Burial Songs
How swiftly it dries,The dew on the garlic-leaf,The dew that dries so fastTo-morrow will fall again.But he whom we carry to the graveWill never more return.
What man’s land is the graveyard?It is the crowded home of ghosts,--Wise and foolish shoulder to shoulder.The King of the Dead claims them all;Man’s fate knows no tarrying.
Words in this poem
- graveyard n.
- A yard or inclosure for the interment of the dead; a cemetery.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Burial Songs is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, the Arthur Waley 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, Burial Songs, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/burial-songs.html, id L18754.
Form and metre
Burial Songs is 11 lines in 2 verse paragraphs. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.2 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 18% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| How swiftly it dries, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| The dew on the garlic-leaf, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| The dew that dries so fast | 6 | ······ |
| To-morrow will fall again. | 7 | ·/˘··˘/ |
| But he whom we carry to the grave | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| Will never more return. | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| What man’s land is the graveyard? | 7 | ·····/· |
| It is the crowded home of ghosts,-- | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Wise and foolish shoulder to shoulder. | 9 | ··/˘/˘·/˘ |
| The King of the Dead claims them all; | 8 | ········ |
| Man’s fate knows no tarrying. | 7 | ····/˘˘ |
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.