Cock-Crow Song
In the eastern quarter dawn breaks, the stars flicker pale.The morning cock at Ju-nan mounts the wall and crows.The songs are over, the clock run down, but still the feastis set.The moon grows dim and the stars are few; morning has come tothe world.At a thousand gates and ten thousand doors the fish-shaped keysturn;Round the Palace and up by the Castle, the crows and magpies areflying.
Words in this poem
- flicker v. i.
- To flutter; to flap the wings without flying. [OE. flikeren, flekeren, to flutter, AS. flicerian, flicorian, cf. D. flikkeren to sparkle. Flacker.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Cock-Crow Song 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, Cock-Crow Song, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/cock-crow-song.html, id L18744.
Form and metre
Cock-Crow Song is 10 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.9 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 40% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| In the eastern quarter dawn breaks, the stars flicker pale. | 13 | ··/˘/˘····/˘· |
| The morning cock at Ju-nan mounts the wall and crows. | 12 | ·/˘········· |
| The songs are over, the clock run down, but still the feast | 13 | ············· |
| is set. | 2 | ·· |
| The moon grows dim and the stars are few; morning has come to | 14 | ·········/˘··· |
| the world. | 2 | ·· |
| At a thousand gates and ten thousand doors the fish-shaped keys | 14 | ··/˘···/˘····· |
| turn; | 1 | · |
| Round the Palace and up by the Castle, the crows and magpies are | 16 | ··/˘····/˘···/·· |
| flying. | 2 | /˘ |
Notes from the edition 1
Arthur Waley's notes to A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918; Project Gutenberg #42290).
- Line 3 A water-clock.
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.