Read 13 ci poems with pinyin and English translations. Notes record textual variants and differing attributions where relevant.
Xin Qiji
How much more can it bear—a few more rounds of wind and rain? In haste, spring goes away again. Loving the spring, I ever feared the flowers would open too soon; how much more now, when the fallen petals are past counting. Spring, I pray you, stay—they say the fragrant grass at the world's end cuts off the road of return. I resent that spring will not answer. I reckon there is only the spider's web beneath the painted eaves, all day long catching the drifting willow-down.
Xin Qiji
Below Yugu Terrace flows the clear river water, and in it how many tears of travellers! I gaze northwest toward Chang'an—alas for the countless hills.
Xin Qiji
The thatched eaves are low and small; beside the brook the green grass grows thick. In their tipsy talk, the Wu dialect sounds fond and gentle—whose white-haired old man and wife are these?
Xin Qiji
Hungry mice scurry about the bed; bats wheel and dance in the lamplight. On the roof the wind through the pines drives the pelting rain; the torn paper at the window talks to itself.
Xin Qiji
I lift my head to the floating clouds of the northwest; to prop the sky for ten thousand li one needs a long sword. They say that at this spot, deep in the night, one may often see the light of the Southern Dipper and the Ox lunar mansions. I feel the hills run high, the pool lies empty and its water cold, the moon is bright and the stars are pale. I would burn a rhinoceros horn and look below, but leaning on the railing I am afraid: the wind and thunder are angry, the fish and dragons are grim.
Xin Qiji
The bright moon startles the magpies from the branch; the clear wind at midnight brings the cicadas' singing. Amid the fragrance of rice flowers they speak of a plenteous year; I listen to the sound of the frogs.
Xin Qiji
How complete is my decay! I grieve that all my life my friends have scattered, and how few are left to me now! White hair hangs down in vain, three thousand zhang long; I laugh once at all the business of the world. I ask what thing it is can make a man glad. I see the blue hills as full of grace, and I think the blue hills see me in the same way: in feeling and in looks, we are somewhat alike.
Xin Qiji
One wheel of autumn shadow turning in golden waves; the flying mirror has been newly ground again. Wine in hand, I ask Heng'e: what can I do against the white hair that comes to mock me?
Xin Qiji
Drunk, I trim the lamp and look upon my sword; in dreams I return to the bugle calls through camp on camp. Roast beef is shared among the ranks; fifty strings, the tunes of the frontier ring out—autumn review of the army upon the sandy field.
Xin Qiji
In my strong years banners thronged about ten thousand men; in brocaded coats my charging horsemen crossed the river in those early days. The troops of Yan at night readied their silver quivers; at dawn the Han warriors sent their Jinpugu arrows flying.
Xin Qiji
Drunk, let me have my fill of laughter—how should I find the time for sorrow? Of late I have come to see that the books of the ancients, taken wholly on trust, have nothing right in them at all.
Xin Qiji
A thousand years of rivers and hills; the hero is nowhere to be found, the place of Sun Zhongmou. Terraces of dance and towers of song—all that splendor has been swept away by wind and rain. The slanting sun on grass and trees, the common lanes and alleys, where men say Jinnu once lived. I think of those days: golden spears and iron horses, a spirit that could swallow ten thousand li like a tiger.
Xin Qiji
Where can I look out upon the sacred land? All the splendor before my eyes—Beigu Tower. A thousand years of rising and falling, how many things? Endless. The long Yangtze rolls on and never ceases.
