Epitaphs
May! Be thou never grac'd with birds that sing,Nor Flora's pride!In thee all flowers and roses spring,Mine only died.
About this text
Epitaphs is in the public domain. This text is taken from Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, Selected Poetry by George Wither, and Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock), Project Gutenberg ebook #22001; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Nicholas Breton, Epitaphs, in Pastoral Poems and Selected Poetry (1597–1604), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22001, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/breton-poems/epitaphs.html, id L08873.
Form and metre
Epitaphs is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.8 syllables.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABAB singA · prideB · springA · diedB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| May! Be thou never grac'd with birds that sing, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Nor Flora's pride! | 4 | ·/˘· |
| In thee all flowers and roses spring, | 9 | ···/˘·/˘· |
| Mine only died. | 4 | ·/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.