The Ghost
Just like an angel with evil eye,I shall return to thee silently,Upon thy bower I'll alight,With falling shadows of the night.
With thee, my brownie, I'll commune,And give thee kisses cold as the moon,And with a serpent's moist embrace,I'll crawl around thy resting-place.
And when the livid morning falls,Thou'lt find alone the empty walls,And till the evening, cold 'twill be.
As others with their tenderness,Upon thy life and youthfulness,I'll reign alone with dread o'er thee.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- brownie n.
- An imaginary good-natured spirit, who was supposed often to perform important services around the house by night, such as thrashing, churning, sweeping. [So called from its supposed tawny or swarthy color.]
- commune n.
- The commonalty; the common people. [F., fr. commun. See Common.]
- crawl v. i.
- To move slowly by drawing the body along the ground, as a worm; to move slowly on hands and kness; to creep. [Dan. kravle, or Icel. krafla, to paw, scrabble with the hands; akin to Sw. kr to crawl; cf. LG. krabbeln, D. krabbelen to scratch.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Ghost 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 Ghost, in The Flowers of Evil (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36098, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/baudelaire-flowers-of-evil/the-ghost.html, id L25425.
Form and metre
The Ghost is 14 lines in 4 verse paragraphs. It is in rhyming couplets, 71% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 --AA eye · silently · alightA · nightA
- 2 AABB communeA · moonA · embraceB · placeB
- 3 AA- fallsA · wallsA · be
- 4 AA- tendernessA · youthfulnessA · thee
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Just like an angel with evil eye, | 8 | ···/˘·/· |
| I shall return to thee silently, | 9 | ··˘/··/˘˘ |
| Upon thy bower I'll alight, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| With falling shadows of the night. | 8 | ·/˘/···· |
| With thee, my brownie, I'll commune, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| And give thee kisses cold as the moon, | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| And with a serpent's moist embrace, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| I'll crawl around thy resting-place. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And when the livid morning falls, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Thou'lt find alone the empty walls, | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| And till the evening, cold 'twill be. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| As others with their tenderness, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘˘ |
| Upon thy life and youthfulness, | 8 | ········ |
| I'll reign alone with dread o'er thee. | 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.