Evening Harmony
The hour approacheth, when, as their stems incline,The flowers evaporate like an incense urn,And sounds and scents in the vesper breezes turn;A melancholy waltz--and a drowsiness divine.
The flowers evaporate like an incense urn,The viol vibrates like the wailing of souls that repine.A melancholy waltz--and a drowsiness divine,The skies like a mosque are beautiful and stern.
The viol vibrates like the wailing of souls that repine;Sweet souls that shrink from chaos vast and etern,The skies like a mosque are beautiful and stern,The sunset drowns within its blood-red brine.
Sweet souls that shrink from chaos vast and etern,Essay the wreaths of their faded Past to entwine,The sunset drowns within its blood-red brine,Thy thought within me glows like an incense urn.
Words in this poem
- vesper n.
- The evening star; Hesper; Venus, when seen after sunset; hence, the evening. [L., the evening, the evening star, the west; akin to Gr. west. Cf. Hesperian, Vespers.]
- repine v. i.
- To fail; to wane. [Pref. re- + pine to languish.]
- chaos n.
- An empty, immeasurable space; a yawning chasm. [L. chaos chaos (in senses 1 & 2), Gr. Chasm.]
- entwine v. t.
- To twine, twist, or wreathe together or round. [Pref. en- + twine. Cf. Intwine.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Evening Harmony 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, Evening Harmony, in The Flowers of Evil (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36098, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/baudelaire-flowers-of-evil/evening-harmony.html, id L25418.
Form and metre
Evening Harmony is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 77%).
See other poems in iambic hexameter.
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 inclineA · urnB · turnB · divineA
- 2 B-AB urnB · repine · divineA · sternB
- 3 --BA repine · etern · sternB · brineA
- 4 -AAB etern · entwineA · brineA · urnB
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 iambic hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The hour approacheth, when, as their stems incline, | 12 | ·/˘˘/˘····˘/ |
| The flowers evaporate like an incense urn, | 12 | ·/˘˘/˘···˘/· |
| And sounds and scents in the vesper breezes turn; | 11 | ······/˘/˘· |
| A melancholy waltz--and a drowsiness divine. | 13 | ·/˘·˘···/˘˘˘/ |
| The flowers evaporate like an incense urn, | 12 | ·/˘˘/˘···˘/· |
| The viol vibrates like the wailing of souls that repine. | 14 | ·/˘/˘··/˘···˘/ |
| A melancholy waltz--and a drowsiness divine, | 13 | ·/˘·˘···/˘˘˘/ |
| The skies like a mosque are beautiful and stern. | 11 | ······/˘˘·· |
| The viol vibrates like the wailing of souls that repine; | 14 | ·/˘/˘··/˘···˘/ |
| Sweet souls that shrink from chaos vast and etern, | 11 | ·····/˘···· |
| The skies like a mosque are beautiful and stern, | 11 | ······/˘˘·· |
| The sunset drowns within its blood-red brine. | 10 | ·/········ |
| Sweet souls that shrink from chaos vast and etern, | 11 | ·····/˘···· |
| Essay the wreaths of their faded Past to entwine, | 12 | ˘/····/˘··˘/ |
| The sunset drowns within its blood-red brine, | 10 | ·/········ |
| Thy thought within me glows like an incense urn. | 11 | ········˘/· |
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.