13. Yōzei In

Various (about 1235), translated by William N. Porter · 1909

iambic trimeter · xaxaa · 5 lines · from A Hundred Verses from Old Japan

The Mina stream comes tumbling downFrom Mount Tsukuba's height;Strong as my love, it leaps intoA pool as black as nightWith overwhelming might.

Words in this poem

mina n.
An ancient weight or denomination of money, of varying value.

Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.

About this text

13. Yōzei In is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (the Hyaku-nin-isshiu), Internet Archive, the William N. Porter translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.

Cite as: Various, 13. Yōzei In, in A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (1909), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hyakunin-isshu/13.html, id L28498.

Form and metre

13. Yōzei In is 5 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes xaxaa. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic trimeter.

See other poems in iambic trimeter.

Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.

Rhyme words, stanza by stanza

The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.

  1. 1 xaxaa downx · heighta · intox · nighta · mighta
Scansion, line by line

Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic trimeter. How this is done.

LineSyl.Stress
The Mina stream comes tumbling down8·/˘··/˘·
From Mount Tsukuba's height;6···/˘·
Strong as my love, it leaps into8········
A pool as black as night6······
With overwhelming might.6··˘/˘·

The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.

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