9. Ono no Komachi
The blossom's tint is washed awayBy heavy showers of rain;My charms, which once I prized so much,Are also on the wane,—Both bloomed, alas! in vain.
About this text
9. Ono no Komachi 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, 9. Ono no Komachi, in A Hundred Verses from Old Japan (1909), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hyakunin-isshu/9.html, id L28494.
Form and metre
9. Ono no Komachi 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 awayx · raina · muchx · wanea · vaina
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The blossom's tint is washed away | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| By heavy showers of rain; | 6 | ·/˘/·· |
| My charms, which once I prized so much, | 8 | ········ |
| Are also on the wane,— | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Both bloomed, alas! in vain. | 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.