Epigrams
Sonnets. The second and third are translated from Marot’s Epigrams,
In youth, before I waxed old,The blynd boy, Venus baby,For want of cunning, made me boldIn bitter hyve to grope for honny:But when he saw me stung and cry,He tooke his wings and away did fly.
About this text
Epigrams is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5, Project Gutenberg ebook #10602; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edmund Spenser, Epigrams, in Amoretti and Epithalamion, and Other Poems (1595), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10602, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/spenser-amoretti/epigrams.html, id L23785.
Form and metre
Epigrams is 7 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
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.
- 2 A-A-BB oldA · baby · boldA · honny · cryB · flyB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Sonnets. The second and third are translated from Marot’s Epigrams, | 17 | /˘·/˘···˘/˘···/˘· |
| In youth, before I waxed old, | 7 | ······· |
| The blynd boy, Venus baby, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| For want of cunning, made me bold | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| In bitter hyve to grope for honny: | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| But when he saw me stung and cry, | 8 | ········ |
| He tooke his wings and away did fly. | 9 | ·····˘/·· |
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.