On Tasso In Prison (Eugène Delacroix’s Painting)

Charles Baudelaire 1821 (Paris) – 1867 (Paris)



The poet in his cell, unkempt and sick,
who crushes underfoot a manuscript,
measures, with a gaze that horror has inflamed,
the stair of madness where his soul was maimed.
The intoxicating laughter that fills his prison
with the absurd and the strange, swamps his reason.
Doubt surrounds him, and ridiculous fear,
hideous and multiform, circles near.
That genius pent up in a foul sty,
those spectres, those grimaces, the cries,
whirling, in a swarm, about his hair,
that dreamer, whom his lodging’s terrors bare,
such are your emblems, Soul, singer of songs obscure,
whom Reality suffocates behind four walls!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

30 sec read
137

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCCDDEEFGHHIJ
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 608
Words 102
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. more…

All Charles Baudelaire poems | Charles Baudelaire Books

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