The Shooting-range And The Cemetery. Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCAD| Cemetery View Inn A queer sign said our traveller to himself but it raises a thirst Certainly the keeper o f this inn appreciates Horace and the poet pupils of Epicurus Perhaps he even apprehends the profound philosophy of those old Egyptians who had no feast without its skeleton or some emblem of life's brevity | A |
| He entered drank a glass of beer in presence of the tombs and slowly smoked a cigar Then his phantasy driving him he went down into the cemetery where the grass was so tall and inviting so brilliant in the sunshine | B |
| The light and heat indeed were so furiously intense that one had said the drunken sun wallowed upon a carpet of flowers that had fattened upon the corruption beneath | C |
| The air was heavy with vivid rumours of life the life of things infinitely small and broken at intervals by the crackling of shots from a neighbouring shooting range that exploded with a sound as of champagne corks to the burden of a hollow symphony | A |
| And then beneath a sun which scorched the brain and in that atmosphere charged with the ardent perfume of death he heard a voice whispering out of the tomb where he sat And this voice said Accursed be your rifles and targets you turbulent living ones who care so little for the dead in their divine repose Accursed be your ambitions and calculations importunate mortals who study the arts of slaughter near the sanctuary of Death himself Did you but know how easy the prize to win how facile the end to reach and how all save Death is naught not so greatly would you fatigue yourselves O ye laborious alive nor would you so often vex the slumber of them that long ago reached the End the only true end of life detestable | D |
Charles Baudelaire
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about The Shooting-range And The Cemetery. poem by Charles Baudelaire
Best Poems of Charles Baudelaire