My only Love, be merciful to me!
This is the gulf of blood, where my heart lies -
This stupefying space, these livid skies,
This welter of disgust and blasphemy.
Dead sun hung overhead for half the year,
Then arctic night and six-month-long relapse,
A place more barren than the polar caps -
No bird, no beast, no grass, no atmosphere.
No evils on this earth now could surpass
The frigid sun that broods on my crevasse,
Enormous night and Chaos over all.
I'm envious of every animal
That hibernates and never needs a mind,
So slowly does the skein of time unwind!
- Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)
