Night on the West River By: Po-Chu-I
No moon
To light my way upon the stair,
Cold comfort
In the wine I drink alone.
Black clouds,
Rain,
The hurried flight of birds,
Water flowing grayly
In the dusk.
A rising storm,
Boats tugging at their mooring ropes.
Or sails full-spread
To take advantage of the wind.
A moving point of fire
In the dark,
The distant lantern
Of a passing boat.
Translated by Henry Hart
Information about the poet:
He lived (772-846)
Great writer of the Chinese Tang dynasty.
He was born in T’ai- yuan in shansi late moved to Ch’ang.
He wrote poem that was simple and easy to understand.
He was government officer, and lived during the Middle Tang.
When his parents died he would go to Wel River to get over his grief.
(I think this poem was written at the same river because of how depressing and dark the poem is)
Speaker: The speaker of the poem is a person who is lonely. For example Po-Chu-I uses words to like comfort, alone, distant, black clouds to symbolize how lonely the poem is.
Imagery: “The hurried flight of birds” shows imagery of birds flying away from the storm. This makes the poem more lonely. “Black clouds/ rain” makes the reader feel scared. Since the speaker is on the water this make the reader worried.
Figurative Language: The figurative language is the metaphor “a moving point of fire in the dark”. This uses to show the light in dark place but it is really a lantern passing by. “Cold Comfort” is alliteration. This is used to show irony because wine is not a comfort to him.
Tone: The tone of this poem is depressing. The poem uses dark images to show the loneliness of the speaker. The poet uses cold and stormy images to make the reader feel fearful.
Theme: The theme of this poem is being on a boat by yourself in cold storm night can bring loneliness to a person. It also tells us he can’t escape his loneliness because he is in the middle of a river by himself. He can’t also escape the darkness or the storm. Being on a boat by yourself is scarce because there is no comfort.
The poem that Fere chose was different from a lot of them. Chinese poem's are often not understood that well. But the imagery examples that she gave show'd how she might have had an understanding. Love how she used emotions to describe some of the imagery and how the speaker might have felt. The way she wrote the theme helped to understand what the poem is trying to convey. The depressing tone makes sense in the context of the poem. Overall she did a good job with the understanding part of the poem and analyzing it by the SIFTT process.
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