Untitled: Behind Layered Curtains, Mochou's Hall
English translation and interpretation are being reviewed.
卧后清宵细细长。
神女生涯原是梦，
小姑居处本无郎。
风波不信菱枝弱，
月露谁教桂叶香。
直道相思了无益，
未妨惆怅是清狂。
English translation
Layered curtains hang deep in Mochou Hall, lying down, the clear night is long and drawn out.
The goddess's life was but a dream, the young girl's dwelling has never known a man.
Wind and waves will not believe the water-chestnut stem is frail, moonlit dew, who taught the cassia leaves their fragrance?
I know full well that longing is of no avail, yet I would keep this melancholy, and be a fool in love.
Meaning
In the silent hall the layered curtains hang deep; lying alone in bed, I recall the past and feel all the more how long the still night is.
A romantic encounter like that of the goddess of Mount Wu was after all only a dream, and I am still like the Little Maid of Qingxi, living alone with no lover.
The wind and waves care nothing that the water-chestnut stems are frail, and insist on battering them; and the cassia leaves, which are fragrant by nature, have no moon or dew to moisten them and make their scent rise.
Even knowing well that drowning in longing does no good at all, what matter if I grieve all my life and end up like one drunk or mad?
Background
Read the background
Whether these untitled poems carry any allegorical meaning is a complicated question. Feng Hao reads the "willow bank" in the first poem as "alluding to the surname Liu" (referring to the poet's patron Liu Zhongying), and "the southwest" as "the land of Shu," and so takes the poem to be the poet's "work of sorrowful song, written when he was about to set out for Dongchuan and went to bid farewell to Linghu, staying the night." Taking the imagery of the poem as a whole, and reading it in the light of the poet's life, his misfortunes, and his other works, this poem may well contain or be pervaded by the poet's own sense of his fate. In "The Deep Palace," a poem that uses the grief of a palace woman to convey his feelings, he writes: "The wild gust spares not the thin shade of the vine; the clear dew knows well the richness of the cassia leaves" — a figure close to the two lines about "wind and waves" (except that the intent of the "clear dew" line is the opposite of that of the "moon and dew" line), which also shows that the "wind and waves" lines do carry an intended meaning. He Zhuo says that this untitled poem "sets forth plainly the original intent (lamenting that he has met with no patron)."