Kept Waiting in the Boat at Chiu-K’Ou Ten Days by an Adverse Wind
White billows and huge waves block the river crossing;Wherever I go, danger and difficulty; whatever I do, failure.Just as in my worldly career I wander and lose the road,So when I come to the river crossing, I am stopped by contrary winds.Of fishes and prawns sodden in the rain the smell fills my nostrils;With the stings of insects that come with the fog, my whole body issore.I am growing old, time flies, and my short span runs out.While I sit in a boat at Chiu-k’ou, wasting ten days!
Words in this poem
- wherever adv.
- At or in whatever place; wheresoever.
- career n.
- A race course: the ground run over. [F. carrière race course, high road, street, fr. L. carrus wagon. See Car.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Kept Waiting in the Boat at Chiu-K’Ou Ten Days by an Adverse Wind 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, Kept Waiting in the Boat at Chiu-K’Ou Ten Days by an Adverse Wind, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/kept-waiting-in-the-boat-at-chiu-k-ou-ten-days-by-an-adverse.html, id L18839.
Form and metre
Kept Waiting in the Boat at Chiu-K’Ou Ten Days by an Adverse Wind is 9 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 81% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 13.7 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 11% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| White billows and huge waves block the river crossing; | 12 | ·/˘·····/˘/˘ |
| Wherever I go, danger and difficulty; whatever I do, failure. | 19 | ˘/˘··/˘·/˘˘˘·/˘··/˘ |
| Just as in my worldly career I wander and lose the road, | 15 | ····/˘˘/·/˘···· |
| So when I come to the river crossing, I am stopped by contrary winds. | 18 | ······/˘/˘····/˘˘· |
| Of fishes and prawns sodden in the rain the smell fills my nostrils; | 16 | ·/˘··/˘·······/˘ |
| With the stings of insects that come with the fog, my whole body is | 16 | ····/········/˘· |
| sore. | 1 | · |
| I am growing old, time flies, and my short span runs out. | 13 | ··/˘········· |
| While I sit in a boat at Chiu-k’ou, wasting ten days! | 13 | ·········/˘·· |
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.