by Charles Baudelaire  No rage, no rancor: I shall beat you  as butchers fell an ox,  as Moses smote the rock in Horeb-  I shall make you weep,  and by the waters of affliction  my desert will be slaked.  My desire, that hope has made monstrous,  will frolic in your tears  as a ship tosses on the ocean-  in my besotted heart  your adorable sobs will echo  like an ecstatic drum.  For I - am I not a dissonance  in the divine accord,  because of the greedy Irony  which infiltrates my soul?  I hear it in my voice - that shrillness,  that poison in my blood!  I am the sinister glass in which  the Fury sees herself!  I am the knife and the wound it deals,  I am the slap and the cheek,  I am the wheel and the broken limbs,  hangman and victim both!  I am the vampire at my own veins,  one of the great lost horde  doomed for the rest of my time, and beyond,  'to laugh - and smile no more'  (Taken from Les Fleurs du Mal, translated by Richard Howard)