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Early verse (ca. 1150-1155)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 March 2010

J. D. Schmidt
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver
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Summary

An autumn day (one quatrain of two)

Emerald rushes and green willows don't suit the frost,

So it dyes them yellow-brown to make a belt for the river.

Don't brag about south China to exiles from the north;

Our cold clouds and frigid streams are even bleaker than up there!

(5, 3)

The cotton-rose in front of my window

My lone cotton-rose braves the year's first cold with such great effort,

His flowers ought to be as depressed as a traveler far from home.

But instead he invites Lady Frost to stay as long as she wishes,

Just so no one will dare compare him to melancholy blossoms of spring!

(5, 3)

A small jetty by the river Zhe on a spring day

I have no one to share a wine cup with on my journey;

Who do the peach trees and plums bloom for back home now?

The vernal tide doesn't care about the sorrow of men in faraway places,

For it rolls up Xixing's evening rain and delivers it to me!

(10, 7)

A description of a walk outside the town on the Cold Food Festival (second poem of two)

Field wheat rejoices and turns green again,

Mountain peaches redden in lonely silence.

A fishing weir ripples at my boatside in the water;

A tavern's banner flutters in the breeze above the treetops. […]

Type
Chapter
Information
Stone Lake
The Poetry of Fan Chengda 1126–1193
, pp. 99 - 111
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1992

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