The Curtain of the Wedding Bed
Flap, flap, you curtain in front of our bed!I hung you there to screen us from the light of day.I brought you with me when I left my father’s house;Now I am taking you back with me again.I will fold you up and lay you flat in your box.Curtain--shall I ever take you out again?
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Curtain of the Wedding Bed 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, The Curtain of the Wedding Bed, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/the-curtain-of-the-wedding-bed.html, id L18771.
Form and metre
The Curtain of the Wedding Bed is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%). 83% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 11.5 syllables.
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-A bed · day · house · againA · box · againA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Flap, flap, you curtain in front of our bed! | 11 | ···/˘···/˘· |
| I hung you there to screen us from the light of day. | 12 | ············ |
| I brought you with me when I left my father’s house; | 12 | ·········/˘· |
| Now I am taking you back with me again. | 11 | ···/˘····˘/ |
| I will fold you up and lay you flat in your box. | 12 | ············ |
| Curtain--shall I ever take you out again? | 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.