Analysis of Epitaph In The Form Of A Ballade
Freres humains qui apres nous vivez,
N'ayez les coeurs contre nous endurcis ...
Men, brother men, that after us yet live,
Let not your hearts too hard against us be;
For if some pity of us poor men ye give,
The sooner God shall take of you pity.
Here are we five or six strung up, you see,
And here the flesh that all too well we fed
Bit by bit eaten and rotten, rent and shred,
And we the bones grow dust and ash withal;
Let no man laugh at us discomforted,
But pray to God that he forgive us all.
If we call on you, brothers, to forgive,
Ye should not hold our prayer in scorn, though we
Were slain by law; ye know that all alive
Have not wit always to walk righteously;
Make therefore intercession heartily
With him that of a virgin's womb was bred,
That his grace be not as a dr-y well-head
For us, nor let hell's thunder on us fall;
We are dead, let no man harry or vex us dead,
But pray to God that he forgive us all.
The rain has washed and laundered us all five,
And the sun dried and blackened; yea, perdie,
Ravens and pies with beaks that rend and rive
Have dug our eyes out, and plucked off for fee
Our beards and eyebrows; never we are free,
Not once, to rest; but here and there still sped,
Driven at its wild will by the wind's change led,
More pecked of birds than fruits on garden-wall;
Men, for God's love, let no gibe here be said,
But pray to God that he forgive us all.
Prince Jesus, that of all art lord and head,
Keep us, that hell be not our bitter bed;
We have nought to do in such a master's hall.
Be not ye therefore of our fellowhead,
But pray to God that he forgive us all.
Algernon Charles Swinburne, trans.
Scheme | aabcdcaeefeFd cbcceefeF bebcceefeFeefeF a |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111111 111111 1101110111 1111110111 11110111111 0101111110 1111111111 0101111111 11110010101 010111011 1111111 1111110111 1111110101 11111010111 0111111101 111111100 11010100 1111010111 11111101111 1111110111 111111101111 1111110111 0111010111 001101011 1001111101 11101101111 1010110111 1111110111 10111110111 1111111101 1111111111 1111110111 1101111101 11111110101 11111010101 11111101 1111110111 100111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,644 |
Words | 327 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 13, 9, 15, 1 |
Lines Amount | 38 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 312 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 82 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 16, 2023
- 1:40 min read
- 53 Views
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"Epitaph In The Form Of A Ballade" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/13667/epitaph-in-the-form-of-a-ballade>.
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