Lo-Yang
A beautiful place is the town of Lo-yang:The big streets are full of spring light.The lads go driving out with harps in their hands:The mulberry girls go out to the fields with their baskets.Golden whips glint at the horses’ flanks.Gauze sleeves brush the green boughs.Racing dawn, the carriages come home,--And the girls with their high baskets full of fruit.
Words in this poem
- yang n.
- The cry of the wild goose; a honk. [Of imitative origin.]
- glint n.
- A glimpse, glance, or gleam. [OE. glent.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Lo-Yang 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, Lo-Yang, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/lo-yang.html, id L18802.
Form and metre
Lo-Yang is 8 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.9 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A beautiful place is the town of Lo-yang: | 11 | ·/˘˘······· |
| The big streets are full of spring light. | 8 | ········ |
| The lads go driving out with harps in their hands: | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| The mulberry girls go out to the fields with their baskets. | 14 | ·/·˘········/˘ |
| Golden whips glint at the horses’ flanks. | 9 | /˘····/˘· |
| Gauze sleeves brush the green boughs. | 6 | ······ |
| Racing dawn, the carriages come home,-- | 9 | /˘··/˘˘·· |
| And the girls with their high baskets full of fruit. | 11 | ······/˘··· |
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.