Epitaph
Heap not on this moundRoses that she loved so well;Why bewilder her with roses,That she cannot see or smell?She is happy where she liesWith the dust upon her eyes.
About this text
Epitaph is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #59167; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Epitaph, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59167, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/millay-poems/epitaph.html, id L24384.
Form and metre
Epitaph is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
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 -ABABB mound · wellA · rosesB · smellA · liesB · eyesB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Heap not on this mound | 5 | ····· |
| Roses that she loved so well; | 8 | /˘···˘·· |
| Why bewilder her with roses, | 8 | ·˘/˘··/˘ |
| That she cannot see or smell? | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| She is happy where she lies | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| With the dust upon her eyes. | 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.