People tend not to appreciate the things they have until they lose them. In The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter, the adaption by Erza Pound of a Chinese poem, the speaker is a young married girl who recalls her regrets of not spending enough time with her now-absent husband. The poem is melancholic, beautiful, and pleading. Throughout the poem, the sorrow of the wife stresses her longing for the return of her husband.
While the original poet, Li Po, writes it with proper poetic form, Pound uses a different tactic to align the context. He refrains from using meter patterns and rhyme, and writes the poem in free verse so that it feels more like a genuine letter to her husband. Doing so allows Pound to draw the reader directly into the solitude of the wife without having to overcome the barrier of an overly structured presentation. In the midst of long sentences, the two shorter ones draw significant attention to the emotional impact that nature has on the speaker. When speaking of the changing season, the falling leaves and the paired butterflies, the speaker remarks, “They hurt me. I grow older” (Pound 25). These sentences capture the attention of the reader as the poem reaches its climax in which the wife acknowledges her despair for the long absence of her husband. By abandoning the rigid form of poetry, Pound allows the reader to feel the sorrowful emotions of the wife.
The sorrowful state of the wife also affects the way that she views the natural world. The early transition of autumn reflects her isolated mood while waiting for her husband. She notes that “the leaves fall early this autumn” and “[different] moss is grown [and is] too deep to clear away” (Pound 20-21). Instead of taking pleasure in the coloured mosaic of fallen leaves, the speaker sees them as a sign of decay and isolation, indicative of her loneliness. The moss illustrates the sorrow that she