63. Sakyō Taiu Michimasa
If we could meet in privacy,Where no one else could see,Softly I'd whisper in thy earThis little word from me—'I'm dying, Love, for thee.'
About this text
63. Sakyō Taiu Michimasa 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, 63. Sakyō Taiu Michimasa, in A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (1909), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hyakunin-isshu/63.html, id L28548.
Form and metre
63. Sakyō Taiu Michimasa 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 privacyx · seea · earx · mea · theea
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 |
|---|---|---|
| If we could meet in privacy, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Where no one else could see, | 6 | ······ |
| Softly I'd whisper in thy ear | 8 | /˘·/˘··· |
| This little word from me— | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| 'I'm dying, Love, for thee.' | 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.