Variant of the foregoing Epitaph
FRANÇOIS am I,— woe worth it me !—Corbier my surname is aright:Native of Auvers, near Pontoise citie;Of folk for sobriquet Villon hight.But for the gallant appeal I made,My neck, in the bight of a rope of three,Had known ere this what my buttocks weighed.The game scarce seemed to me worth to be played.
Words in this poem
- aright adv.
- Rightly; correctly; in a right way or form; without mistake or crime; as, to worship God aright. [Pref. a- + right.]
- folk 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.]
- sobriquet n.
- An assumed name; a fanciful epithet or appellation; a nickname. [F. sobriquet, OF. soubzbriquet, soubriquet, a chuck under the chin, hence, an affront, a nickname; of uncertain origin; cf. It. sottobecco a chuck under the chi]
- hight v. t.
- To be called or named. [OE. heiten, highten, haten, hoten; also hight, hatte, hette, is called, was called, AS. hatan to call, name, be called, to command, promise; also hatte is calle]
- 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
Variant of the foregoing Epitaph is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Master François Villon of Paris, now first done into English verse, in the original forms, with a biographical and critical introduction, by John Payne, Internet Archive, the John Payne translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: François Villon, Variant of the foregoing Epitaph, in The Poems of Master François Villon of Paris (1892), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/villon-poems/variant-of-the-foregoing-epitaph.html, id L27066.
Form and metre
Variant of the foregoing Epitaph is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%).
See 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 AB-BCACC meA · arightB · citie · hightB · madeC · threeA · weighedC · playedC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| FRANÇOIS am I,— woe worth it me ! | 8 | ········ |
| —Corbier my surname is aright: | 8 | ···/··˘/ |
| Native of Auvers, near Pontoise citie; | 10 | /˘········ |
| Of folk for sobriquet Villon hight. | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| But for the gallant appeal I made, | 9 | ···/˘˘/·· |
| My neck, in the bight of a rope of three, | 10 | ·········· |
| Had known ere this what my buttocks weighed. | 9 | ······/˘· |
| The game scarce seemed to me worth to be played. | 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.