La Géante by Charles Baudelaire

Here's a great poem by French author Charles Baudelaire. "La Géante" or "The Giantess" was published in the book Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) in 1857. There are several different translations, but I like the imagery in this one the most.

The Giantess

In times of old when Nature in her glad excess
Brought forth such living marvels as no more are seen,
I should have loved to dwell with a young giantess,
Like a voluptuous cat about the feet of a queen;
To run and laugh beside her in her terrible games,
And see her grow each day to a more fearful size,
And see the flowering of her soul, and the first flames
Of passionate longing in the misty depths of her eyes;
To scale the slopes of her huge knees, explore at will
The hollows and the heights of her — and when, oppressed
By the long afternoons of summer, cloudless and still,
She would stretch out across the countryside to rest,
I should have loved to sleep in the shadow of her breast,
Quietly as a village nestling under a hill.

Image: Ochiko Terada