Meditation
Be wise, O my Woe, seek thy grievance to drown,Thou didst call for the night, and behold it is here,An atmosphere sombre, envelopes the town,To some bringing peace and to others a care.
Whilst the manifold souls of the vile multitude,'Neath the lash of enjoyment, that merciless sway,Go plucking remorse from the menial brood,From them far, O my grief, hold my hand, come this way.
Behold how they beckon, those years, long expired,From Heaven, in faded apparel attired,How Regret, smiling, foams on the waters like yeast;
Its arches of slumber the dying sun spreads,And like a long winding-sheet dragged to the East,Oh, hearken Beloved, how the Night softly treads!
Words in this poem
- grievance n.
- A cause of uneasiness and complaint; a wrong done and suffered; that which gives ground for remonstrance or resistance, as arising from injustice, tyranny, etc.; injury. [OF. grcvance. See Grieve, v. t.]
- didst
- , the 2d pers. sing. imp. of Do.
- sombre n.
- Gloom; obscurity; duskiness; somberness.
- beckon v. t.
- To make a significant sign to; hence, to summon, as by a motion of the hand.
- attired p. p.
- Provided with antlers, as a stag.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Meditation 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, Meditation, in The Flowers of Evil (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36098, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/baudelaire-flowers-of-evil/meditation.html, id L25439.
Form and metre
Meditation is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 2 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
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 ABAB drownA · hereB · townA · careB
- 2 ABAB multitudeA · swayB · broodA · wayB
- 3 AA- expiredA · attiredA · yeast
- 4 A-A spreadsA · east · treadsA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Be wise, O my Woe, seek thy grievance to drown, | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| Thou didst call for the night, and behold it is here, | 12 | ·······˘/··· |
| An atmosphere sombre, envelopes the town, | 11 | ·/˘·/˘/˘··· |
| To some bringing peace and to others a care. | 11 | ··/˘···/˘·· |
| Whilst the manifold souls of the vile multitude, | 12 | ··/˘·····/˘· |
| 'Neath the lash of enjoyment, that merciless sway, | 11 | ····˘/˘·/˘· |
| Go plucking remorse from the menial brood, | 11 | ·/˘˘/··/˘˘· |
| From them far, O my grief, hold my hand, come this way. | 12 | ············ |
| Behold how they beckon, those years, long expired, | 11 | ˘/··/˘···˘/ |
| From Heaven, in faded apparel attired, | 11 | ·/˘·/˘˘/˘˘/ |
| How Regret, smiling, foams on the waters like yeast; | 12 | ·˘//˘···/˘·· |
| Its arches of slumber the dying sun spreads, | 11 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘·· |
| And like a long winding-sheet dragged to the East, | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| Oh, hearken Beloved, how the Night softly treads! | 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.