76. Hōshō-ji Nyūdō Saki no Kwambaku
When rowing on the open sea,The waves, all capped with white,Roll onward, like the fleecy cloudsWith their resistless might;Truly a wondrous sight!
Words in this poem
- fleecy a.
- Covered with, made of, or resembling, a fleece.
- resistless a.
- Having no power to resist; making no opposition.
- wondrous adv.
- In a wonderful or surprising manner or degree; wonderfully. [OE. wonders, adv. (later also adj.). See Wonder, n., and cf. -wards.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
76. Hōshō-ji Nyūdō Saki no Kwambaku 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, 76. Hōshō-ji Nyūdō Saki no Kwambaku, in A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (1909), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hyakunin-isshu/76.html, id L28561.
Form and metre
76. Hōshō-ji Nyūdō Saki no Kwambaku 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 seax · whitea · cloudsx · mighta · sighta
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When rowing on the open sea, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| The waves, all capped with white, | 6 | ······ |
| Roll onward, like the fleecy clouds | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| With their resistless might; | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| Truly a wondrous sight! | 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.