The River and the Leaf
Into the night the sounds of luting flow;The west wind stirs amid the root-crop blue;While envious fireflies spoil the twinkling dew,And early wild-geese stem the dark Kin-ho.
Now great trees tell their secrets to the sky,And hill on hill looms in the moon-clear night.I watch one leaf upon the river light,And in a dream go drifting down the Hwai.
Words in this poem
- amid prep.
- In the midst or middle of; surrounded or encompassed by; among. [OE. amidde, amiddes, on midden, AS. on middan, in the middle, fr. midde the middle. The s is an adverbial ending, originally marking the genitive; the t is a la]
- envious a.
- Malignant; mischievous; spiteful. [OF. envios, F. envieux, fr. L. invidiosus, fr. invidia envy. See Envy, and cf. Invidious.]
- twinkling n.
- The act of one who, or of that which, twinkles; a quick movement of the eye; a wink; a twinkle. Holland.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The River and the Leaf 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, The River and the Leaf, in A Lute of Jade (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #390, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lute-of-jade/the-river-and-the-leaf.html, id L15599.
Form and metre
The River and the Leaf is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ABBA flowA · blueB · dewB · hoA
- 2 ABBA skyA · nightB · lightB · hwaiA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Into the night the sounds of luting flow; | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| The west wind stirs amid the root-crop blue; | 10 | ····˘/···· |
| While envious fireflies spoil the twinkling dew, | 11 | ·/˘/˘···/˘· |
| And early wild-geese stem the dark Kin-ho. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Now great trees tell their secrets to the sky, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And hill on hill looms in the moon-clear night. | 10 | ·········· |
| I watch one leaf upon the river light, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And in a dream go drifting down the Hwai. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
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.