Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
I alone, drinking, without a companion. I lift the cup and invite the bright moon. My shadow opposite certainly makes us three. But the moon cannot drink, And my shadow follows the motions of my body in vain. For the briefest time are the moon and my shadow my companions. Oh, be joyful! One must make the most of Spring.
Some four centuries later, during the Song dynasty, for example, just in the case of his poem that is sometimes translated "Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon", the poet Yang Wanli wrote a whole poem alluding to it (and to two other Li Bai poems), in the same gushi, or old-style poetry form.
The poem is one of Li's shi poems, structured as a single quatrain in five-character regulated verse with a simple AABA rhyme scheme (at least in its original Middle Chinese dialect as well as the majority of contemporary Chinese dialects). It is short and direct in accordance with the guidelines for shi poetry, and cannot be conceived as ...
Li Bai and Du Fu did meet and in fact Du Fu greatly admired Li Bai. In the introduction of Three Chinese Poets , Seth talks about the influence of translations on his life and work; that while sometimes he has been so moved by a translation that he learnt another language to read the original, he doubts that he would ever be able to do this as ...
Li's most famous and cryptic poem is arguably "Jin Se", or "Chin-se" (錦瑟) ("The Brocade Zither", also translated as "The Ornamented Zither" [12] or "The Exquisite Zither" [13]) (the title is taken from the first two characters of the first verse, as this is one of Li's "no title" poems) (original text and translation seen below), consisting ...
His most famous work is the "Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion" (Chinese: 兰亭序; pinyin: Lán Tíng Xù), the preface of a collection of poems written by a number of poets when gathering at Lanting near the town of Shaoxing for the Spring Purification Festival. The original is lost, but there are a number of fine tracing ...
Get AOL Mail for FREE! Manage your email like never before with travel, photo & document views. Personalize your inbox with themes & tabs. You've Got Mail!
The poet invokes the sound and image of simians while singing to his muse, in the poem's concluding lines (Hawkes translation, 116): The thunder rumbles; rain darkens the sky: The monkeys chatter; apes scream in the night: The wind soughs sadly and the trees rustle. I think of my lady and stand alone in sadness.