Correspondences

(From the French of Charles Baudelaire) All nature is a temple where the alive Pillars breathe often a tremor of mixed words; Man wanders in a forest of accords That peer familiarly from each ogive. Like thinning echoes tumbling to sleep beyond In a unity umbrageous and infinite, Vast as the night stupendously moonlit, All smells and colors and sounds correspond. Odors blown sweet as infants' naked flesh, Soft as oboes, green as a studded plain, Others, corrupt, rich and triumphant, thresh Expansions to the infinite of pain: Amber and myrrh, benzoin and musk condense To transports of the spirit and the sense!