Analysis of The Lid
Charles Baudelaire 1821 (Paris) – 1867 (Paris)
Whatever place he goes, on land or sea,
under a sky on fire, or a polar sun,
servant of Jesus, follower of Cytherea,
shadowy beggar, or Croesus the glittering one,
city-dweller or rustic, traveller or sedentary,
whether his tiny brain works fast or slow,
everywhere man knows the terror of mystery,
and with a trembling eye looks high or low.
Above, the Sky! That burial vault that stifles,
a ceiling lit for a comic opera, blind walls,
where each actor treads a blood-drenched stage:
Freethinkers’ fear, the hermit sets his hope on:
the Sky! The black lid of the giant cauldron,
under which we vast, invisible Beings rage.
Scheme | ABCBADADEFGHBG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101111111 100111010101 101101001010 100101101001 10101101001100 1011011111 10110101100 01010011111 010111001110 010110101011 111010111 11010101111 01011101010 101110100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 621 |
Words | 110 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 14 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 488 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 108 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 33 sec read
- 128 Views
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"The Lid" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/5024/the-lid>.
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