The Seven Old Men Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBCDEDFGFHFAIAIJEK ELMLNEEEEOPQERSSSETE TSSSSEEEEEUEU| Victor Hugo | A |
| Ant like city city full of dreams | B |
| where the passer by at dawn meets the spectre | C |
| Mysteries everywhere are the sap that streams | B |
| through the narrow veins of this great ogre | C |
| One morning when on the dreary street | D |
| the buildings all seemed heightened cold | E |
| a swollen river s banks carved out to greet | D |
| their stage set mirroring an actor s soul | F |
| the dirty yellow fog that flooded space | G |
| arguing with my already weary soul | F |
| steeling my nerves like a hero I paced | H |
| suburbs shaken by the carts drum roll | F |
| Suddenly an old man in rags their yellow | A |
| mirroring the colour of the rain filled sky | I |
| whose looks alone prompted alms to flow | A |
| except for the evil glittering of his eye | I |
| appeared You d have thought his eyeballs | J |
| steeped in gall his gaze intensified the cold | E |
| and his long beard as rigid as a sword | K |
| was jutting out like Judas s of old | E |
| He was not bent but broken his spine | L |
| made a sharp right angle with his legs | M |
| so that the stick perfecting his line | L |
| gave him the awkward shape and step | N |
| of three legged usurer or sick quadruped | E |
| Wading through snow and mud he went | E |
| as if under his feet he crushed the dead | E |
| hostile to the world not just indifferent | E |
| Then his double beard eyes rags stick back | O |
| no trait distinguished his centenarian twin | P |
| they marched in step two ghosts of the Baroque | Q |
| sprung from one hell towards some unknown end | E |
| Was I the butt of some infamous game | R |
| some evil chance aimed at humiliation | S |
| Since minute by minute I counted seven | S |
| of that sinister old man s multiplication | S |
| Whoever smiles at my anxiety | E |
| and balks at shivering the un fraternal | T |
| consider then despite their senility | E |
| those seven vile monsters looked eternal | T |
| Could I have lived to see an eighth yet one | S |
| more ironic fatal inexorable replication | S |
| loathsome Phoenix his own father and son | S |
| I turned my back on that hell bent procession | S |
| Exasperated a drunk that sees things doubled | E |
| I stumbled home slammed the door terrified | E |
| sick depressed mind feverish and troubled | E |
| wounded by mystery the absurd outside | E |
| In vain my reason tried to take command | E |
| its efforts useless in the tempest s roar | U |
| my soul a mastless barge danced and danced | E |
| over some monstrous sea without a shore | U |
Charles Baudelaire
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