Bertha's Eyes
The loveliest eyes you can scorn with your wondrous glow:O! beautiful childish eyes there abounds in your light,A something unspeakably tender and good as the night:O! eyes! over me your enchanting darkness let flow.
Large eyes of my child! O Arcana profoundly adored!Ye resemble so closely those caves in the magical creek;Where within the deep slumbering shade of some petrified peak,There shines, undiscovered, the gems of a dazzling hoard.
My child has got eyes so profound and so dark and so vast,Like thee! oh unending Night, and thy mystical shine:Their flames are those thoughts that with Love and with Faith combine,And sparkle deep down in the depths so alluring or chaste.
Words in this poem
- wondrous adv.
- In a wonderful or surprising manner or degree; wonderfully. [OE. wonders, adv. (later also adj.). See Wonder, n., and cf. -wards.]
- profoundly adv.
- In a profound manner.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Bertha's Eyes is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Flowers of Evil, Project Gutenberg ebook #36098; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Charles Baudelaire, Bertha's Eyes, in The Flowers of Evil (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36098, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/baudelaire-flowers-of-evil/bertha-s-eyes.html, id L25437.
Form and metre
Bertha's Eyes is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABBA, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is anapaestic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
See other poems in anapaestic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBA glowA · lightB · nightB · flowA
- 2 ABBA adoredA · creekB · peakB · hoardA
- 3 -AA- vast · shineA · combineA · chaste
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against anapaestic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The loveliest eyes you can scorn with your wondrous glow: | 13 | ··········/˘· |
| O! beautiful childish eyes there abounds in your light, | 13 | ·/˘˘/˘··˘/··· |
| A something unspeakably tender and good as the night: | 14 | ·/˘····/˘····· |
| O! eyes! over me your enchanting darkness let flow. | 13 | ······˘/˘/˘·· |
| Large eyes of my child! O Arcana profoundly adored! | 14 | ······˘/˘˘/˘˘/ |
| Ye resemble so closely those caves in the magical creek; | 14 | ·˘/˘·/˘····/˘· |
| Where within the deep slumbering shade of some petrified peak, | 14 | ·····/˘···/˘·· |
| There shines, undiscovered, the gems of a dazzling hoard. | 13 | ···˘/˘····/˘· |
| My child has got eyes so profound and so dark and so vast, | 14 | ······˘/······ |
| Like thee! oh unending Night, and thy mystical shine: | 13 | ···˘/˘···/˘˘· |
| Their flames are those thoughts that with Love and with Faith combine, | 13 | ···········/˘ |
| And sparkle deep down in the depths so alluring or chaste. | 14 | ·/˘······˘/˘·· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.