"To the Reader" by Charles Baudelaire

This poem prefaces Baudelaire's 1857 collection Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil). To the Reader Folly and error, sin and avarice, Labor our minds and bodies in their course, Blithely we nourish pleasurable remorse As beggars feed their parasitic lice. Our sins are stubborn, our repentance faint, We sell our weak confessions at high [...]