Analysis of The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter
Ezra Pound 1885 (Hailey) – 1972 (Venice)
After Li Po
While my hair was still cut straight
across my forehead
I played at the front gate, pulling
flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing
horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with
blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of
Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or
suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never
looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with
yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river
of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise
overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went
out,
By the gate now, the moss is grown,
the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in
wind.
The paired butterflies are already
yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the
narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-sa.
Translated by Ezra Pound
Scheme | X XABXBXCXXDXD EXXFX BCXFG XFXXXA XGDXXDXXXDFXBXEX X |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011 1111111 01110 11101110 10 111101110 1 110111101 11 01111000101 1 111001011 010 111110111 11011010 1001111101 110101110 11 1011110 10101111101 1 01000100010 111101 1011010 110111111010 11010 0111111 01011001 101 1111111 1 10110111 010010 1111101 011101100 1 01101010 10110 100100110 1111110 11110110 1010101 111101 01111111 111111 0101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,309 |
Words | 228 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 12, 5, 5, 6, 16, 1 |
Lines Amount | 46 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 137 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 32 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 26, 2023
- 1:08 min read
- 197 Views
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