53. Udaishō Michi-tsuna no Haha

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

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

All through the long and dreary nightI lie awake and moan;How desolate my chamber feels,How weary I have grownOf being left alone!

Words in this poem

dreary a.
Sorrowful; distressful. [OE. dreori, dreri, AS. dreórig, sad; akin to G. traurig, and prob. to AS. dreósan to fall, Goth. driusan. Cf. Dross, Drear, Drizzle, Drowse.]

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

About this text

53. Udaishō Michi-tsuna no Haha 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, 53. Udaishō Michi-tsuna no Haha, in A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (1909), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hyakunin-isshu/53.html, id L28538.

Form and metre

53. Udaishō Michi-tsuna no Haha 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 nightx · moana · feelsx · growna · alonea
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
All through the long and dreary night8·····/˘·
I lie awake and moan;6··˘/··
How desolate my chamber feels,7·/˘·/˘·
How weary I have grown6·/˘···
Of being left alone!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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