It’s an experience specific to Baudelaire’s 19th-century flânerie — strolling through the world as the world flows around you — but it should be familiar to anyone who’s watched a masked stranger float past their window. --Bynner, (69) GENERAL GESHUAnonymousThis constellation, with its seven high stars,Is Deshu lifting his sword in the night;And no more barbarians, nor their horses,nor cattle,Dare ford the river boundary.--Bynner, (100) LONELYBy Geng WeiThe evening sun slants o`er the village street;My grief alas! Poets remind us that deep feelings of isolation can arise even when we’ve got company, that our most powerful connections may be those that bridge the greatest distances and that sometimes, the best thing we can do for our social worlds is to maintain walls between us. ON PARTING WITH THE BUDDHIST PILGRIM LINGCHEBy Liu ChangqingFrom the temple, deep in its tender bamboos,Comes the low sound of an evening bell,While the har of a pilgrim carries the sunsetFarther and farther down the green mountain.--Bynner, (23) I return old,Speaking as then, but with hair grown thin;And my children, meeting me, do not know me.They smile and say:“Stranger, where do you come from?"--Bynner. THE NEGLECTED BEAUTYBy Wang ChanglingThan colours of the peonymy raiment is more fair.The breeze across the palace laketakes fragrance from my hair.My love is hidden in my breast,a fan conceals my pain.A clear moon in an autumn night,I wait my Lord in vain.--Fletcher, (21) OVER THE BORDERBy Wang ChanglingThe moon goes back to the time of Qin.theWall to the time of Han.And the road our troops are travelling goesback three hundred miles--.Oh, for the winged General at the Dragon City--That never a Tartar horseman might ceoss theYing Mountain.--Bynner, (22) A MOONLIGHT NIGHTBy Liu FangpingWhen the moon has coloured half house,With the North Star at its height and the South Star setting,I can feel first motions of warm air of spring.In the singing of an insect at my green-silk window.--Bynner, (45) THE SPINSTARBy Liu FangpingDim twilght throws a deeper sgadeacross the window screen;Alone within a gilded hallher tear-drops flow unseen.No sound the lonely court-yard stirs;the spring is all but through;Around the pear-blooms fade and fall...and no one comes to woo.--Giles, (46) IN MONGOLIABy Wang ZhihuanThe Yollow River rises farfrom fleecy cloudland tossed.`Mid peaks so high our tiny townto sight is almost lost.Why need my Mongol flute bewailthe elm and the willow missed?Beyoud the Yumen pass the breathof spring has never crossed.--Fletcher. ILLNESSBy Bai JuyiDear friends, there is no cause for so muchsympathy.I shall certainly manage from time to timeto take my walks abroad.All that matters is an active mind, what isthe use of feet?By land one can ride in a carrying-chair;by water,be rowed in a boat.--Waley, (74)
Although during the same period, he tried to offer the emperor his treatises on how to manage the invasions by the Jin as well as other state affairs, he was never taken seriously. [9][circular reference], Some six hundred and twenty of Xin's poems survive today, all were written after he moved to the south. AT CHUZHOU ON THE WESTERN STREAMBy Wei YingwuWhere tender grasses rim the streamAnd deep boughs twill with mango-birds,On the spring flood of last night`s rainThe freey-boat moves as though someone were poling.--Bynner, (39) Tell me about it, I think from my home office. THE PAING OF LOVEBy Jia ZhiThe yellow willow waver abovethe grass is green below.The peach and pear blossomsin massed fragrance grow.The east wind dose not besr awaythe sorrow at my heart.Spring`s growing days but lengthen outmy still increasing woe.--Fletcher, (43) SPRING IN THE HAREMBy Cui DaorongMy husband to the wars has goneAnd I a cloak for him would make:To wrap him from the rugged climeLest bitter cold his slumbers break.But when I tried to cut the wordsOf "Happy Spring" as omen fair,The chilling breath that winter leavesBenumbed and left me helpless there.If cold am I, far colder thouUpon those desert plains and bare!Thou lookest for thy cloak and IOf sending it despair.--Fletcher, (94) “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” the poem begins. I learned this trick in college. Xin Qiji. However, Xin never shook his patriotic resolve, and put all his enthusiasm and worries about national destiny to the creation of poetry. Goblet in hand, scratching my head at the east window, I presume that Tao Yuanming, having finished his poem, Those on the south side of the Yangtze who play drunkard.
In 1181, he was forced to resign. THE CITY OF STONES(NANJING)By Liu YuxiHills surround the ancient kingdom; theynever change.The tide beats against the empty city, andsilently, silently returns.To the East, over the Huai River--the ancient moon.Through the long, quiet night it moves,crossing the battlemented wall.--Lowell, (65) [3], Xin's victory gained him a place in the Southern Song court. [5], In 1192, Xin was recalled to the Song court to take up another minor post because the previous incumbent had died. Other poets, including some of Bishop’s contemporaries, have shown that distance from a special someone can make a full house seem vacant. Maybe that’s why so many of us have been reconnecting with longtime friends who live too far away for the local happy hour. Only southern China was ruled by the Han Chinese Southern Song dynasty. However, Xin attended the funeral and wrote lament for Zhu. SOUVENIRSBy Li ShangyinYou ask me when I`m coming, Alas, not just yet--.How the rain filled the pools on that night whenwe met!Ah, when shall we ever snuff candles again,And recall the glad hours of that evening of rain?--Giles.
When I searched my own syllabi for poems about loneliness, those that I found tended to focus on missing a specific individual, as the Merwin poem does.
A REASON FAIRBy Wang Han"Tis night: the grape-juice mantles highin cups of gold galore;We set to drink,-but now the buglesounds to horse once more.Oh, marvel not if drunken welie strewed about the plain;How few of all who seek the fightshall e`er come bank again!--Giles, (24) BLACKTAIL ROWBy liu YuxiGrass has run wild now by the Bridge of Red-Birds;And swallow`s wings, at sunset in Blacktail RowWhere once they visited great homes,Dip among doorways of the poor.--Bynner, (64) (56) RIVER-SNOWBy Liu ZongyuanA hundred mountains and no bird,A thousand paths without a footprint;A little boat,a bamboo cloak,An old man fishing in the cold river-snow.--Bynner, (62) AUTUMN LEAVESby Lu LunThe,years that passHave brought with themWhite hair.Autumn has comeAnd the trees standBare and cold.Perplexed,I ask the yellow leavers:"Are you,too,sad?What griefs have youThat youAre sere and old?"--Hart. When something terrible happens, I choose a poem to share with my students, one that might offer a little solace. How can there be pain in a place where there is so much joy? Like O’Hara’s poem above, this one ends with a strange call to absent others: “Why do I tell you these things?
The most important news stories of the day, curated by Post editors and delivered every morning. Stones keep rolling off the wall, so they walk the line yearly, replacing fallen rocks as they go. We must remember, "Better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all." SHE SINGS AN OLD SONGBy Zhang HuA lady of the palace these twenty years,She has lived here a thousand miles from her home--Yet ask her for this song and, with the first fewwords of it,See how she tries to hold back her tears.--Bynner, (76) OF ONE IN THE FORBIDDEN CITYBy Zhang HuWhen the moonlight, reaching a tree by the gate,Shows her a quiet bird on its nest,She removes her jade hairpins and sits in theshadow,And puts out a flame where a moth was flying.--Bynner, (77) ON THE EVE OF GOVERNMENT EXAMINATIONS TO SECRETARY ZHANGBy Zhu QingyuOut go the great red wedding-chamber candles.Tomorrow in state the bride faces your parents.She has finished preparing; she asks of you meeklyWhether her eyebrows are painted in fashion.--Bynner, (79-80) AN ENCOUNTER IN THE FIELDBy Li BaiCame an amorous rider,Trampling the fallen flowers of the road.The dangling end of his cropBrushes a passing carriage of five-colored clouds.The jeweled curtain is raisedA beautiful woman smiles within--"That is my house," she whispers,Pointing to a pink house beyond.--Obata. "Alas, all my life I've seen friends and companions fall off. As Claude McKay’s “On Broadway” reminds us, we can feel lonesome even on a busy street: “Oh wonderful is Broadway — only / My heart, my heart is lonely.” As a black man writing about the Great White Way in the 1920s, McKay may allude to an especially damaging kind of exclusion. And when I connect with my students or friends via Zoom, our conversations rarely mask the fact that we’re each alone with our computers. It was then that Han realized that he needed Xin again. THE OLD PALACEBy Du MuA wilderness alone remains,all garden glories gone;The river runs unheeded by,weeds grow unheeded on.Dusk comes, the east wind blows, and birdspipe forth a mournful soundPetals,like nymphs from balconies,comes tumbling to the ground.--Giles, (83) AT AN OLD PALACEBy Yuan ZhenDeserted now the Imperial bowersSave by some few poor lonely flowers--.One white-haired dame,An Emperor`s flame,Sits down and tells of bygone hours.--Giles, (75)
He improved the irrigation systems in his district, relocated poverty-struck peasants and trained his own troops. During Xin's lifetime, northern China was occupied during the Jin–Song Wars by the Jurchens of the Jin dynasty, a semi-nomadic people who moved to what is now north-east China.
Beijing: Wuzhou Chuanbo Chubenshe, 2005. / You are not even here.” Both of these calls to “you” seem directed at someone almost too distant to hear. Discussion of news topics with a point of view, including narratives by individuals regarding their own experiences. (3) ABSENCEby Zhong YueMy eagerness chases the sun and the moon,I number the days till I reach my home.The winds of autumn they wait not for me,But hurry on thither where I would be.--Fletcher. (37)
Suddenly we are left with the realization that we no longer have another to lean on. Unfortunately, Xin was ill-fated and repressed, failed to realize his ambitions. He left for Jiangxi where he then stayed and perfected his famous ci form of poetry for ten depressing years. Their difference, however, is that the content of Xin's poetry spans an even greater range of topics. PARTINGBy Du Mu(1)She is slim and supple and not yet fourteen,The young spying-tip of a cardamon-spray.On the Yangzhou Road for three miles in the breezeEvery pearl-screen is open.