Easing My Grief: No. 3
English translation and interpretation are being reviewed.
百年都是几多时。
邓攸无子寻知命，
潘岳悼亡犹费词。
同穴窅冥何所望，
他生缘会更难期。
惟将终夜长开眼，
报答平生未展眉。
English translation
Sitting idle, I grieve for you and for myself, a hundred years, how long a time is that?
Deng You was childless, and knew it was fate, Pan Yue mourned his wife, and still spent many words.
To share one grave in the dark, what hope is there? A bond in another life is harder still to expect.
I can only keep my eyes open all night long, to repay the brows you never once unknit in life.
Meaning
Sitting idle with nothing to do, I grieve for you and sigh for myself — how long, after all, is a man's brief hundred years? That Deng You had no descendants was the arrangement of fate, and Pan Yue's elegies for his dead wife were no more than vain lamentation. Even if we were buried together, I could not tell you all that is in my heart, and to hope for a bond in a future life is a vain hope indeed. There is only this: to lie awake all night, tossing and turning in longing, to repay the bitter care you took, running about for me while you lived.
Background
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This group consists of three poems, of which this is the third. They were written in about 811 (the sixth year of the Yuanhe era), when Yuan Zhen was serving as investigating censor in charge of the eastern station; another account holds that the group was written in 822 (the second year of the Changqing era). They were written by Yuan Zhen in memory of his deceased first wife.