Owls
Beneath the shades of sombre yews,The silent owls sit ranged in rows,Like ancient idols, strangely pose,And darting fiery eyes, they muse.
Immovable, they sit and gaze,Until the melancholy hour,At which the darknesses devourThe faded sunset's slanting rays.
Their attitude, instructs the wise,That he--within this world--who fliesFrom tumult and from merriment;
The man allured by a passing face,For ever bears the chastisementOf having wished to change his place.
Words in this poem
- sombre n.
- Gloom; obscurity; duskiness; somberness.
- strangely adv.
- As something foreign, or not one's own; in a manner adapted to something foreign and strange.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Owls 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, Owls, in The Flowers of Evil (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36098, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/baudelaire-flowers-of-evil/owls.html, id L25429.
Form and metre
Owls is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is ABBA, complete in 2 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other poems in iambic 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 yewsA · rowsB · poseB · museA
- 2 ABBA gazeA · hourB · devourB · raysA
- 3 AA- wiseA · fliesA · merriment
- 4 A-A faceA · chastisement · placeA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Beneath the shades of sombre yews, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The silent owls sit ranged in rows, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Like ancient idols, strangely pose, | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| And darting fiery eyes, they muse. | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Immovable, they sit and gaze, | 8 | ˘/˘˘···· |
| Until the melancholy hour, | 9 | ···/˘·˘/˘ |
| At which the darknesses devour | 9 | ···/˘˘˘/˘ |
| The faded sunset's slanting rays. | 8 | ·/˘/·/˘· |
| Their attitude, instructs the wise, | 8 | ·/˘·˘/·· |
| That he--within this world--who flies | 8 | ········ |
| From tumult and from merriment; | 8 | ·/˘··/˘˘ |
| The man allured by a passing face, | 9 | ··˘/··/˘· |
| For ever bears the chastisement | 8 | ·/˘··/˘˘ |
| Of having wished to change his place. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
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.