Climbing a Mountain
High rises the Eastern PeakSoaring up to the blue sky.Among the rocks--an empty hollow,Secret, still, mysterious!Uncarved and unhewn,Screened by nature with a roof of clouds.Times and Seasons, what things are youBringing to my life ceaseless change?I will lodge for ever in this hollowWhere Springs and Autumns unheeded pass.
Words in this poem
- ceaseless a.
- Without pause or end; incessant.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Climbing a Mountain 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, Climbing a Mountain, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/climbing-a-mountain.html, id L18791.
Form and metre
Climbing a Mountain is 10 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%). 84% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.9 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 30% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic 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.
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 --A-----A- peak · sky · hollowA · mysterious · unhewn · clouds · you · change · hollowA · pass
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| High rises the Eastern Peak | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| Soaring up to the blue sky. | 7 | /˘····· |
| Among the rocks--an empty hollow, | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| Secret, still, mysterious! | 7 | /˘·˘/˘˘ |
| Uncarved and unhewn, | 5 | ····· |
| Screened by nature with a roof of clouds. | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| Times and Seasons, what things are you | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Bringing to my life ceaseless change? | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| I will lodge for ever in this hollow | 10 | ····/˘··/˘ |
| Where Springs and Autumns unheeded pass. | 9 | ···/˘˘/˘· |
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.