Analysis of Overcast

Charles Baudelaire 1821 (Paris) – 1867 (Paris)



Are they blue, gray or green? Mysterious eyes
(as if in fact you were looking through a mist)
in alternation tender, dreamy, grim
to match the shiftless pallor of the sky.

That's what you're like- these warm white afternoons
which make the ravished heart dissolve in tears,
the nerves, inexplicably overwrought,
outrage the dozing mind.

Not always, though-sometimes
you're like the horizon when the sun
ignites our cloudy autumn-how you glow!
A sodden countryside in sudden rout,
turned incandescent by a changing wind.

Dangerous woman-demoralizing days!
Will I adore your killing frost as much,
and in that implacable winter, when it comes,
discover pleasures sharper than iron and ice?


Scheme XXXX XXXA XXXXA XXXX
Poetic Form
Metre 11111101001 11011010101 010010101 110101101 111111101 110110101 01010001 10101 11101 110010101 01101010111 010100101 101010101 1001001001 1101110111 001010010111 010101011001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 695
Words 111
Sentences 8
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 5, 4
Lines Amount 17
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 138
Words per stanza (avg) 27
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

34 sec read
119

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. more…

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