim-lit—to low-moaned whimpers melancholic.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">If poison, fire, blade, rape do not succeed<br>In sewing on that dull embroidery<br>Of our pathetic lives their artistry,<br>It's that our soul, alas, shrinks from the deed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And yet, among the beasts and creatures all—<br>Panther, snake, scorpion, jackal, ape, hound, hawk—<br>Monsters that crawl, and shriek, and grunt, and squawk,<br>In our vice-filled menagerie's caterwaul,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One worse is there, fit to heap scorn upon—<br>More ugly, rank! Though noiseless, calm and still,<br>yet would he turn the earth to scraps and swill,<br>swallow it whole in one great, gaping yawn:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ennui! That monster frail!—With eye wherein<br>A chance tear gleams, he dreams of gibbets, while<br>Smoking his hookah, with a dainty smile. . .<br>—You know him, reader,—hypocrite,—my twin!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Charles+Baudelaire">Charles Baudelaire</a><div class=q> <img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share"> <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354549" data-title="To the Reader de Charles Baudelaire" data-description="Folly, depravity, greed, mortal sin Invade our souls and rack our flesh; we feed Our gentle guilt, gracious regrets, that breed Like vermin glutting on foul beggars' skin. Our sins are stubborn; our repentance, faint. We take a handsome price for..."></div> </div> </div>

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