Dreaming of a Dead Lady
“I heard at night your long sighsAnd knew that you were thinking of me.”As she spoke, the doors of Heaven openedAnd our souls conversed and I saw her face.She set me a pillow to rest onAnd she brought me meat and drink.
I stood beside her where she lay,But suddenly woke and she was not there:And none knew how my soul was torn,How the tears fell surging over my breast.
Words in this poem
- spoke n.
- The radius or ray of a wheel; one of the small bars which are inserted in the hub, or nave, and which serve to support the rim or felly. [OE. spoke, spake, AS, spaca; akin to D. speek, LG. speke, OHG. speihha, G. speiche. sq. root170. Cf. Spike a nail.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Dreaming of a Dead Lady 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, Dreaming of a Dead Lady, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/dreaming-of-a-dead-lady.html, id L18800.
Form and metre
Dreaming of a Dead Lady is 10 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 80%). 97% 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. 30% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| “I heard at night your long sighs | 7 | ······· |
| And knew that you were thinking of me.” | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| As she spoke, the doors of Heaven opened | 10 | ······/˘/˘ |
| And our souls conversed and I saw her face. | 11 | ·/˘·˘/····· |
| She set me a pillow to rest on | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| And she brought me meat and drink. | 7 | ······· |
| I stood beside her where she lay, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| But suddenly woke and she was not there: | 10 | ·/˘˘······ |
| And none knew how my soul was torn, | 8 | ········ |
| How the tears fell surging over my breast. | 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.