The Other Side of the Valley
I am a prisoner in the hands of the enemy,Enduring the shame of captivity.My bones stick out and my strength is goneThrough not getting enough to eat.My brother is a MandarinAnd his horses are fed on maize.Why can’t he spare a little moneyTo send and ransom me?
About this text
The Other Side of the Valley 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 Other Side of the Valley, in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #42290, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waley-chinese/the-other-side-of-the-valley.html, id L18752.
Form and metre
The Other Side of the Valley is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%). 85% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.0 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 38% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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--- enemy · captivity · goneA · eat · mandarinA · maize · money · me
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I am a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, | 14 | ···/˘˘·····/˘˘ |
| Enduring the shame of captivity. | 10 | ˘/˘···˘/˘˘ |
| My bones stick out and my strength is gone | 9 | ········· |
| Through not getting enough to eat. | 8 | ··/˘˘/·· |
| My brother is a Mandarin | 8 | ·/˘··/˘˘ |
| And his horses are fed on maize. | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Why can’t he spare a little money | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| To send and ransom me? | 6 | ···/˘· |
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.