Sonnet XLIII
What sayest thou, to-night, poor soul so drear,What sayest--heart erewhile engulfed in gloom,To the very lovely, very chaste, and very dear,Whose god-like look hath made thee to re-bloom?
To her, with pride we chant an echoing Hymn,For nought can touch the sweetness of her sway;Her flesh ethereal as the seraphim,Her eyes with robe of light our souls array.
And be it in the night, or solitude,Among the streets or 'mid the multitude,Her shadow, torch-like, dances in the air,
And murmurs, "I, the Beautiful proclaim--That for my sake, alone ye love the Fair;I am the Guardian Angel, Muse and Dame!"
Words in this poem
- drear n.
- Sadness; dismalness.
- erewhile adv.
- Some time ago; a little while before; heretofore.
- seraphim n.
- The Hebrew plural of Seraph. Cf. Cherubim.
- dame n.
- A mistress of a family, who is a lady; a womam in authority; especially, a lady. [F. dame, LL. domna, fr. L. domina mistress, lady, fem. of dominus master, ruler, lord; akin to domare to tame, subdue. See Tame, and cf. Dam mother, Dan, Danger]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sonnet XLIII 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, Sonnet XLIII, in The Flowers of Evil (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36098, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/baudelaire-flowers-of-evil/sonnet-xliii.html, id L25415.
Form and metre
Sonnet XLIII is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
See other poems in iambic 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 ABAB drearA · gloomB · dearA · bloomB
- 2 -A-A hymn · swayA · seraphim · arrayA
- 3 AA- solitudeA · multitudeA · air
- 4 A-A proclaimA · fair · dameA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| What sayest thou, to-night, poor soul so drear, | 9 | ········· |
| What sayest--heart erewhile engulfed in gloom, | 11 | ·······˘/·· |
| To the very lovely, very chaste, and very dear, | 13 | ··/˘/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Whose god-like look hath made thee to re-bloom? | 10 | ·········· |
| To her, with pride we chant an echoing Hymn, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| For nought can touch the sweetness of her sway; | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Her flesh ethereal as the seraphim, | 11 | ··˘/˘˘··/˘˘ |
| Her eyes with robe of light our souls array. | 10 | ······/·˘/ |
| And be it in the night, or solitude, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Among the streets or 'mid the multitude, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Her shadow, torch-like, dances in the air, | 10 | ·/···/˘··· |
| And murmurs, "I, the Beautiful proclaim-- | 10 | ·/˘··/˘˘˘/ |
| That for my sake, alone ye love the Fair; | 10 | ····˘/···· |
| I am the Guardian Angel, Muse and Dame!" | 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.