Feelings and Encounters: No. 7
English translation and interpretation are being reviewed.
经冬犹绿林。
岂伊地气暖？
自有岁寒心。
可以荐嘉客，
奈何阻重深。
运命惟所遇，
循环不可寻。
徒言树桃李，
此木岂无阴？
English translation
In Jiangnan there are red tangerines, through the winter the grove stays green.
Is it that the earth's air here is warm? They have of themselves a heart that knows the year's cold.
They could be offered to honored guests, but alas, they are barred by depth on depth.
Fortune depends on what one meets, and the cycle cannot be traced.
In vain men speak of planting peach and plum, has this tree no shade to give?
Meaning
The red tangerines south of the Yangtze are thick of leaf and branch; they do not wither in winter but stay green through all the seasons. Is it that the place where they grow is warm? No, it is that they have the nature of pine and cypress. Presented to honoured guests they would surely win praise, but hills and rivers bar the way; how can they be offered up? Fortune and misfortune are never the same from one to another, and the mystery of cause and effect is hard to trace. Men speak only of peach and plum, that bear fruit and make a grove; would you say the red tangerine can cast no shade?
Background
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In 737, the twenty-fifth year of the Kaiyuan era of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, Zhang Jiuling was demoted from chancellor in the Department of State Affairs to chief administrator (zhangshi) of Jingzhou. Slandered in his later years and exiled despite his loyalty, "whenever he read Han Fei's 'The Sorrow of Isolation' his tears soaked the front of his robe" (Xu Hao, "The Spirit-Path Stele of His Lordship Zhang"), and so he wrote the twelve poems "Stirred by What I Have Met."