Epitaph
Stop, Christian passer-by!--Stop, child of God,And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sodA poet lies, or that which once seem'd he.--O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.;That he who many a year with toil of breathFound death in life, may here find life in death!Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fameHe ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same!
Words in this poem
- passer n.
- One who passes; a passenger.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Epitaph is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of Coleridge, Project Gutenberg ebook #8208; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Epitaph, in Poems of Coleridge (1796–1817), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8208, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/coleridge-poems/epitaph.html, id L00394.
Form and metre
Epitaph is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 38% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 AABBCCDD godA · sodA · heB · cB · breathC · deathC · fameD · sameD
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Stop, Christian passer-by!--Stop, child of God, | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he.-- | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.; | 10 | ·········· |
| That he who many a year with toil of breath | 10 | ···/······ |
| Found death in life, may here find life in death! | 10 | ·········· |
| Mercy for praise--to be forgiven for fame | 11 | /˘····˘/˘·· |
| He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same! | 10 | ·········· |
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.