The Dance Of Death Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCC DDEE FFGG HHII JKLM NOJJ PPQQ RSTT UUVV JJWW XXYY CCFZ A2A2B2B2 C2C2D2D2 MME2E2| Carrying bouquet and handkerchief and gloves | A |
| Proud of her height as when she lived she moves | B |
| With all the careless and high stepping grace | C |
| And the extravagant courtesan's thin face | C |
| - | |
| Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball room wooed | D |
| Her floating robe in royal amplitude | D |
| Falls in deep folds around a dry foot shod | E |
| With a bright flower like shoe that gems the sod | E |
| - | |
| The swarms that hum about her collar bones | F |
| As the lascivious streams caress the stones | F |
| Conceal from every scornful jest that flies | G |
| Her gloomy beauty and her fathomless eyes | G |
| - | |
| Are made of shade and void with flowery sprays | H |
| Her skull is wreathed artistically and sways | H |
| Feeble and weak on her frail vertebrae | I |
| O charm of nothing decked in folly they | I |
| - | |
| Who laugh and name you a Caricature | J |
| They see not they whom flesh and blood allure | K |
| The nameless grace of every bleached bare bone | L |
| That is most dear to me tall skeleton | M |
| - | |
| Come you to trouble with your potent sneer | N |
| The feast of Life or are you driven here | O |
| To Pleasure's Sabbath by dead lusts that stir | J |
| And goad your moving corpse on with a spur | J |
| - | |
| Or do you hope when sing the violins | P |
| And the pale candle flame lights up our sins | P |
| To drive some mocking nightmare far apart | Q |
| And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart | Q |
| - | |
| Fathomless well of fault and foolishness | R |
| Eternal alembic of antique distress | S |
| Still o'er the curved white trellis of your sides | T |
| The sateless wandering serpent curls and glides | T |
| - | |
| And truth to tell I fear lest you should find | U |
| Among us here no lover to your mind | U |
| Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave | V |
| The charms of horror please none but the brave | V |
| - | |
| Your eyes' black gulf where awful broodings stir | J |
| Brings giddiness the prudent reveller | J |
| Sees while a horror grips him from beneath | W |
| The eternal smile of thirty two white teeth | W |
| - | |
| For he who has not folded in his arms | X |
| A skeleton nor fed on graveyard charms | X |
| Recks not of furbelow or paint or scent | Y |
| When Horror comes the way that Beauty went | Y |
| - | |
| O irresistible with fleshless face | C |
| Say to these dancers in their dazzled race | C |
| Proud lovers with the paint above your bones | F |
| Ye shall taste death musk scented skeletons | Z |
| - | |
| Withered Antino s dandies with plump faces | A2 |
| Ye varnished cadavers and grey Lovelaces | A2 |
| Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath | B2 |
| Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death | B2 |
| - | |
| From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream | C2 |
| The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream | C2 |
| They do not see within the opened sky | D2 |
| The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high | D2 |
| - | |
| In every clime and under every sun | M |
| Death laughs at ye mad mortals as ye run | M |
| And oft perfumes herself with myrrh like ye | E2 |
| And mingles with your madness irony | E2 |
Charles Baudelaire
(1)
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