Wen Yiduo was the first poet to advocate and practice new metrical poetry, and this poem is also an example of practicing his new metrical poetry ideas.
Wen Yiduo wrote in "The Rhythm of Poetry" It advocates that "the strength of poetry includes not only the beauty of music (syllables), the beauty of painting (words), but also the beauty of architecture (the symmetry of stanzas and the uniformity of sentences)." This poem is completely in line with his above-mentioned claims.
First of all, from the perspective of syllables, the poem has the harmonious beauty of syllables, which is mainly reflected in the rhythm of the poem. The rhythm of this poem is very neat. Each line of the poem has four pauses; each four pauses are composed of three "two-character rulers" and one "three-character ruler". Such neat pauses make the syllables of this poem very harmonious, just like a four-beat song, giving its rhythm a metrical musical beauty.
Secondly, the so-called architectural beauty of poetry refers to the even arrangement of lines and stanzas. This poem has five stanzas, each stanza has four sentences and each sentence has nine characters, achieving the symmetry of the stanzas and the uniformity of the sentences. Each verse is square and neat, like an angular, strong and upright building, with architectural beauty.
Finally, when describing the stagnant water, the poet deliberately selected words that are easy to arouse people's visual association to enhance the painterly beauty of the poem. For example, in the poem, there are rich and vivid "emerald" green, "peach blossom" red, and "pearl" white, plus descriptions such as "Luoqi", "Yunxia", and "green wine", which make the stagnant water appear. The complex colors undoubtedly greatly enhance the painting beauty of the poem. The poet uses beautiful colors to describe the "outside" of the stagnant water, precisely to effectively reveal its ugly "inside". The strong contrast between the outside and the inside creates a strong ironic effect.