孟郊诗

Poems of Meng Jiao


Index

子庆诗

Poem celebrating a son


王家事已奇
孟氏庆无涯
献子还生子
羲之又有之

Royal house, affairs already wonderful.
Meng clan, celebrations without end.
The lord is again presented with a son,
Another offspring of Fuxi is born.

凤兮且莫叹
鲤也会闻诗
小小豫章甲
纤纤玉树姿

Phoenix's joy beyond expression.
Let his least relations also hear this poem.
Small child, our happiness first made known.
Slender and delicate, a young man of beauty.

人来唯仰乳
母抱未知慈
我欲拣其养
放麛者是谁

Men come only to admire your nursing --
Your mother's love before you even understand.
I want to offer my support for this
Young fawn, as do we all.

-- 孟郊


废话

This appears to be a formal, if heartfelt, gushing, sent to the emperor on behalf of the Meng clan, celebrating the birth of a royal son. It suggests that the poem could be dated by looking at Meng Jiao's later years for a son born to an emperor or other high noble, who had perhaps lost an heir in early childhood. It's probably an emperor because of the male phoenix (凤) character in line 5. This is both a noun for the emperor and a symbol of joy and Meng Jiao here employs it in both ways.

The poem reveals a few possibilities. This is the first occurrence in hundreds of poems of the character for "fawn" (麛). So there might be something there worth looking into. The poem suggests that imperial scions were shown off in public, along with their mother's breasts, to show them healthily nursing. It also suggests that imperial offspring were also showered with poems from every clan, unless Meng Jiao is being ballsy and breaking protocol, which in his case is a possibility. But it's more likely that all clans did this and one might expect to find the equivalent of royal scrapbooks full of these is some empress' tomb.

All poems have their little problems. This one's is 者是谁 "the one who is anyone." I haven't seen this phrase before and you can see in line 12 what I did with it. Perhaps it is some kind of formal phrase meaning more or less what I've translated it as. 谁 is most often "who?" but can also be "anyone" or "everyone." English actually uses "who" in the same way if you think about it. Fuxi, btw, is the legendary early emperor. And the emperor's "least relations" are literally "carp," the nascent untransformed dragons.


Index