Passing Jia Yi's House at Changsha
English translation and interpretation are being reviewed.
万古惟留楚客悲。
秋草独寻人去后，
寒林空见日斜时。
汉文有道恩犹薄，
湘水无情吊岂知？
寂寂江山摇落处，
怜君何事到天涯！
English translation
Three years of exile, lodging here, and for ten thousand ages only a stranger's grief in Chu.
Alone I search the autumn grass, now the man is gone, in the cold wood I see only the slanting sunlight.
Emperor Wen was a ruler of virtue, yet his grace was thin, the Xiang waters are unfeeling, how can they know my lament?
Silent, where the rivers and hills have shed their leaves, I pity you: what brought you to the world's end?
Meaning
Jia Yi was banished and dwelt here three years, yet the sorrow he left to the stranger in Chu is lasting still.
Alone I seek him in his old dwelling amid the lush autumn grass; its master is long departed, and in the cold wood I see only the sun slanting in the west.
Emperor Wen of Han, though a sovereign of the Way, was yet grudging and unkind to Master Jia; the Xiang River is without feeling, who can know what it is to mourn beside it?
In the lonely depths of the hills the leaves come falling; alas for you, banished to this far distant place for no fault at all!
Background
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Liu Changqing was "upright but offensive to his superiors, and twice suffered demotion." The first came in the spring of 758, the third year of the Zhide era of Emperor Suzong of Tang, when he was demoted from defender of Changzhou County in Suzhou to defender of Nanba County in Panzhou; the second, in a late autumn between 773 and 777 (the eighth to the twelfth year of the Dali era of Emperor Daizong), when, falsely accused, he was demoted from acting transport commissioner of Huaxi and Eyue to marshal of Muzhou. Judging from the late autumn scene described in the poem, it must have been written when the poet came to Changsha during his second demotion; that was precisely the turn between autumn and winter, matching the season in the poem exactly.