破阵子·四十年来家国

Forty years, the house and the realm; three thousand li of hills and rivers. Phoenix pavilions and dragon towers reaching up to the Milky Way; jade trees and coral branches like mist and trailing vines — when did I ever know the clash of arms?

Then all at once I became a captive and a slave; the waist grown thin as Shen's, the temples streaked as Pan's, all worn away. Worst of all was that day I fled the ancestral temple in panic: the players of the Music Bureau still struck up the song of parting, and I shed my tears before the palace maids.