Found Pages #7: The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire

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THE DEATH OF THE POOR

Death is consoler and Death brings to life; The end of all, the solitary hope; We, drunk with Death's elixir, face the strife, Take heart, and mount till eve the weary slope.

Across the storm, the hoar-frost, and the snow, Death on our dark horizon pulses clear; Death is the famous hostel we all know, Where we may rest and sleep and have good cheer.

Death is an angel whose magnetic palms Bring dreams of ecstasy and slumberous calms To smooth the beds of naked men and poor.

Death is the mystic granary of God; The poor man's purse; his fatherland of yore; The Gate that opens into heavens un trod!