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The prose poem (2) a hyper-structured

It was night. First it was - and I saw, so I said, - to an abbey walls cracked by the moon - a forest pierced by winding paths - and the Morimont (*) teeming with capes and hats.

It was then - and I heard, so I said - the knell of a bell which was answered by sobs funeral of a cell, - the cries and laughter shivered ferocious each flower along an arcade - and the prayers of buzzing black penitents that accompany a criminal to execution.

It was finally - and ended the dream, so I said, - A monk who expired lying in the ashes of the dying - a girl who struggled hanging from the branches of an oak - and I tied the hangman disheveled on the spokes of the wheel.

Dom Augustine, the prior deceased, will, dressed as Franciscan, the honors of the chapel, and Margaret, that her lover was killed will be buried in his white robe of innocence, between four wax candles.

But I had the helm of the executioner, at first, like a broken glass, torches were extinguished black penitents under torrents of rain, the crowd had passed with streams overflowing and fast - and I pursued other dreams to waking.

Aloysius Bertrand, "A Dream" Gaspard de la nuit .

Bertrand's poem is divided into stanzas, which are all units of meaning. The first three stanzas have the same theme: the sets are discussed through a special meaning in verses 1 and 2 (vision and hearing). The third stanza focuses on the theme of agony, three deaths occur simultaneously in the scene sketched above.
The verse follows another structuring principle: anaphora: "it was", "so I ... I ... well."
Stanzas 3 and 4, meanwhile, resumed by untying the themes outlined at the beginning of the poem. They are distinguished by the change in the utterance (passage of time from past to future) that guide the story towards its climax.

The organization of the poem relies on an opposition between simultaneity (verses 1 to 3) and chronology (stanzas 4 and 5) but also between indeterminacy and uniqueness: for this movement, the text allows progressive identification of the characters in the scene and their future.