Chance Meeting with an Old Friend on a Traveler's Night
English translation and interpretation are being reviewed.
城阙夜千重。
还作江南会，
翻疑梦里逢。
风枝惊暗鹊，
露草泣寒蛩。
羁旅长堪醉，
相留畏晓钟。
English translation
Autumn skies, and the moon is full again, over the city walls, a thousand folds of night.
Once more we meet as if in Jiangnan, and I wonder if it is only a dream.
Wind in the branches startles the hidden magpies, dew on the grass, and the cold crickets' plaint.
Long on the road, we may well drink deep, we hold each other here, dreading the dawn bell.
Meaning
The autumn moon has waxed full once more, and the night in the city has grown deep.
You and I meet in the south of the river, and I doubt it is a meeting in a dream.
The evening wind stirs the branches and startles the roosting magpies; the autumn grass is heavy with frost and dew, amid the mournful singing of cold insects.
We are strangers here, and should drink deep to drive away our gloom; I keep you long over the cups to talk of old times, fearing only the bell that rings at dawn.
Background
Read the background
This poem was written while the author was serving on a provincial staff in the south; on an autumn night, at an inn somewhere in the south, he chanced to meet an old acquaintance from his home region from whom he had been parted many years, and was filled with delighted surprise. But the meeting was all too brief: at daybreak they would part again, and who could say when or where they would meet next — and this filled the poet's breast with melancholy. So the poet inscribed a poem to bid farewell to his fellow townsman, and thus the piece came into the world.