6. Chū-nagon Yakamochi

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

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

When on the Magpies' Bridge I seeThe Hoar-frost King has castHis sparkling mantle, well I knowThe night is nearly past,Daylight approaches fast.

Words in this poem

daylight n.
The light of day as opposed to the darkness of night; the light of the sun, as opposed to that of the moon or to artificial light.

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

About this text

6. Chū-nagon Yakamochi 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, 6. Chū-nagon Yakamochi, in A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (1909), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hyakunin-isshu/6.html, id L28491.

Form and metre

6. Chū-nagon Yakamochi 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 seex · casta · knowx · pasta · fasta
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
When on the Magpies' Bridge I see8···/····
The Hoar-frost King has cast6······
His sparkling mantle, well I know8·/˘/˘···
The night is nearly past,6···/˘·
Daylight approaches fast.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.

More by Various