The Song of Everlasting Sorrow

English translation

The Han emperor prized beauty, and longed for one who could topple a state; for many years he ruled the realm, and sought her without success.

A daughter of the Yang house had just grown to womanhood, reared in the inner chambers, known to no one.

Her natural loveliness could not remain hidden, and one day she was chosen to stand at the sovereign's side.

A glance back and a smile, and a hundred charms were born, the powdered beauties of the six palaces lost all their color.

In the spring chill he granted her a bath at Huaqing Pool, the warm spring's smooth water washing her jade-like skin.

Her maids helped her rise, tender and unresisting, this was the hour she first received his favor.

Cloud-like hair, flower-like face, a golden swaying hairpin, warm within the lotus curtains they passed the spring night.

The spring night was all too short, the sun rose high, and from that day the sovereign held no early court.

Attending his pleasure and his feasts, she had no moment free, by day she followed his outings, by night she had him to herself.

Three thousand beauties filled the rear palaces, the love meant for three thousand was gathered in one.

Adorned in the golden chamber, charmingly she attended the night, the feast in the jade tower ended, and drunk with spring she lay.

Her sisters and brothers were all granted fiefs, a pitiable splendor was born into the house.

And so the hearts of parents all the world over came to prize the bearing of girls, and not of boys.

The halls of Li Palace rise high into the blue clouds, immortal music drifts on the wind, heard on every side.

Slow songs and languid dances hold the strings and pipes, all day long the sovereign could not gaze his fill.

Then the war drums of Yuyang shook the earth, shattering the Song of the Rainbow Skirt and Feather Coat.

Smoke and dust rose over the ninefold city gates, a thousand chariots and ten thousand horsemen set off southwest.

The kingfisher banners swayed, moving on and halting, a hundred li beyond the western gate of the capital.

The six armies would not march, and there was no help for it, until the moth-browed one died before his horse.

Her flowered hairpins lay scattered on the ground, no one to gather them, the kingfisher plume, the golden sparrow, the jade hairpin.

The sovereign covered his face, unable to save her, turning to look, blood and tears flowed together.

The yellow dust drifted wide, the wind was bleak, the cloud-wrapped plank road coiled up to Jiange.

Below Mount Emei few travelers pass, the banners are dim, the sunlight thin.

The rivers of Shu are blue, the hills of Shu green, and the sacred lord grieves morning and evening.

In the traveling palace he sees the moon, a heart-breaking color, in the night rain he hears the bells, a soul-rending sound.

Heaven turned and earth revolved, the dragon carriage came back, but arriving at this place he lingered, unable to go on.

There in the earth beneath Mawei Slope, he sees not the jade face, only the place of her empty death.

Lord and ministers look at one another, their robes wet with tears, and, gazing east to the capital gate, they let the horses bear them home.

Returning, the pools and gardens are all as before, the lotus of Taiye, the willows of Weiyang.

The lotus like her face, the willows like her brows, facing these, how could the tears not fall?

In spring wind, the day the peach and plum come into bloom, in autumn rain, the hour the paulownia sheds its leaves.

The western palace and the southern quarter are full of autumn grass, fallen leaves strew the steps, red, and never swept.

The players of the Pear Garden have newly white hair, the women of the pepper chambers, once so fair, are old.

At dusk in the hall the fireflies flit, his thoughts fall silent, he picks the wick of the lone lamp, and still he cannot sleep.

Slow, slow, the bells and drums of the long night's beginning, bright, bright, the Milky Way as the sky approaches dawn.

Cold the mandarin-duck tiles, heavy the frost, chill the kingfisher quilt, with whom is it to be shared?

Far and long the parting of life and death, a whole year gone, her spirit has never once come into his dreams.

A Taoist of Linqiong, a stranger from Hongdu, could by the power of pure sincerity summon the souls of the dead.

Moved by the sovereign's tossing thoughts, he sent the magician to seek her diligently.

Cleaving the air and riding the ether, swift as lightning, he searched through heaven and through earth, everywhere.

Above, to the very end of the blue sky; below, to the Yellow Springs, both vast and empty, and she nowhere to be found.

Then suddenly he heard that on the sea there is an immortal mountain, lying in the void, faint and far away.

Towers and pavilions, delicate, rising amid five-colored clouds, and within them many graceful immortals.

Among them was one whose name was Taizhen, with snow-white skin and flower-like face, perhaps the very one.

At the golden palace's western chambers he knocked at the jade door, and sent Xiaoyu in to tell Shuangcheng.

Hearing that the Han Son of Heaven's envoy had come, within the nine-flowered curtains her dreaming soul started.

She caught up her robe, pushed aside the pillow, rose and paced, the pearly blind and silver screens drew open, row on row.

Her cloud-like hair half fallen, newly woken from sleep, her flower crown unarranged, she came down the hall.

The wind lifts her immortal sleeves, fluttering, raised, as if she still danced the Rainbow Skirt and Feather Coat.

Her jade face is forlorn, the tears streaming down, like a spray of pear blossom bearing the spring rain.

Full of feeling she gazes, and thanks the sovereign: since parting, voice and face alike have grown dim.

In Zhaoyang Hall their love was cut short, but in Penglai Palace the days and months are long.

Turning her head, she looks down on the world of men: Chang'an is not to be seen, only dust and mist.

Only with keepsakes of old can she show her deep feeling, the inlaid box and the golden hairpin are sent along.

One wing of the pin she keeps, one half of the box, the pin is broken from its gold, the box from its inlay.

But let the heart be firm as gold and inlay, in heaven or among men we shall surely meet.

At parting she earnestly entrusted more words, and in those words an oath that our two hearts knew.

The seventh day of the seventh month, in the Hall of Long Life, at midnight, when no one was near, we whispered:

In heaven may we be birds that fly wing to wing, on earth, branches that twine into one.

Heaven is long, earth enduring, yet both may come to an end, but this sorrow is endless and never ceases.