Epigram on Seeing Miss Fontenelle in a Favourite Character
Sweet naivete of feature,Simple, wild, enchanting elf,Not to thee, but thanks to Nature,Thou art acting but thyself.
Wert thou awkward, stiff, affected,Spurning Nature, torturing art;Loves and Graces all rejected,Then indeed thou’d’st act a part.
About this text
Epigram on Seeing Miss Fontenelle in a Favourite Character is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, Project Gutenberg ebook #1279; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Burns, Epigram on Seeing Miss Fontenelle in a Favourite Character, in Poems and Songs (1786–1796), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1279, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/burns-poems/epigram-on-seeing-miss-fontenelle-in-a-favourite-character.html, id L03293.
Form and metre
Epigram on Seeing Miss Fontenelle in a Favourite Character is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.6 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in trochaic 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 -A-A feature · elfA · nature · thyselfA
- 2 ABAB affectedA · artB · rejectedA · partB
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sweet naivete of feature, | 8 | ·˘·˘/·/˘ |
| Simple, wild, enchanting elf, | 7 | /˘·˘/˘· |
| Not to thee, but thanks to Nature, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Thou art acting but thyself. | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| Wert thou awkward, stiff, affected, | 8 | ··/˘·˘/˘ |
| Spurning Nature, torturing art; | 8 | /˘/˘/˘˘· |
| Loves and Graces all rejected, | 8 | ··/˘·˘/˘ |
| Then indeed thou’d’st act a part. | 7 | ·˘/···· |
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.