This is an analysis of the poem The Epitaph In Form Of A Ballad Which Villon Made For Himself And His Comrades, Expecting To Be Hanged Along With Them that begins with:

Men, brother men, that after us yet live,
Let not your hearts too hard against us be; ... full text

Elements of the verse: questions and answers

The information we provided is prepared by means of a special computer program. Use the criteria sheet to understand greatest poems or improve your poetry analysis essay.

  • Rhyme scheme: abacbddXXE abaccddedE aXXbbddedE ddeXE
  • Stanza lengths (in strings): 10,10,10,5,
  • Closest metre: iambic pentameter
  • Сlosest rhyme: couplets
  • Сlosest stanza type: sonnet
  • Guessed form: heroic couplets
  • Metre: 1101110111 1111110110 10110011111 0101110110 1111111111 1101111111 11110110111 1101111110 1111111000 1101110111 0111110001 1111110111 0111111101 1111001100 1111010100 0110010111 1010110111 1111110111 111111101111 1101110111 0111110111 101111011 1011011111 1111111111 1111110111 1101111111 1101010111 11001111101 1111111101 1101110111 1101011111 1111011101 11101010101 0111101100 1101110111
  • Amount of stanzas: 4
  • Average number of symbols per stanza: 387
  • Average number of words per stanza: 78
  • Amount of lines: 38
  • Average number of symbols per line: 40 (medium-length strings)
  • Average number of words per line: 8
  • Mood of the speaker:

    The punctuation marks are various. Neither mark predominates.

  • The author used lexical repetitions to emphasize a significant image; men, us, and, we are repeated.

    The poet repeated the same word all at the end of some neighboring stanzas. The poetic device is a kind of epiphora.

If you write a school or university poetry essay, you should Include in your explanation of the poem:

  • summary of The Epitaph In Form Of A Ballad Which Villon Made For Himself And His Comrades, Expecting To Be Hanged Along With Them;
  • central theme;
  • idea of the verse;
  • history of its creation;
  • critical appreciation.

Good luck in your poetry interpretation practice!

More information about poems by Algernon Charles Swinburne