The Ferry
Of marsh-mallows my boat is made,The ropes are lily-roots.The pole-star is athwart the sky:The moon sinks low.It’s at the ferry I’m plucking lilies.But it might be the Yellow River--So afraid you seem of the wind and waves,So long you tarry at the crossing.
Words in this poem
- mallows n.
- A genus of plants (Malva) having mucilaginous qualities. See Malvaceous. [OE. malwe, AS. mealwe, fr. L. malva, akin to Gr. mala`chh; cf. mala`ssein to soften, malako`s soft. Named either from its softening or relaxing properties, or f]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Ferry 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 Ferry, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/the-ferry.html, id L18806.
Form and metre
The Ferry is 8 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic pentameter, other poems in blank verse.
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 iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Of marsh-mallows my boat is made, | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| The ropes are lily-roots. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The pole-star is athwart the sky: | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| The moon sinks low. | 4 | ···· |
| It’s at the ferry I’m plucking lilies. | 10 | ···/˘·/˘/˘ |
| But it might be the Yellow River-- | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| So afraid you seem of the wind and waves, | 10 | ·˘/······· |
| So long you tarry at the crossing. | 9 | ···/˘··/˘ |
Notes from the edition 1
Arthur Waley's notes to A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918; Project Gutenberg #42290).
- Line 8 A lady is waiting for her lover at the ferry which crosses a small stream. When he does not come, she bitterly suggests that he is as afraid of the little stream as though it were the Yellow River, the largest river in China.
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.