t e t ra s y l l a biC Sh i P oe t ry : The B o ok of P oeT ry 23adjective “beautiful” (mei) in the final five lines (it is used four times!) implicitly
refers to the girl. Twice mei is the stressed rhyme word in these final lines, link-
ing the persona’s reveries in the resulting cc / cdcd pattern. In the final couplet,
the young man’s impatience for his beloved leads him to address the reed sprout
directly. This rhetorical device, known as apostrophe, is yet another thread be-
tween the three beautiful “objects” that weave the stanzas together: girl, stalk,
and sprout. Read in this fashion, the poem begins as an exposition (fu) in the first
stanza but comes to end unresolved in a series of comparisons (bi). The circularity
of the young man’s thoughts, as well as the metaphoric binding of gifts and girl,
are highlighted by another rhetorical device, the linking of lines 6 and 7 through
the repetition of “vermilion stalk” and the doubled “beautiful” that links line 11 to
line 12 (a device known in Chinese as lianzhu [ linking pearls] and in English as
anadiplosis).
Although the poems presented earlier should suggest that tetrameter is the
standard rhythm for the Book of Poetry as a whole (over 91 percent of the lines are
in tetrameter, about 6 percent in pentameter, and most of the remaining 3 percent
in trimeter), there are also a few poems written in lines of varying length, such
as “Jiang you si” (The River Has Branches [Mao no. 22]) in trimeter or “Xing lu”
(Treading Frost [Mao no. 17]) in pentameter. “Xing lu” is a bit different. There are
seven tetrasyllabic lines in this piece. Strictly speaking, there is not a single penta-
syllabic poem in the Book of Poetry, while “Jiang you si” is obviously a trisyllabic
poem. Both songs are found in the second section of the airs, “Shao nan” (Nan-
Type Songs from the States Set Up by the Duke of Shao), and it is likely that both
this section and the paired “Zhou nan” (Nan-Type Songs from the States Set Up by
the Duke of Zhou) had a musical base that differed from that of the other airs.5 To
us moderns, however, only the text remains:
C 1. 7
The River Has Branches 江有汜 ( jiāng yŏu sì)The River has branches that leave and return— 江有汜^ ( jiāng yŏu sì)
2 When this person returned home, 之子歸 (zhī zĭ guī)
He did not take me, 不我以^ (bù wŏ yĭ)
4 He did not take me, 不我以 (bù wŏ yĭ)
And afterward he will regret it! 其後也悔 (qí hòu yě huĭ )
6 The River has channels ’tween its islets— 江有渚 ( jiāng yŏu zhŭ)
When this person returned home, 之子歸 (zhī zĭ guī)
8 He would not be close to me, 不我與 (bù wŏ yŭ)
He would not be close to me, 不我與 (bù wŏ yŭ)
10 And afterward he will be troubled by it! 其後也處 (qí hòu yě chŭ)
The River has the Tuo tributary— 江有沱 ( jiāng yŏu tuó)
12 When this person returned home, 之子歸 (zhī zĭ guī)
He did not stop by to see me, 不我過^ (bù wŏ guò)