Lyric Poem · Death & Loss
Epitaph on a Lap-dog
by Robert Burns
IN wood and wild, ye warbling throng,
Your heavy loss deplore;
Now, half extinct your powers of song,
Sweet Echo is no more.
Ye jarring, screeching things around,
Scream your discordant joys;
Now, half your din of tuneless sound
With Echo silent lies.
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“Epitaph on a Lap-dog” by Robert Burns — quilloak.com/poems/epitaph-on-a-lap-dog
Quick facts
- Poem
- Epitaph on a Lap-dog
- Poet
- Robert Burns
- Length
- 8 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem, Short Poems
- Themes
- Death & Loss, Nature, 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
- 8 lines · 2 quatrains
- 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.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
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 on a Lap-dog 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 bf45877c50092e2f…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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