44. Chū-nagon Asa-tada
To fall in love with womankindIs my unlucky fate;If only it were otherwise,I might appreciateSome men, whom now I hate.
Words in this poem
- womankind n.
- The females of the human race; women, collectively.
- appreciate v. t.
- To set a price or value on; to estimate justly; to value. [L. appretiatus, p. p. of appretiare to value at a price, appraise; ad + pretiare to prize, pretium price. Cf. Appraise.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
44. Chū-nagon Asa-tada 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, 44. Chū-nagon Asa-tada, in A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (1909), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hyakunin-isshu/44.html, id L28529.
Form and metre
44. Chū-nagon Asa-tada 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 xaxaa womankindx · fatea · otherwisex · appreciatea · hatea
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.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| To fall in love with womankind | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| Is my unlucky fate; | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| If only it were otherwise, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| I might appreciate | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| Some men, whom now I hate. | 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.