The Cicada
High in the branches, it is hard to eat one’s fill;
Your voice seems spent in vain complaint.
By the fifth watch your calls grow sparse, nearly stopping;
The green tree remains unmoved.
My modest official life drifts like a floating stem;
My old garden has grown level with weeds.
Your song, I must trouble you to say, reminds me most:
My whole household too is poor.
Notes
The fifth watch is the last part of the night. A floating stem suggests a drifting official life. The old garden is overgrown. Qing can suggest poverty as well as purity, allowing the poem’s identification with the cicada more than one shade of meaning.
Meaning
The cicada’s high perch and fading song lead the poet to reflect on a drifting official life and a poor household.
Appreciation
The high perch and fading calls establish the cicada’s situation.
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The apparently indifferent tree is a personification that sharpens the sense of isolation.
A floating stem and overgrown garden turn toward the poet’s circumstances.
The word qing can suggest both poverty and purity, linking person and insect.
About the poet
Li Shangyin (c. 813–c. 858), courtesy name Yishan, was a late Tang poet. His family came from the area of present-day Qinyang, Henan; accounts of his dates differ.
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He served in regional offices and wrote works including The Patterned Zither and poems titled Untitled.
Readers differ on the addressee of Night Rain Sent North and the specific meaning of Chang’e.