Autumn
Charles Baudelaire 1821 (Paris) – 1867 (Paris)
Soon we will plunge ourselves into cold shadows,
And all of summer's stunning afternoons will be gone.
I already hear the dead thuds of logs below
Falling on the cobblestones and the lawn.
All of winter will return to me:
derision, Hate, shuddering, horror, drudgery and vice,
And exiled, like the sun, to a polar prison,
My soul will harden into a block of red ice.
I shiver as I listen to each log crash and slam:
The echoes are as dull as executioners' drums.
My mind is like a tower that slowly succumbs
To the blows of a relentless battering ram.
It seems to me, swaying to these shocks, that someone
Is nailing down a coffin in a hurry somewhere.
For whom? -- It was summer yesterday; now it's autumn.
Echoes of departure keep resounding in the air.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 20, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 109 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | XAXA XBCB DEED CFXF |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 749 |
Words | 141 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"Autumn" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/4894/autumn>.
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