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by Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)
Translation by Cyril Meir Scott (1879 - 1970)

Que le Soleil est beau quand tout frais...
Language: French (Français) 
Que le Soleil est beau quand tout frais il se lève,
Comme une explosion nous lançant son bonjour !
— Bienheureux celui-là qui peut avec amour
Saluer son coucher plus glorieux qu'un rêve !

Je me souviens !... J'ai vu tout, fleur, source, sillon,
Se pâmer sous son œil comme un cœur qui palpite...
— Courons vers l'horizon, il est tard, courons vite,
Pour attraper au moins un oblique rayon !

Mais je poursuis en vain le Dieu qui se retire ;
L'irrésistible Nuit établit son empire,
Noire, humide, funeste et pleine de frissons ;

Une odeur de tombeau dans les ténèbres nage,
Et mon pied peureux froisse, au bord du marécage,
Des crapauds imprévus et de froids limaçons. * 1

About the headline (FAQ)

View original text (without footnotes)

Confirmed with Charles Baudelaire, Les Épaves, Amsterdam: À l'enseigne du Coq, 1866, pages 5-7. Also confirmed with Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes de Charles Baudelaire, vol. I : Les Fleurs du mal, Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1868, in Spleen et Idéal, page 235.

* = footnotes from the 1866 source text

* 1 Le mot : Genus irritabile vatum, date de bien des siècles avant les querelles des Classiques, des Romantiques, des Réalistes, des Euphuistes, etc… Il est évident que par l’irrésistible Nuit M. Charles Baudelaire a voulu caractériser l’état actuel de la littérature, et que les crapauds imprévus et les froids limaçons sont les écrivains qui ne sont pas de son école.
Ce sonnet a été composé en 1862, pour servir d’épilogue à un livre de M. Charles Asselineau, qui n’a pas paru : Mélanges tirés d’une petite bibliothèque romantique ; lequel devait avoir pour prologue un sonnet de M. Théodore de Banville : Le lever du soleil romantique.
(Note de l’éditeur.)

First appeared in the revue Le Boulevard, January 12, 1862; later published in Les Épaves, 1866. Also appears under Spleen et Idéal as number 100 in the 1868 edition of Les Fleurs du mal.


Text Authorship:

  • by Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867), "Le Coucher du soleil romantique", written 1861?, appears in Les Fleurs du mal, in 1. Spleen et Idéal, no. 100, appears in Les Épaves, no. 1 [author's text checked 3 times against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Rodolphe Théophile Cahen d'Anvers, marquis de Torre Alfina , as Armand Bolsène, "Le Coucher du soleil romantique" [ mezzo-soprano or tenor and piano ], from Frissons d'au delà, no. 3, Éd. E. Fromont [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Ferenc Farkas (1905 - 2000), "Pour Isabelle ...par Grandpapa", 1996 [ voice and piano ] [sung text not yet checked]
  • by Maria Teresa Pelegrí i Marimón (1907 - 1996), "Le coucher du soleil romantique" [ voice and piano ], from Quatre chansons sentimentales, no. 1 [sung text not yet checked]

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Jaroslav Haasz) , "Romantický západ slunce"
  • ENG English (Cyril Meir Scott) , "The Set of the Romantic Sun", appears in The Flowers of Evil, London, Elkin Mathews, first published 1909
  • ENG English (Frank Pearce Sturm) , "Sunset", first published 1906
  • GER German (Deutsch) (Stefan George) , "Der Untergang der romantischen Sonne", appears in Die Blumen des Bösen, in Trübsinn und Vergeisterung, first published 1901


Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2016-01-02
Line count: 14
Word count: 115

The Set of the Romantic Sun
Language: English  after the French (Français) 
How beauteous the sun as it rises supreme,
Like an explosion that greets us from above,
Oh, happy is he that can hail with love,
Its decline, more glorious far, than a dream.

I saw flower, furrow, and brook. . . . I recall
How they swooned like a tremulous heart 'neath the sun,
Let us haste to the sky-line, 'tis late, let us run,
At least to catch one slanting ray ere it fall.

But the god, who eludes me, I chase all in vain,
The night, irresistible, plants its domain,
Black mists and vague shivers of death it forbodes ;

While an odour of graves through the darkness spreads,
And on the swamp's margin, my timid foot treads
Upon slimy snails, and on unseen toads.

Confirmed with Cyril Scott, The Flowers of Evil [by Charles Baudelaire; translated into English verse by Cyril Scott], London: Elkin Mathews, 1909, page 56.


Text Authorship:

  • by Cyril Meir Scott (1879 - 1970), "The Set of the Romantic Sun", appears in The Flowers of Evil, London, Elkin Mathews, first published 1909 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Based on:

  • a text in French (Français) by Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867), "Le Coucher du soleil romantique", written 1861?, appears in Les Fleurs du mal, in 1. Spleen et Idéal, no. 100, appears in Les Épaves, no. 1
    • Go to the text page.

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

    [ None yet in the database ]


Researcher for this page: Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2019-08-22
Line count: 14
Word count: 126

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This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

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