Emily Dickinson & Charles Baudelaire

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) & Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) lived in different continents, but for both their religion – 
and intoxication — 
was poetry!

Dickinson:

I dwell in Possibility —
A fairer House than Prose —
More numerous of Windows —
Superior — for Doors —

Of Chambers as the Cedars —
Impregnable of eye —
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky —

Of Visitors — the fairest —
For Occupation — This —
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise —

Baudelaire, ‘Get Drunk’

(trans. Amelia Hasard)

Always be drunk.
That is all
there is to it.
Do not feel
Time’s horrible burden
chip at your shoulders
and crush you into the earth,
by getting drunk and staying so.
On what?
On wine, on poetry, on virtue, on whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you find yourself
at the steps of a palace,
on the green grasses of a gutter
or in the bleak dejection of your room,
waking to find your drunkenness
already fading, disappearing,
ask the wind,
wave,
star,
bird
or clock,
ask anything that flees,
anything that whimpers,
ask anything that rolls,
sings
or speaks, ask what time it is;
and the wind,
wave,
star,
bird or clock
will all answer you,
‘Time to get drunk!
Avoid becoming Time’s martyred slaves,
by getting drunk;
by getting drunk endlessly!
On wine, on poetry, on virtue, on whatever.’ 

Dickinson:

I taste a liquor never brewed —

From Tankards scooped in Pearl —

Not all the Vats upon the Rhine

Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of Air — am I —

And Debauchee of Dew —

Reeling — thro endless summer day —

From inns of Molten Blue —

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee

Out of the Foxglove's door —

When Butterflies — renounce their “drams” —

I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats —

And Saints — to windows run —

To see the little Tippler

Leaning against the — Sun —