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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MORNING TWILIGHT, by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Reveille rang out in the barracks-courts Last Line: Takes up its tools like an old laborer. | |||
Reveille rang out in the barracks-courts, And the morning wind blew on the street lamps. It was the hour when injurious dreams Twist the brown adolescents on their pillows; When, like a bleeding, palpitating eye, The lamp makes a red spot against the day; When the soul, weighted down with the dull body, Imitates the struggle of lamp and day. Like a tear-drenched face dried by the breezes, The air fills with the shiver of flying things; Man tires of writing, woman of making love. Here and there the houses begin to smoke. Women of pleasure, their eyelids livid, Slept with open mouths their stupefied sleep; The beggar girls, dragging their thin, cold breasts, Blow on their brands and blow on their fingers. At that hour, with cold and frugality, The pains of women in labor grow worse; Like a sob sliced in two by foamy blood A rooster's far-off cry rends the misty air; Buildings are bathed in a sea of fog, And deep in the poorhouses the dying Give out their last rattle in broken hiccups. The debauchees come home, spent with their toil. Dawn, shivering in pink and green garments, Comes slowly over the deserted Seine, And, rubbing its eyes, a somber Paris Takes up its tools like an old laborer. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...DON JUAN IN HELL by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE A VOYAGE TO CYTHERA by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE AFFINITIES by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE ANYWHERE OUT OF THE WORLD by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE AT ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE BE DRUNK by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE BEATRICE by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE |
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