Meeting in the Road
In a narrow road where there was not room to passMy carriage met the carriage of a young man.And while his axle was touching my axleIn the narrow road I asked him where he lived.“The place where I live is easy enough to find,Easy to find and difficult to forget.The gates of my house are built of yellow gold,The hall of my house is paved with white jade,On the hall table flagons of wine are set,I have summoned to serve me dancers of Han-tan.In the midst of the courtyard grows a cassia-tree,--And candles on its branches flaring away in the night.”
Words in this poem
- cassia n.
- A genus of leguminous plants (herbs, shrubs, or trees) of many species, most of which have purgative qualities. The leaves of several species furnish the senna used in medicine. [L. cassia and casia, Gr. qetsi\'beh, fr. qatsa' to cut off, to peel off.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Meeting in the Road 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, Meeting in the Road, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/meeting-in-the-road.html, id L18747.
Form and metre
Meeting in the Road is 12 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic hexameter, 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 11.6 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 17% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic hexameter.
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.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -A---B--BA-- pass · manA · axle · lived · find · forgetB · gold · jade · setB · tanA · tree · night
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| In a narrow road where there was not room to pass | 12 | ··/˘········ |
| My carriage met the carriage of a young man. | 11 | ·/˘··/˘···· |
| And while his axle was touching my axle | 11 | ···/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| In the narrow road I asked him where he lived. | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| “The place where I live is easy enough to find, | 12 | ······/˘˘/·· |
| Easy to find and difficult to forget. | 11 | /˘···/˘˘·˘/ |
| The gates of my house are built of yellow gold, | 11 | ········/˘· |
| The hall of my house is paved with white jade, | 11 | ·······˘··· |
| On the hall table flagons of wine are set, | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| I have summoned to serve me dancers of Han-tan. | 12 | ··/˘···/˘··· |
| In the midst of the courtyard grows a cassia-tree,-- | 12 | ·····/···/˘· |
| And candles on its branches flaring away in the night.” | 14 | ·/˘··/˘/˘˘/··· |
Notes from the edition 1
Arthur Waley's notes to A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918; Project Gutenberg #42290).
- Line 10 Capital of the kingdom of Chao, where the people were famous for their beauty.
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.