Lament for the Makaris (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: William Dunbar
- First Published: 1508
- Type of Work: Ballad
- Genres: Poetry, Ballad
- Subjects: Poetry or poets, England or English people, Death or dying, Fifteenth century, Sixteenth century, Scotland or Scottish people
The Poem
“Lament for the Makaris” is a poem in twenty-five stanzas, each of four lines with a rhyme scheme of aabb and a recurring refrain. Although written in a ballad form, William Dunbar’s poem is actually a meditation on serious moral and religious issues, including what for his time would have been the most important of all, the afterlife. The poem is about mutability and transition, including the transition from life to death, and what the human response to those changes should be. Death is a central concern because, as Dunbar notes in his repeated refrain,...
[The entire page is 1485 words long]
