Analysis of Morning Twilight
Charles Baudelaire 1821 (Paris) – 1867 (Paris)
Reveille was sounding on barrack-squares,
and the wind of dawn blew on lighted stairs.
It was the hour when a swarm of evil visions
torments swarthy adolescents, when pillows hum:
when, a bloodshot eye, throbbing and quivering,
the lamp makes a reddened stain on the morning:
when the soul, by dull sour body, bowed down,
enacts the struggle between lamp and dawn.
Like a tearful face that the breeze wipes dry,
the air’s filled with the frisson of things that fly,
and man is tired of writing, woman with loving.
The chimneys, here and there, began smoking.
The women of pleasure, with their bleary eyes,
and gaping mouths, were sleeping stupefied:
poor old women, with chilled and meagre breasts,
blew the embers, then fingers, roused from rest.
It was the hour, when frozen, with money scarcer,
the pains of women in childbirth grew fiercer:
and like a sob cut short by a surge of blood
a cock-crow far away broke through the fog:
a sea of mist bathed the buildings, dying men,
in the depths of the workhouse, groaned again
emitting their death-rattles in ragged breaths.
Debauchees, tired by their efforts, headed for rest.
Shivering dawn in a robe of pink and green
made her way slowly along the deserted Seine,
and sombre Paris, eyes rubbed and watering,
groped for its tools, an old man, labouring.
Scheme | AABCDDEFGGDDHIJIKKILMMNIOPDD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11101101 0011111101 1101010111010 1100101101 1011100100 0110111010 10111101011 101001101 1010110111 0111011111 0111011010110 0101010110 01011011101 01010101 111011011 1010110111 1101011011010 0111001110 01011110111 0111011101 01111010101 001101101 01011100101 11011101011 10010011101 1011001001010 0110110100 11111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,289 |
Words | 228 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 28 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,030 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 226 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 19, 2023
- 1:08 min read
- 415 Views
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"Morning Twilight" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4986/morning-twilight>.
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