鱼玄机诗

Poems of Yu Xuanji


Index

左名场自泽州至京使人传语

At the Eastern Examination Hall in the Capital of Zezhou, I Watch a Messenger's Announcement


闲居作赋几年愁
王屋山前是旧游
诗咏东西千嶂乱
马随南北一泉流

Idly at home, I have written verse, wasting many years.
The king's palace at the mountains' feet is my second home.
I've chanted poems, east and west, on a thousand broken peaks.
I've ridden this horse, north and south, singlemindedly.

曾陪雨夜同欢席
别后花时独上楼
忽喜扣门传语至
为怜邻巷小房幽

Once upon a rainy night, I went to a happy feast.
Afterwards, to kill some time, alone I climbed a tower.
Suddenly, a knock on a gate, below a messenger arrived.
Somber, he stood in a narrow way, before a secluded home.

相如琴罢朱弦断
双燕巢分白露秋
莫倦蓬门时一访
每春忙在曲江头

It was as if the red silk strings of their lute had fallen silent,
As if two swallows were split from their nest in fall's white frost.
Don't neglect to visit the poor from time to time.
Every spring they exert themselves, singing along the river.

-- 鱼玄机


废话

I'm going to go out on a limb with this one. This was written in the middle of September (白露) just after Yu Xuanji was importuned by Li Jinren at his graduation ceremony. Before gratefully snuffing her lamp that night, she broke away from her unwanted suitor and walked up into a tower. Below, on the backside of the testing hall, in a narrow alley, a messenger arrived at a poor house and gave the family some very bad news. This set her to thinking about the poor, put her in a worse mood, and when she got home she wrote the more or less mean response to Li Jinren's request to see her again. I think that if Yu Xuanji had lived to old age, she would have been another Bai Juyi, full of heart and openness. And we would have five hundred of a several thousand poems instead of forty-eight of several hundred.


Index