Ballad of the Ancient Cypress
English translation and interpretation are being reviewed.
柯如青铜根如石。
霜皮溜雨四十围，
黛色参天二千尺。
君臣已与时际会，
树木犹为人爱惜。
云来气接巫峡长，
月出寒通雪山白。
忆昨路绕锦亭东，
先主武侯同閟宫。
崔嵬枝干郊原古，
窈窕丹青户牖空。
落落盘踞虽得地，
冥冥孤高多烈风。
扶持自是神明力，
正直原因造化功。
大厦如倾要梁栋，
万牛回首丘山重。
不露文章世已惊，
未辞翦伐谁能送？
苦心岂免容蝼蚁，
香叶终经宿鸾凤。
志士幽人莫怨嗟：古来材大难为用。
English translation
In front of the temple of Kongming stands an ancient cypress, its boughs like green bronze, its roots like stone.
Its frost-gray bark sheds the rain, forty spans around, its black-green crown reaches the sky, two thousand feet.
Lord and minister met their time and were joined, and still the tree is cherished for the man's sake.
When clouds come its breath joins the long Wu Gorge, when the moon rises its cold reaches the white Snow Mountains.
I recall the road that wound east of the Brocade Pavilion, where the First Ruler and the Marquis share one shuttered shrine.
Towering boughs and trunk, ancient upon the plain, dim the painted colors, empty the doors and windows.
Stately it crouches, having found its ground, yet in the dark, alone and lofty, it meets many fierce winds.
Its support comes of itself from the gods' power, its uprightness derives from the work of creation.
When a great hall is near collapse, a beam is needed, ten thousand oxen turn their heads, a mountain's weight.
Though its grain is not displayed, the world already marvels, not refusing the axe, yet who will send it forth?
Its bitter heart cannot escape the ants, its fragrant leaves in time have lodged the phoenix.
Men of purpose, quiet recluses, do not complain, for since of old great timber has been hard to use.
Meaning
Before the shrine of Kong Ming stands an ancient cypress; its trunk is hard as bronze, its roots firm as a great rock.
Its gray bark is smooth enough for the rain to run down; its girth would take forty men to encompass, and its dark green crown soars into the clouds, as though two thousand feet in height.
Long ago, when Liu Bei and Kong Ming met as lord and minister and accomplished great deeds together, this tree too was cherished by the people for the grace they showed, and it is cherished still.
When the clouds drift in, its breath joins that of the Wu Gorge; when the moon rises, its cold reaches to the white snows of the Snow Mountains.
I recall how in other days I passed to the east of the Brocade Pavilion, where the temple of the late sovereign and the shrine of the Marquis of Wu stood together within one deep and secluded compound.
The great trunk stands upon the open plain, bearing the marks of passing years; the shrine is deep and still, and the painted doors and windows are empty and untenanted.
It stands alone, rooted firmly in this place, and is well bestowed; yet because it towers lonely to the clouds, it is ever battered by the fierce winds.
Background
Read the background
This poem was written in 766 (the first year of the Dali era of Emperor Daizong of Tang), and is to be dated to roughly the same time as "Ten Quatrains on Kuizhou." Du Fu was thwarted all his life: first he was stranded in Chang'an for ten years, then came the An Lushan Rebellion and he drifted from place to place. After turning forty-eight he gave up office, took his family and fled with the people, and for a time lived at Kuizhou. This poem is his meditation on the ancient cypress before the Temple of the Marquis of Wu at Kuizhou, written at the age of fifty-four.