The Spiritual Dawn
When the morning white and rosy breaks,With the gnawing Ideal, upon the debauchee,By the power of a strange decree,Within the sotted beast an Angel wakes.
The mental Heaven's inaccessible blue,For wearied mortals that still dream and mourn,Expands and sinks; towards the chasm drawn.Thus, cherished goddess, Being pure and true--
Upon the rests of foolish orgy-nightsThine image, more sublime, more pink, more clear,Before my staring eyes is ever there.
The sun has darkened all the candle lights;And thus thy spectre like the immortal sun,Is ever victorious--thou resplendent one!
Words in this poem
- debauchee n.
- One who is given to intemperance or bacchanalian excesses; a man habitually lewd; a libertine. [F. dé, n., properly p. p. of débaucher. See Debauch, v. t.]
- sotted
- a. & p. p. of Sot. Befooled; deluded; besotted.
- spectre n.
- Something preternaturally visible; an apparition; a ghost; a phantom. [F. spectre, fr. L. spectrum an appearance, image, specter, fr. specere to look. See Spy, and cf. Spectrum.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Spiritual Dawn 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 Spiritual Dawn, in The Flowers of Evil (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36098, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/baudelaire-flowers-of-evil/the-spiritual-dawn.html, id L25417.
Form and metre
The Spiritual Dawn is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
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 A--A breaksA · debauchee · decree · wakesA
- 2 A--A blueA · mourn · drawn · trueA
- 3 -AA nights · clearA · thereA
- 4 -AA lights · sunA · oneA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When the morning white and rosy breaks, | 9 | ··/˘··/˘· |
| With the gnawing Ideal, upon the debauchee, | 12 | ··/˘˘/······ |
| By the power of a strange decree, | 9 | ··/˘···˘/ |
| Within the sotted beast an Angel wakes. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| The mental Heaven's inaccessible blue, | 10 | ·/˘/˘·˘/˘· |
| For wearied mortals that still dream and mourn, | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| Expands and sinks; towards the chasm drawn. | 10 | ˘/·····/˘· |
| Thus, cherished goddess, Being pure and true-- | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘··· |
| Upon the rests of foolish orgy-nights | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Thine image, more sublime, more pink, more clear, | 10 | ·/˘·˘/···· |
| Before my staring eyes is ever there. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| The sun has darkened all the candle lights; | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And thus thy spectre like the immortal sun, | 11 | ···/˘··˘/˘· |
| Is ever victorious--thou resplendent one! | 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.