The Enemy
My childhood was nought but a ravaging storm,Enlivened at times by a brilliant sun;The rain and the winds wrought such havoc and harmThat of buds on my plot there remains hardly one.
Behold now the Fall of ideas I have reached,And the shovel and rake one must therefore resume,In collecting the turf, inundated and breached,Where the waters dug trenches as deep as a tomb.
And yet these new blossoms, for which I craved,Will they find in this earth--like a shore that is laved--The mystical fuel which vigour imparts?
Oh misery!--Time devours our lives,And the enemy black, which consumeth our heartsOn the blood of our bodies, increases and thrives!
Words in this poem
- childhood n.
- The state of being a child; the time in which persons are children; the condition or time from infancy to puberty. [AS. cildhad; cild child + -had. See Child, and hood.]
- havoc n.
- Wide and general destruction; devastation; waste. [W. hafog devastation, havoc; or, if this be itself fr. E. havoc, cf. OE. havot, or AS. hafoc hawk, which is a cruel or rapacious bird, or F. hai, voux! a cry to]
- resume n.
- A summing up; a condensed statement; an abridgment or brief recapitulation. [F. See Resume.]
- vigour v. t.
- To invigorate. Feltham.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Enemy 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, The Enemy, in The Flowers of Evil (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36098, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/baudelaire-flowers-of-evil/the-enemy.html, id L25399.
Form and metre
The Enemy is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
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 -A-A storm · sunA · harm · oneA
- 2 ABAB reachedA · resumeB · breachedA · tombB
- 3 AA- cravedA · lavedA · imparts
- 4 A-A livesA · hearts · thrivesA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My childhood was nought but a ravaging storm, | 11 | ·/·····/˘˘· |
| Enlivened at times by a brilliant sun; | 11 | ˘/˘˘····/˘· |
| The rain and the winds wrought such havoc and harm | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| That of buds on my plot there remains hardly one. | 12 | ·······˘//˘· |
| Behold now the Fall of ideas I have reached, | 12 | ˘/····˘/˘··· |
| And the shovel and rake one must therefore resume, | 12 | ··/˘······˘/ |
| In collecting the turf, inundated and breached, | 12 | ·˘/˘··/˘·˘·· |
| Where the waters dug trenches as deep as a tomb. | 12 | ··/˘·/˘····· |
| And yet these new blossoms, for which I craved, | 11 | ····/˘····˘ |
| Will they find in this earth--like a shore that is laved-- | 12 | ············ |
| The mystical fuel which vigour imparts? | 11 | ·/˘˘/˘·/˘˘/ |
| Oh misery!--Time devours our lives, | 11 | ·/˘˘·˘/˘/˘· |
| And the enemy black, which consumeth our hearts | 12 | ··/˘˘··˘/˘/· |
| On the blood of our bodies, increases and thrives! | 12 | ····//˘˘/˘·· |
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.