Song of Eight-Six: Leaning on the High Pavilion

I lean upon the high pavilion: my grief is like the fragrant grass — thick and rank, mown down and yet growing again. I think of parting beyond the willows where the gray horse stood, and beside the water where I parted from the woman in red sleeves — and I am stricken with a sudden, secret pang.

For no reason at all Heaven gave me that lovely one. A night moon, a curtain of quiet dream; the spring wind, ten li of tender feeling. Yet how can I bear it, that the gladness has gone away with the flowing water: the silk strings' music broken, the scent of the green gauze faded — and worse, the fluttering petals mock the dusk, and the fine drizzle veils the clearing sky. I stand lost in thought. And then the oriole cries out a few times more.