And ready I stand,

[keannu]

Title : Counting Stars at Night by Yoon Dong Ju
In the sky where seasons pass in a hurry
Autumn fills the air.
And ready I stand, without a worry,
To count all the stars there
.....
Memory for one star,
Love for another star,
=================
This is the translation of a Korean poem. What does the underlined mean? Why did the translator inverse "I stand ready" to "Ready I stand"?
To emphasize that I'm really ready?

 

[5jj]

Why did the translator inver[STRIKE]se[/STRIKE]t "I stand ready" to "Ready I stand"?

It's poetry. We can be more flexible about word order in verse than in prose.


;-)

 

[jutfrank]

I'd guess it's mostly because he or she thought it sounded better that way, rhythmically speaking.

 

[Tarheel]

Speaking as somebody who has written a few poems, I do what feels right.

The reader expects something a little different in a poem and is not surprised when that happens. Indeed, those twists and turns that make a poem different also make it interesting. (At least that's what you hope.)

 

[Phaedrus]

In the sky where seasons pass in a hurry
Autumn fills the air.
And ready I stand, without a worry,
To count all the stars there

[. . .] Why did the translator inverse "I stand ready" to "Ready I stand"?
To emphasize that I'm really ready?

The rhyme scheme of the quatrain is abab; that is, the last word of every other line rhymes ("hurry" rhymes with "worry," and "air" with "there").

By fronting "ready" and placing its its infinitival complement ("To count all the stars there") in the fourth line, the author gets the rhyming words where they need to be.

 

[Tarheel]

It's not just the rhyme scheme. It's the way one word follows another. There is no hurry, but there is a purpose.