唐代 白居易 Bai Juyi  唐代   (772~846)
One poem at a time

Bai Juyi
  South is good, have a working knowledge of the old scenery.
  Flaming Red sunrise, spring, such as blue-green river.
  Can not Yi Jiangnan.
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Bai Juyi
  Bian water, Surabaya flow.
  Guazhou Furuwatari flow head, Wushan little melancholy.
  Think of time, the Henyou You.
  Hate to go off when the same shall, on Ming Yi Lou.
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Bai Juyi
元和十年,予左迁九江郡司马。明年秋,送客湓浦口。闻舟中夜弹琵琶者,听其音,铮铮然有京都声。问其人,本长安倡女。尝学琵琶于穆、曹二善才,年长色衰,委身为贾人妇。遂命酒使快弹数曲,曲罢悯然。自叙少小时欢乐事,今漂沦憔悴,转徙于江湖间。予出官二年,恬然自安,感斯人言,是夕始觉有迁谪意。因为长句,歌以赠之,凡六百一十二言,命曰《琵琶行》。  I was bidding a guest farewell, at night on the Xunyang River,
  Where maple-leaves and full-grown rushes rustled in the autumn.
  I, the host, had dismounted, my guest had boarded his boat,
  And we raised our cups and wished to drink-but, alas, there was no music.
  For all we had drunk we felt no joy and were parting from each other,
  When the river widened mysteriously toward the full moon –
  We had heard a sudden sound, a guitar across the water.
  Host forgot to turn back home, and guest to go his way.
  We followed where the melody led and asked the player's name.
  The sound broke off...then reluctantly she answered.
  We moved our boat near hers, invited her to join us,
  Summoned more wine and lanterns to recommence our banquet.
  Yet we called and urged a thousand times before she started toward us,
  Still hiding half her face from us behind her guitar.
  ...She turned the tuning-pegs and tested several strings;
  We could feel what she was feeling, even before she played:
  Each string a meditation, each note a deep thought,
  As if she were telling us the ache of her whole life.
  She knit her brows, flexed her fingers, then began her music,
  Little by little letting her heart share everything with ours.
  She brushed the strings, twisted them slow, swept them, plucked them –
  First the air of The Rainbow Skirt, then The Six Little Ones.
  The large strings hummed like rain,
  The small strings whispered like a secret,
  Hummed, whispered-and then were intermingled
  Like a pouring of large and small pearls into a plate of jade.
  We heard an oriole, liquid, hidden among flowers.
  We heard a brook bitterly sob along a bank of sand...
  By the checking of its cold touch, the very string seemed broken
  As though it could not pass; and the notes, dying away
  Into a depth of sorrow and concealment of lament,
  Told even more in silence than they had told in sound....
  A silver vase abruptly broke with a gush of water,
  And out leapt armored horses and weapons that clashed and smote –
  And, before she laid her pick down, she ended with one stroke,
  And all four strings made one sound, as of rending silk
  There was quiet in the east boat and quiet in the west,
  And we saw the white autumnal moon enter the river's heart.
  ...When she had slowly placed the pick back among the strings,
  She rose and smoothed her clothing and, formal, courteous,
  Told us how she had spent her girlhood at the capital,
  Living in her parents' house under the Mount of Toads,
  And had mastered the guitar at the age of thirteen,
  With her name recorded first in the class-roll of musicians,
  Her art the admiration even of experts,
  Her beauty the envy of all the leading dancers,
  How noble youths of Wuling had lavishly competed
  And numberless red rolls of silk been given for one song,
  And silver combs with shell inlay been snapped by her rhythms,
  And skirts the colour of blood been spoiled with stains of wine....
  Season after season, joy had followed joy,
  Autumn moons and spring winds had passed without her heeding,
  Till first her brother left for the war, and then her aunt died,
  And evenings went and evenings came, and her beauty faded –
  With ever fewer chariots and horses at her door;
  So that finally she gave herself as wife to a merchant
  Who, prizing money first, careless how he left her,
  Had gone, a month before, to Fuliang to buy tea.
  And she had been tending an empty boat at the river's mouth,
  No company but the bright moon and the cold water.
  And sometimes in the deep of night she would dream of her triumphs
  And be wakened from her dreams by the scalding of her tears.
  Her very first guitar-note had started me sighing;
  Now, having heard her story, I was sadder still.
  "We are both unhappy – to the sky's end.
  We meet. We understand. What does acquaintance matter?
  I came, a year ago, away from the capital
  And am now a sick exile here in Jiujiang –
  And so remote is Jiujiang that I have heard no music,
  Neither string nor bamboo, for a whole year.
  My quarters, near the River Town, are low and damp,
  With bitter reeds and yellowed rushes all about the house.
  And what is to be heard here, morning and evening? –
  The bleeding cry of cuckoos, the whimpering of apes.
  On flowery spring mornings and moonlit autumn nights
  I have often taken wine up and drunk it all alone,
  Of course there are the mountain songs and the village pipes,
  But they are crude and-strident, and grate on my ears.
  And tonight, when I heard you playing your guitar,
  I felt as if my hearing were bright with fairymusic.
  Do not leave us. Come, sit down. Play for us again.
  And I will write a long song concerning a guitar."
  ...Moved by what I said, she stood there for a moment,
  Then sat again to her strings-and they sounded even sadder,
  Although the tunes were different from those she had played before....
  The feasters, all listening, covered their faces.
  But who of them all was crying the most?
  This Jiujiang official. My blue sleeve was wet.

Bai Juyi
  China's Emperor, craving beauty that might shake an empire,
  Was on the throne for many years, searching, never finding,
  Till a little child of the Yang clan, hardly even grown,
  Bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her,
  But with graces granted by heaven and not to be concealed,
  At last one day was chosen for the imperial household.
  If she but turned her head and smiled, there were cast a hundred spells,
  And the powder and paint of the Six Palaces faded into nothing.
  ...It was early spring. They bathed her in the FlowerPure Pool,
  Which warmed and smoothed the creamy-tinted crystal of her skin,
  And, because of her languor, a maid was lifting her
  When first the Emperor noticed her and chose her for his bride.
  The cloud of her hair, petal of her cheek, gold ripples of her crown when she moved,
  Were sheltered on spring evenings by warm hibiscus curtains;
  But nights of spring were short and the sun arose too soon,
  And the Emperor, from that time forth, forsook his early hearings
  And lavished all his time on her with feasts and revelry,
  His mistress of the spring, his despot of the night.
  There were other ladies in his court, three thousand of rare beauty,
  But his favours to three thousand were concentered in one body.
  By the time she was dressed in her Golden Chamber, it would be almost evening;
  And when tables were cleared in the Tower of Jade, she would loiter, slow with wine.
  Her sisters and her brothers all were given titles;
  And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
  She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
  Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy.
  ...High rose Li Palace, entering blue clouds,
  And far and wide the breezes carried magical notes
  Of soft song and slow dance, of string and bamboo music.
  The Emperor's eyes could never gaze on her enough-
  Till war-drums, booming from Yuyang, shocked the whole earth
  And broke the tunes of The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
  The Forbidden City, the nine-tiered palace, loomed in the dust
  From thousands of horses and chariots headed southwest.
  The imperial flag opened the way, now moving and now pausing- -
  But thirty miles from the capital, beyond the western gate,
  The men of the army stopped, not one of them would stir
  Till under their horses' hoofs they might trample those moth- eyebrows....
  Flowery hairpins fell to the ground, no one picked them up,
  And a green and white jade hair-tassel and a yellowgold hair- bird.
  The Emperor could not save her, he could only cover his face.
  And later when he turned to look, the place of blood and tears
  Was hidden in a yellow dust blown by a cold wind.
  ... At the cleft of the Dagger-Tower Trail they crisscrossed through a cloud-line
  Under Omei Mountain. The last few came.
  Flags and banners lost their colour in the fading sunlight....
  But as waters of Shu are always green and its mountains always blue,
  So changeless was His Majesty's love and deeper than the days.
  He stared at the desolate moon from his temporary palace.
  He heard bell-notes in the evening rain, cutting at his breast.
  And when heaven and earth resumed their round and the dragon car faced home,
  The Emperor clung to the spot and would not turn away
  From the soil along the Mawei slope, under which was buried
  That memory, that anguish. Where was her jade-white face?
  Ruler and lords, when eyes would meet, wept upon their coats
  As they rode, with loose rein, slowly eastward, back to the capital.
  ...The pools, the gardens, the palace, all were just as before,
  The Lake Taiye hibiscus, the Weiyang Palace willows;
  But a petal was like her face and a willow-leaf her eyebrow –
  And what could he do but cry whenever he looked at them?
  ...Peach-trees and plum-trees blossomed, in the winds of spring;
  Lakka-foliage fell to the ground, after autumn rains;
  The Western and Southern Palaces were littered with late grasses,
  And the steps were mounded with red leaves that no one swept away.
  Her Pear-Garden Players became white-haired
  And the eunuchs thin-eyebrowed in her Court of PepperTrees;
  Over the throne flew fire-flies, while he brooded in the twilight.
  He would lengthen the lamp-wick to its end and still could never sleep.
  Bell and drum would slowly toll the dragging nighthours
  And the River of Stars grow sharp in the sky, just before dawn,
  And the porcelain mandarin-ducks on the roof grow thick with morning frost
  And his covers of kingfisher-blue feel lonelier and colder
  With the distance between life and death year after year;
  And yet no beloved spirit ever visited his dreams.
  ...At Lingqiong lived a Taoist priest who was a guest of heaven,
  Able to summon spirits by his concentrated mind.
  And people were so moved by the Emperor's constant brooding
  That they besought the Taoist priest to see if he could find her.
  He opened his way in space and clove the ether like lightning,
  Up to heaven, under the earth, looking everywhere.
  Above, he searched the Green Void, below, the Yellow Spring;
  But he failed, in either place, to find the one he looked for.
  And then he heard accounts of an enchanted isle at sea,
  A part of the intangible and incorporeal world,
  With pavilions and fine towers in the five-coloured air,
  And of exquisite immortals moving to and fro,
  And of one among them-whom they called The Ever True-
  With a face of snow and flowers resembling hers he sought.
  So he went to the West Hall's gate of gold and knocked at the jasper door
  And asked a girl, called Morsel-of-Jade, to tell The Doubly- Perfect.
  And the lady, at news of an envoy from the Emperor of China,
  Was startled out of dreams in her nine-flowered, canopy.
  She pushed aside her pillow, dressed, shook away sleep,
  And opened the pearly shade and then the silver screen.
  Her cloudy hair-dress hung on one side because of her great haste,
  And her flower-cap was loose when she came along the terrace,
  While a light wind filled her cloak and fluttered with her motion
  As though she danced The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
  And the tear-drops drifting down her sad white face
  Were like a rain in spring on the blossom of the pear.
  But love glowed deep within her eyes when she bade him thank her liege,
  Whose form and voice had been strange to her ever since their parting –
  Since happiness had ended at the Court of the Bright Sun,
  And moons and dawns had become long in Fairy-Mountain Palace.
  But when she turned her face and looked down toward the earth
  And tried to see the capital, there were only fog and dust.
  So she took out, with emotion, the pledges he had given
  And, through his envoy, sent him back a shell box and gold hairpin,
  But kept one branch of the hairpin and one side of the box,
  Breaking the gold of the hairpin, breaking the shell of the box;
  "Our souls belong together," she said, " like this gold and this shell –
  Somewhere, sometime, on earth or in heaven, we shall surely
  And she sent him, by his messenger, a sentence reminding him
  Of vows which had been known only to their two hearts:
  "On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life,
  We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world
  That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,
  And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."
  Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,
  While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever.

Bai Juyi
  Dismount Liuyin, the single line on an embankment.
  Enemy thousands of miles, a new cicada three twice.
  Qujiang city water, the river city of Gangneung.
  Two new Autumn Thoughts, this day should be the same situation.
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Bai Juyi
  Cien Chun color at the present to make the best of leaning back on PEI Terakado.
  Melancholy Chungui stay shall not, under the wisteria getting dusk.
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Bai Juyi
  Somo few colors, no main pool poultry.
  Daini wings difficult to take, easy to knot the people.
  Top off the residual Bi Cui, spending the end of the dark gold.
  Shall not be _set_ free to fly, so the nest deep sea of clouds.
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Bai Juyi
  Who gives a total wine surplus cup holders? Acacia Flower Palace Montreal alone.
  Acacia only stand near the lace, do Yong Ju Jun Yin Poetry Day.
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Bai Juyi
  Dark on the river bank is also independent of water the night wind, frost, gas edge edges.
  Looking back at the boat stop Fukaura, reeds take a point light.
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Bai Juyi
  Xiao-Dan sky smoke micro-month, silverside autumn of the same forever.
  Love and Lihen dash of joy, and on this night in mid.
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Bai Juyi
  Pre-order Red Peony melancholy, late to only two residues.
  Ming wind should Chuijin, but unfortunately bad night to see the red fire.
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Bai Juyi
  Have been surprised quilt pillow cold back to see out the window.
  Know that heavy snow the night, when you hear the sound of bamboo folding.
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Bai Juyi
  Emei potential connection of clouds, like the Road by Liu Lang fans.
  If you like quiet easy to that still separated the Wuling River spring.
   
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Bai Juyi
  Small Ke two liters wine,
  New six-foot bamboo mat bed.
  Night Talk not to come?
  For cool autumn pool.
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Bai Juyi
  Wong Jing wire your article, engraved bell tower in the drain length.
  Who is sitting in the evening with, crape myrtle flowers on crape myrtle Lang.
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Bai Juyi
伤农夫之困也。  The storm also hurt the farmer.
  Sou Duling, Duling home, more than one are aged species Susukida.
  Dry wind, no rain in March, barley grass does not show more yellow death.
  September frost early autumn cold, Wo are young immature ear dry.
  Zhang Li Shen knows not breaking, radical violence to seek convergence of the examination.
  Code Officer is satisfied Sang land rent, food and clothing will be how about next year.
  Silk peel me, take my mouth millet.
  Pest child who is the wolf, why hook claws saw tooth eating human flesh.
  I do not know who played the emperor, the emperor heart compassion Appreciating disadvantages.
  White linen paper book, Dean, Gyeonggi do put this tax.
  Xu came to the door yesterday, where, armed with country-foot dispatch list.
  Tax nine of ten graduates, virtual free by Wu Jun Yan Juan.
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Bai Juyi
忧蚕桑之费也。  The fee also worry about sericulture.
  Red carpet, silk clear choice boiled silkworm Qiao, pick red and blue dye silk line training.
  Red and blue dyed red, carpet weaving for Phi Hong Dianshang.
  Phi Xiangdian wide ten Zhang Yu, the red line can be woven into a shop house.
  Choi Hong baboons soft and thick wire, wire soft flowers numerous virtual objects;
  Americans step on the dance, the Law no socks embroidered with the step.
  Taiyuan blanket thread hard astringent Cui, Shu is a thin mattress Jinhua cold;
  Not so warm and soft blanket, in mid-October to Xuanzhou.
  Xuanzhou prefect of sample organizations, since that can be tried for the minister;
  Centurion palace with Tam, the line of thick multi-volume wire not.
  Xuanzhou Prefecture know I do not know? Yi Zhang blankets, a thousand two wire,
  I do not know who to warm to cold, less away people's clothes for the lichen!
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Bai Juyi
念女工之劳也。  Women workers in the labor read too.
  Ling Ling Ho of the wind like a sail, not like raw silk and Wan Yee Lo;
  Should they agree to anything like last month, Tiantai Mountain, forty five feet waterfalls spring.
  There are articles and Wonderful, ground floor cluster snow white fireworks.
  Clothes organizers who who who? The more women Palace Ji Han River.
  Last year, Amnesty mouth propaganda manipulation, sampling the sky world organization.
  Organization for the Clouds Qiuyan line for Jason Jiang dye color.
  System wide cut sleeves long dress, Kim iron scissors wave pattern.
  Relatives and queer Caribbean splendor, Zhuance see Flower uncertain.
  Zhaoyang dancers grace is deep, a pair of spring clothes straight daughter.
  James Khan is no longer a dirty powder, drag step on clay soil without pity heart.
  Wind damask woven into charges merit, Moby unusual tie and silk.
  Qiao fine wire over girls hand pain, Zaza Sounds not Ying Chi.
  Zhaoyang temple dance man, if the organization should see and treat.
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Bai Juyi
苦宫市也。  Temple City is also suffering.
  Maitan Weng, cutting pay, Nanshan in charcoal.
  Fireworks sounded dust color, gray temples fingers black.
  He sold the business of carbon have the money, who dress fresh mouth.
  Clothing the poor who are single, worry long carbon base is willing to Tian Han.
  The night comes a foot of snow on the city, Xiao-carbon cars driving Nianbing difficult situation.
  Hungry people trapped on cattle has been high, the mud outside the South Gate City Break.
  Lightly Liangji to who, in yellow messenger in white children.
  Amnesty said hand instrument port, enter the north ox scold.
  A car of carbon, more than a thousand pounds, the palace will be pity not to drive.
  Yi Zhang Hong Sha Ling half horse, the Department of charge to the Ngau Tau carbon straight.
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Bai Juyi
愍怨旷也。  Min Kuang complain too.
  On the positive people, the dark roots of the old white-haired new.
  Buddhism in green prison to keep a close number of spring sun.
  The end of the age into the reign primaries, fashionable sixteen sixty today.
  Taking the same time hundreds of people, scattered in deep residue of this body.
  Recalling past sorrow Do not swallow relatives, supporting the cry into the car do not teach.
  Jieyun into Cheng'en within a face like lotus chest jade.
  King was not content to meet, have been Yang Fei away eyebrows.
  Jealous that potential coupled with Yang Palace, and his availability was made to places.
  Accommodation availability, autumn night long, night long no sleep last days is unknown.
  Dedicated Candeng back wall of shadow, the rustling sound of the dark and rain window.
  Late spring, late sitting days is difficult at dusk.
  Gong Wen Ying twitterings worry tired, old beams and nesting birds off jealousy.
  Yan Ying return quietly to the length of the spring to autumn are not recorded years.
  CD to the palace moon, things circle back to four or five hundred.
  Today, most of the old palace, we give away Book number.
  Head narrow dress shoes, indigo point Meimei slender.
  Outsiders should not see see laugh when the world late Tempo makeup.
  On the positive people suffer the most.
  Also less bitter, bitter old also less bitter and old how hard the two.
  Do not you see the beauty yore Lu Fu
  Also seen on the sun today, white-haired song.
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Bai Juyi
恶幸人也。  Fortunately, evil people.
  Salt women, more Jinbo, do not do field performance of agricultural and silkworm;
  North-South thing without losing the home, feng shui for the house boat for the township.
  This is a small family in Yangzhou women, marry off Xijiang business.
  Green DW-rich to more than nobile, Hao Wan fertilizer to chuan narrow.
  After calling the former soldier scold servant, Seoul asked why so?
  Husband fifteen years for merchants, is not a case of the emperor counties.
  Of salt per year into the government interest, the less and more into the private sector into the local administrative officials.
  Authoritative thin profit private thick, salt Shang far less.
  Moreover, the first river fish and rice cheap, red orange yellow kuai aromatic rice;
  Reliance House, heavy makeup and feed the rudder, two red cheeks like blossoming flowers.
  Salt women, had the honor to marry merchants;
  DPRK end meals, Zhongsui good clothes.
  Good food has to place clothing, also ashamed Sang Hongyang.
  Sang Hongyang, died a long time, not just Han today also.
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Bai Juyi
  April Fangfei world to do, before Temple peach blossoms.
  Regret Chungui fruitless searching, I wonder if there is a world to turn.
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Bai Juyi
  Her tears are spent, but no dreams come.
  She can hear the others singing through the night.
  She has lost his love. Alone with her beauty,
  She leans till dawn on her incense-pillow.
  
  
  2) Palace Plaint
  Tr. Xu Yuan-zhong
  
  Her kerchief soak'd with tears, she cannot fall asleep,
  When songs and beats of drums waft though the night is deep.
  Her rosy face outlasts the favor of the king,
  She leans on her perfumed bed till morning birds sing.

Bai Juyi
  A _set_ting sun spread in the water, half-howling half-Jiang Hong Jiang.
  Poor third-September night, the dew like pearls on like the bow.
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忆江南
长相思
琵琶行并序
长恨歌
立秋日曲江忆元九
三月三十日题慈恩寺
和武相公感韦令公旧池孔雀
禁中九日对菊花酒忆元九
浦中夜泊
七夕
惜牡丹花
夜雪
与薛涛
招东邻
直中书省
杜陵叟
红线毯
缭绫
卖炭翁
上阳白发人
盐商妇
大林寺桃花
后宫词
暮江吟