The Song of Autumn by Charles Baudelaire Analysis

By Lia Amberly Dela Cruz

Stanza 1: The personna feels extreme sadness towards the coming winter(his death) and mourns for his
passed good memories (summer).

Soon we shall plunge into the cold darkness;

~》Implies that what personna's describing(death) naturally occurs in the humanity, which is true.

Farewell, vivid brightness of our short-lived summers!

~》The personna's farewell to his memories that will be gone when the winter comes(when he die).

Already I hear the dismal sound of firewood

Falling with a clatter on the courtyard pavements.

~》Implies extreme sadness, loneliness and grief of the personna.

Stanza 2: The personna is describing the coming winter.

All winter will possess my being: wrath,

Hate, horror, shivering, hard, forced labor,

~》 The winter will take him (his being).

And, like the sun in his polar Hades,

My heart will be no more than a frozen red block.

~》 He is describing the lifelessness in it.

Stanza 3: Anxiety or extreme fear of the personna on the coming winter.

All atremble I listen to each falling log;

The building of a scaffold has no duller sound.

~》 The personna feels extreme fear as he thinks about the coming winter and the lifelessness in it.

My spirit resembles the tower which crumbles

Under the tireless blows of the battering ram.

~》 Destruction of his spirit.

Stanza 4: Anxiety or extreme fear of the personna on the coming winter.

It seems to me, lulled by these monotonous shocks,

~》The personna's difficulties on sleeping because of emotional disturbances.

That somewhere they’re nailing a coffin, in great haste.

For whom? — Yesterday was summer; here is autumn

~》 He's mourning for his passed happy memories, his childhood, etc.

That mysterious noise sounds like a departure.

~》 He knows he's going to leave or he's going to leave summer (happy memories).

Stanza 5: The personna's personification to nature.

I love the greenish light of your long eyes,

Sweet beauty, but today all to me is bitter;

~》 H expresses nature's beauty through comparing it into a woman but at the same time he feels
nature becoming bitter towards him because it will somehow take him as he die,

Nothing, neither your love, your boudoir, nor your hearth

Is worth as much as the sunlight on the sea.

~》 He' saying that there's nothing worthy of summer except the happy memories it bring.
Stanza 6: The personna pleads the nature to take care of his body as he die.

Yet, love me, tender heart! be a mother,

Even to an ingrate, even to a scapegrace;

~》 He pleads the nature to take care of his body even the bodies of those people who did not
appreciate or was rude towards the nature.

Mistress or sister, be the fleeting sweetness

Of a gorgeous autumn or of a setting sun.

~》 He pleads the nature to be his/someone's sweet goodbye/farewell no matter how it can.

Stanza 7: The winter is approaching.

Short task! The tomb awaits; it is avid!

~》 The tomb awaits for him (his body) very eagerly.

Ah! let me, with my head bowed on your knees,

~》 (Maybe) He's accepting the fact that he will going to die...

Taste the sweet, yellow rays of the end of autumn...

~》 as he goes now to the end of autumn which means the winter is approaching.

While I mourn for the white, torrid summer!

~》 As he mourns for the happy memories that will be gone.