The Albatross

Like all nations at the lowest step of civilisation, the Jews gave expression to their thought and feeling merely through the medium of song and poesy; their language remained always to the end of their power in the state most convenient to the poet, highly figurative and vague.
- Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, Introduction to the Study of the Old Testament

Often to pass the time on board, the crew
will catch an albatross, one of those big birds
which nonchalently chaperone a ship
across the bitter fathoms of the sea.

Tied to the deck, this sovereign of space,
as if embarrassed by its clumsiness,
pitiably lets its great white wings
drag at its sides like a pair of unshipped oars.

How weak and awkward, even comical
this traveller but lately so adoit -
one deckhand sticks a pipestem in its beak,
another mocks the cripple that once flew!

The Poet is like this monarch of the clouds
riding the storm above the marksman's range;
exiled on the ground, hooted and jeered,
he cannot walk because of his great wings.

- Charles Baudelaire

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