General
La Poe/sie Chinoise, by C. de Harlez. Bruxelles, 1892.(The best treatise on Chinese poetry that has yet appeared.The passage dealing with Chinese style is especially illuminating.The whole essay is deserving of a wider circulation.)
About this text
General is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Lute of Jade, Project Gutenberg ebook #390, the L. Cranmer-Byng 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, General, in A Lute of Jade (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #390, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lute-of-jade/general.html, id L15625.
Form and metre
General is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 15.0 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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.
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| La Poe/sie Chinoise, by C. de Harlez. Bruxelles, 1892. | 13 | ··········˘/˘ |
| (The best treatise on Chinese poetry that has yet appeared. | 14 | ··/˘·˘//˘···˘/ |
| The passage dealing with Chinese style is especially illuminating. | 18 | ·/˘/˘·˘/··˘/˘˘/˘·˘ |
| The whole essay is deserving of a wider circulation.) | 15 | ··/··˘/˘··//˘·˘ |
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.