Analysis of Beacons
Charles Baudelaire 1821 (Paris) – 1867 (Paris)
Reubens, river of forgetfulness, garden of sloth,
Pillow of wet flesh that one cannot love,
But where life throngs and seethes without cease
Like the air in the sky and the water in the sea.
Leonardo da Vinci, sinister mirror,
Where these charming angels with sweet smiles
Charged with mystery, appear in shadows
Of glaciers and pines that close off the country.
Rembrandt, sad hospital full of murmurs
Decorated only with a crucifix,
Where tearful prayers arise from filth
And a ray of winter light crosses brusquely.
Michelangelo, a wasteland where one sees Hercules
Mingling with Christ, and rising in a straight line
Powerful phantoms that in the twilight
Tear their shrouds with stretching fingers.
Rage of a boxer, impudence of a faun,
You who gather together the beauty of the boor,
Your big heart swelling with pride at man defective and yellow,
Puget, melancholy emperor of the poor.
Watteau, this carnival of illustrious hearts
Like butterflies, errant and flamboyant,
In the cool decor, with delicate lightning in the chandeliers
Crossing the madness of the twirling ball.
Goya, nightmare of unknown things,
Fetuses roasting on the spit,
Harridans in the mirror and naked children
Tempting demons by loosening their stockings.
Delacroix, haunted lake of blood and evil angels,
Shaded by evergreen forests of dark firs,
Where, under a grieving sky, strange fanfares
Pass, like a gasping breath of Weber.
These curses, these blasphemies, these moans,
These ecstasies, these tears, these cries of "Te Deum"
Are an echo reiterated in a thousand mazes;
It is for mortal hearts a divine opium!
It is a cry repeated by a thousand sentinels,
An order returned by a thousand megaphones,
A beacon lighting a thousand citadels
A summons to hunters lost in the wide woods.
For truly, O Lord, what better testimony
Can we give to our dignity
Than this burning sob that rolls from age to age
And comes to die on the shore of Your eternity?
Translated by William A. Sigler
Submitted by Ryan McGuire
Scheme | XXAB CXXB DXXB XEXD EXXX XXFX GXXG HDAC IJFJ HIAX BBXB C X |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111011 1011111101 111101011 1010010010001 01011010010 111010111 111000101 11001111010 11101110 100101010 11010111 00111011010 0100111110 100110100011 100101001 11111010 110101101 1110010010101 111101111010010 10100100101 11100101001 110100010 001011100100001 1001010101 1011011 10010101 1001001010 10101100110 0001011101010 1011010111 110010111 110101110 1101111 111111111 11100100001010 111101001100 11010101010100 11001101010 010100101 01011010011 11011110100 111110100 11101111111 0111101110100 0101100100 01011001 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,957 |
Words | 335 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 13 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1, 1 |
Lines Amount | 46 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 124 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:40 min read
- 81 Views
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"Beacons" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4897/beacons>.
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