Flood
The lingering clouds, rolling, rolling,And the settled rain, dripping, dripping,In the Eight Directions--the same dusk.The level lands--one great river.Wine I have, wine I have:Idly I drink at the eastern window.Longingly--I think of my friends,But neither boat nor carriage comes.
Words in this poem
- dripping n.
- A falling in drops, or the sound so made.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Flood 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, Flood, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/flood.html, id L18788.
Form and metre
Flood is 8 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 74%). 84% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.4 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The lingering clouds, rolling, rolling, | 9 | ·/˘˘·/˘/˘ |
| And the settled rain, dripping, dripping, | 9 | ··/˘·/˘/˘ |
| In the Eight Directions--the same dusk. | 9 | ···˘/˘··· |
| The level lands--one great river. | 8 | ·/˘···/˘ |
| Wine I have, wine I have: | 6 | ······ |
| Idly I drink at the eastern window. | 10 | /˘····/˘/˘ |
| Longingly--I think of my friends, | 8 | /˘˘····· |
| But neither boat nor carriage comes. | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
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.