Epitaph in Berkeley Church-Yard, Gloucestershire
Here lies the Earl of Suffolk's fool,Men call'd him Dicky Pearce;His folly served to make folks laugh,When wit and mirth were scarce.
Poor Dick, alas! is dead and gone,What signifies to cry?Dickies enough are still behind,To laugh at by and by.
Words in this poem
- dicky n.
- A seat behind a carriage, for a servant.
- folks n.
- In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]
- scarce a.
- Not plentiful or abundant; in small quantity in proportion to the demand; not easily to be procured; rare; uncommon. [OE. scars, OF. escars, eschars, LL. scarpsus, for L. excerptus, p. p. of excerpere to pick out, and hence to contract, to shorten; ex (see Ex-) + carpere. See C]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Epitaph in Berkeley Church-Yard, Gloucestershire is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #13621; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Jonathan Swift, Epitaph in Berkeley Church-Yard, Gloucestershire, in Cadenus and Vanessa, and Other Poems (1710–1745), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13621, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/swift-poems/epitaph-in-berkeley-church-yard-gloucestershire.html, id L25674.
Form and metre
Epitaph in Berkeley Church-Yard, Gloucestershire is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.4 syllables. 59 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 19% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
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 gone · cryA · behind · byA
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Here lies the Earl of Suffolk's fool, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Men call'd him Dicky Pearce; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| His folly served to make folks laugh, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| When wit and mirth were scarce. | 6 | ······ |
| Poor Dick, alas! is dead and gone, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| What signifies to cry? | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Dickies enough are still behind, | 8 | /˘˘/···· |
| To laugh at by and by. | 6 | ······ |
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.