The Sick Muse
Alas--my poor Muse--what aileth thee now?Thine eyes are bedimmed with the visions of Night,And silent and cold--I perceive on thy browIn their turns--Despair and Madness alight.
A succubus green, or a hobgoblin red,Has it poured o'er thee Horror and Love from its urn?Or the Nightmare with masterful bearing hath ledThee to drown in the depths of some magic Minturne?
I wish, as the health-giving fragrance I cull,That thy breast with strong thoughts could for ever be full,And that rhymthmic'ly flowing--thy Christian blood
Could resemble the olden-time metrical-flood,Where each in his turn reigned the father of RhymesPhoebus--and Pan, lord of Harvest-times.
Words in this poem
- succubus n.
- A demon or fiend; especially, a lascivious spirit supposed to have sexual intercourse with the men by night; a succuba. Cf. Incubus. [See Succuba.]
- hobgoblin n.
- A frightful goblin; an imp; a bugaboo; also, a name formerly given to the household spirit, Robin Goodfellow. [See 2d Hob, and Goblin.]
- masterful a.
- Inclined to play the master; domineering; imperious; arbitrary.
- cull v. t.
- To separate, select, or pick out; to choose and gather or collect; as, to cuil flowers. [OE., OF. cuillir, coillir, F.cueillir, to gather, pluck, pick, fr. L. colligere. See Coil, v. t., and cf. Collect.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Sick Muse 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 Sick Muse, in The Flowers of Evil (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36098, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/baudelaire-flowers-of-evil/the-sick-muse.html, id L25396.
Form and metre
The Sick Muse 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 88%).
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 nowA · nightB · browA · alightB
- 2 ABAB redA · urnB · ledA · minturneB
- 4 -AA flood · rhymesA · timesA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Alas--my poor Muse--what aileth thee now? | 10 | ˘/········ |
| Thine eyes are bedimmed with the visions of Night, | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| And silent and cold--I perceive on thy brow | 11 | ·/˘···˘/··· |
| In their turns--Despair and Madness alight. | 10 | ···˘/·/˘˘/ |
| A succubus green, or a hobgoblin red, | 10 | ·/˘˘···/˘· |
| Has it poured o'er thee Horror and Love from its urn? | 12 | ·····/˘····· |
| Or the Nightmare with masterful bearing hath led | 12 | ··/··/˘˘/˘·· |
| Thee to drown in the depths of some magic Minturne? | 12 | ········/˘·· |
| I wish, as the health-giving fragrance I cull, | 11 | ·····/˘/˘·· |
| That thy breast with strong thoughts could for ever be full, | 12 | ········/˘·· |
| And that rhymthmic'ly flowing--thy Christian blood | 11 | ·····/˘·/˘· |
| Could resemble the olden-time metrical-flood, | 12 | ·˘/˘·/˘·/˘˘· |
| Where each in his turn reigned the father of Rhymes | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| Phoebus--and Pan, lord of Harvest-times. | 9 | /˘····/˘· |
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.