Thinking of Li Bai at the End of the Sky

天末懷李白

涼風起天末
君子意如何
鴻雁幾時到
江湖秋水多
文章憎命達
魑魅喜人過
應共冤魂語
投詩贈汨羅

tiān mò huái lǐ bái

liáng fēng qǐ tiān mò
jūn zǐ yì rú hé
hóng yàn jǐ shí dào
jiāng hú qiū shuǐ duō
wén zhāng zèng mìng dá
chī mèi xǐ rén guò
yìng gòng yuān hún yǔ
tóu shī zèng mì luó

Cold wind rise sky end
Gentleman thought resemble what?
Goose what time come?
River lake autumn water much
Literature hate fate eminent
Demons happy people failure
Respond together wronged person language
Throw poems give Miluo

Cold wind rises at the end of the sky,
What thoughts occupy the gentleman's mind?
What time will the wild goose come?
The rivers and lakes are full of autumn's waters.
Literature and worldly success are opposed,
Demons exult in human failure.
Talk together with the hated poet,
Throw a poem into Miluo river.

View Chinese text in simplified characters.

Other Chinese poems about Separation and Autumn.

Notes: This poem dates from 759 (Hawkes p. 100). The wild goose is a symbol of autumn, letters and travellers in difficulties; Hawkes suggests (p. 101) that the latter is the relevant association here. The hated poet is Qu Yuan, a poet of the fourth century BC who was rejected by his king and drowned himself in the Miluo river; another exiled poet later threw some verses into the river as an offering to him (Hawkes p. 102).

This poem is volume (juàn) 225, no. 72 in the Complete Tang Poems (quán táng shī). It is translated as poem 15 in Hawkes, pp. 99-102, and poem CXXXVIII in Hung, p.149, and on p. 42 of Hinton.

Hawkes, D. (1967) A Little Primer of Tu Fu. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Hinton, D. (1990) The Selected Poems of Tu Fu. London, Anvil Press Poetry.
Hung, W. (1952) Tu Fu: China's Greatest Poet. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.