The Death of Paupers Print
By Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire   
Sunday, 25 September 2011

It’s Death comforts us, alas! and makes us live.
It is the goal of life, it brings us hope, 

And, like a rich elixir, seems to give 

Courage to march along the darkening slope.

Across the tempest, hail, and hoarfrost, look!

Along the black horizon, a faint gleam!

It is the inn that's written in the book

Where one can sleep, and eat, and sit and dream.

An Angel, in magnetic hands it holds
Sleep and the gift of sweet ecstatic dreams, 

And makes a bed for poor and naked souls.

It is God’s glory and the mystic grange: 

The poor man's purse and fatherland it seems, 

And door that opens Heavens vast and strange.

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