孟郊诗

Poems of Meng Jiao


Index

游子

The Wanderer


萱草生堂阶
游子行天涯
慈亲倚堂门
不见萱草花

Daylilies bloom by the courtyard steps.
But the wanderer is a sky away.
Mother leans against the courtyard gate.
But she doesn't see the lilies bloom.

-- 孟郊


废话

Let's recall that Meng Jiao, thanks to the conservative tastes of Ming poetry collators, is best known for "The Wanderer's Song" or 游子吟. I believe they chose it for being the smarmiest instance of filial piety in his entire body of work. Or at least the first smarm they could find. If we are collecting 300 Hallmark Cards of the Tang, which is about what they were doing, we could have picked this more mature and more interesting instance of filial smarm. Which isn't even smarm. It's more like a watercolor sketch. It's a beautiful, mature poem. The lesson here is that mankind should go to the effort to make its own choices and not rely on the wailing gibbons who constitute Nobel committees, Pulitzer mavens, or Ming dynasty poetasters.


Index