Lyric Poem · Love

Epitaph for William Nicol, High School, Edinburgh

by Robert Burns

Reading room

1YE maggots, feed on Nicol’s brain,

2 For few sic feasts you’ve gotten;

3And fix your claws in Nicol’s heart,

4 For deil a bit o’t’s rotten.

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“Epitaph for William Nicol, High School, Edinburgh” by Robert Burns — quilloak.com/poems/epitaph-for-william-nicol-high-school-edinburgh

Quick facts

Poem: Epitaph for William Nicol, High School, Edinburgh
Poet: Robert Burns
Length: 4 lines
Form: Lyric Poem, Short Poems
Themes: Love, Death & Loss, Short

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 4 lines · one 4-line stanza
End rhyme: ABCB — ballad rhyme — only lines 2 and 4 chime.
Line length: Consistent with common metre. Alternating eight- and six-syllable lines — the hymn stanza (8.6.8.6), the most-used quatrain in English verse.

The poem’s silhouette — approximate syllables per line, measured from the text above. Even bars mean a measured line; ragged bars mean the poem sets its own widths.

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.

Author record: Robert Burns1759–1796
Source record: PoetryDBEpitaph for William Nicol, High School, Edinburgh by robert-burns, PoetryDB transcription
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: Not recorded in the imported source
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 31a950fa7d65c689…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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Lyric Poem Short Poems Love Death & Loss Short

Epitaph for William Nicol, High School, Edinburgh

Quick facts

How this poem works

A traceable edition

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