I'm like the king of a rain-country, rich <br />but sterile, young but with an old wolf's itch, <br />one who escapes Fénelon's apologues, <br />and kills the day in boredom with his dogs; <br />nothing cheers him, darts, tennis, falconry, <br />his people dying by the balcony; <br />the bawdry of the pet hermaphrodite <br />no longer gets him through a single night; <br />his bed of fleur-de-lys becomes a tomb; <br />even the ladies of the court, for whom <br />all kings are beautiful, cannot put on <br />shameful enough dresses for this skeleton; <br />the scholar who makes his gold cannot invent <br />washes to cleanse the poisoned element; <br />even in baths of blood, Rome's legacy, <br />our tyrants' solace in senility, <br />we cannot warm up his shot corpse, whose food <br />is syrup-green Lethean ooze, not blood.<br /><br />Charles Baudelaire<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/spleen/
