Man and the Sea
Free man! the sea is to thee ever dear!The sea is thy mirror, thou regardest thy soulIn its mighteous waves that unendingly roll,And thy spirit is yet not a chasm less drear.
Thou delight'st to plunge deep in thine image down;Thou tak'st it with eyes and with arms in embrace,And at times thine own inward voice would'st effaceWith the sound of its savage ungovernable moan.
You are both of you, sombre, secretive and deep:Oh mortal, thy depths are foraye unexplored,Oh sea--no one knoweth thy dazzling hoard,You both are so jealous your secrets to keep!
And endless ages have wandered by,Yet still without pity or mercy you fight,So mighty in plunder and death your delight:Oh wrestlers! so constant in enmity!
Words in this poem
- drear n.
- Sadness; dismalness.
- sombre n.
- Gloom; obscurity; duskiness; somberness.
- secretive a.
- Tending to secrete, or to keep secret or private; as, a secretive disposition.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Man and the Sea 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, Man and the Sea, in The Flowers of Evil (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36098, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/baudelaire-flowers-of-evil/man-and-the-sea.html, id L25402.
Form and metre
Man and the Sea is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABBA, complete in 2 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in anapaestic tetrameter.
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 dearA · soulB · rollB · drearA
- 2 -AA- down · embraceA · effaceA · moan
- 3 ABBA deepA · unexploredB · hoardB · keepA
- 4 -AA- by · fightA · delightA · enmity
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Free man! the sea is to thee ever dear! | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| The sea is thy mirror, thou regardest thy soul | 12 | ····/˘·˘/˘·· |
| In its mighteous waves that unendingly roll, | 11 | ··········· |
| And thy spirit is yet not a chasm less drear. | 11 | ··/····/˘·· |
| Thou delight'st to plunge deep in thine image down; | 11 | ········/˘· |
| Thou tak'st it with eyes and with arms in embrace, | 11 | ·········˘/ |
| And at times thine own inward voice would'st efface | 11 | ·····/˘··˘/ |
| With the sound of its savage ungovernable moan. | 11 | ·····/˘˘/˘· |
| You are both of you, sombre, secretive and deep: | 11 | ·····/˘/˘·· |
| Oh mortal, thy depths are foraye unexplored, | 11 | ·/˘······˘/ |
| Oh sea--no one knoweth thy dazzling hoard, | 11 | ····/˘·/˘˘· |
| You both are so jealous your secrets to keep! | 11 | ····/˘·/˘·· |
| And endless ages have wandered by, | 10 | ·/˘/˘·/˘˘· |
| Yet still without pity or mercy you fight, | 11 | ····/˘·/˘·· |
| So mighty in plunder and death your delight: | 11 | ·/˘·/˘···˘/ |
| Oh wrestlers! so constant in enmity! | 10 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘˘ |
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.