Harmonie du soir by Baudelaire: the full text, and why the lines keep returning
Looking for the text of Harmonie du soir? Here it is in full, in the original French, followed by a plain English reading: why the same lines return from one stanza to the next, what that rare form does to the ear, and where this sunset leads.
The PoemHarmonie du soir, the Complete Original Text
The poem appears in Les Fleurs du mal, in the section Spleen et Idéal. It follows the pattern of the pantoum, a form in which two lines of each stanza reappear in the next. Here it is exactly as Baudelaire wrote it.
Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige
Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir ;
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir ;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige !
Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir ;
Le violon frémit comme un cœur qu'on afflige ;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige !
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir.
Le violon frémit comme un cœur qu'on afflige,
Un cœur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir !
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir ;
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.
Un cœur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir,
Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige !
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige...
Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir !
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal.
A plain prose rendering, offered as a reading aid. The print itself keeps the original French.
Now comes the time when, quivering on its stem, each flower evaporates like a censer; sounds and scents turn in the evening air; a melancholy waltz and a languid dizziness.
Each flower evaporates like a censer; the violin trembles like a heart in distress; a melancholy waltz and a languid dizziness. The sky is sad and beautiful like a great altar.
The violin trembles like a heart in distress, a tender heart that hates the vast black nothingness. The sky is sad and beautiful like a great altar; the sun has drowned in its own congealing blood.
A tender heart that hates the vast black nothingness gathers every trace of the luminous past. The sun has drowned in its own congealing blood. Your memory shines in me like a monstrance.
What the Poem Is About
Evening falls. The flowers give off their scent, a violin plays somewhere, the sky reddens then goes out. Nothing else happens: no character, no action, just a moment of the day dissolving.
But the vocabulary is that of the church, and it takes over everything: censer, altar, monstrance. Baudelaire turns a sunset into a mass, and the final line reveals who it is for: a memory, kept like a host. The religious poem was a love poem all along.
A Stanza-by-Stanza Reading
Four quatrains on two rhymes only, and above all a pantoum: the second and fourth lines of each stanza become the first and third of the next. The poem moves forward by turning on itself.
Stanza 1: The Evening Rising
Now comes the time is almost a biblical formula, announcing an event. Then everything begins to evaporate, turn and waltz. Baudelaire mixes the senses from the start, sounds and scents turning together in the same air, which he theorises elsewhere under the name of correspondences.
Stanzas 2 and 3: The Waltz and the Blood
The repeated lines come back like a refrain nobody chose. The violin appears, then the heart in distress, and the tone darkens: the vast black nothingness, the sun drowned in its own congealing blood. The twilight stops being pretty and becomes an agony looked at directly.
Stanza 4: The Monstrance
The poem has reached the end of its night, and that is where it turns everything around. The tender heart gathers the traces of the luminous past, and the last line makes the memory shine like a monstrance, the object that displays the host. Where the sun went out, an inner light takes over.
Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir ! Harmonie du soir, final line
Why This Turning Form Works So Well
The pantoum is a form of Malay origin that the French romantics adopted, and Baudelaire takes liberties with it. The effect is physical: by dint of returning, the lines stop being read and become sound matter, exactly like the waltz and the violin the text talks about. The poem does not merely describe a dizziness, it produces one. Debussy set it to music, which is no accident.
The Poem on Your Wall
At Heure d'été we set the full text of Harmonie du soir as a typographic art print, composed like the page of an old edition: the poem, the poet's name, nothing else. Printed to order on 170 g/m² matte paper, it finds its place in a reading corner, above a desk, or inside a gallery wall of literary prints.
A poem you love on a wall is a text you reread. That is the whole idea.
The Last Word
Harmonie du soir is the most musical poem in Les Fleurs du mal, the one you retain without learning it. Read it, reread it, and if it is one of yours, give it a place where you can see it every day.
Baudelaire as Art Prints
The great French poems set as typographic prints, made to order on 170 g/m² matte paper.
See the full collection →
Frequently Asked Questions
Which collection is Harmonie du soir from?
Harmonie du soir is a poem by Charles Baudelaire from Les Fleurs du mal, where it appears in the section Spleen et Idéal, among the poems addressed to Apollonie Sabatier.
What is a pantoum?
A pantoum is a poetic form of Malay origin in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza are taken up as the first and third lines of the next. Baudelaire adapts the principle freely in Harmonie du soir.
What does the last line of Harmonie du soir mean?
A monstrance is the liturgical object that displays the host. By comparing the memory of the beloved woman to a monstrance, Baudelaire turns it into a sacred light that survives once the sun has set.
How is the poem structured?
Harmonie du soir is made of four quatrains of alexandrines built on two rhymes only, with lines carried over from one stanza to the next. That circularity gives the poem its waltz effect.