寒山（生卒年不详），字、号均不详，唐代首都长安（今陕西西安）人。出身于官宦人家，多次投考不第，被迫出家，三十岁后隐居于浙东天台山，享年一百多岁。严振非《寒山子身世考》中更以《北史》、《隋书》等大量史料与寒山诗相印证，指出寒山乃为隋皇室后裔杨瓒之子杨温，因遭皇室内的妒忌与排挤及佛教思想影响而遁入空门，隐于天台山寒岩。这位富有神话色彩的唐代诗人，曾经一度被世人冷落，然而随着二十世纪的到来，其诗却越来越多地被世人接受并广泛流传。正如其诗所写：“有人笑我诗，我诗合典雅。不烦郑氏笺，岂用毛公解。”

寒山·《鹦鹉宅西国》

鹦鹉宅西国，虞罗捕得归。

美人朝夕弄，出入在庭帏。

赐以金笼贮，扃哉损羽衣。

不如鸿与鹤，飖飏入云飞。

Cliffs, Sun, and a Daylight Moon Arise

The word goes forth, and a woodsmen

Cast their nets for feathers, red, green and blue.

For what? For beauties, immured by painted screens,

To pass their hours aimlessly.

Though their cages shimmer, sunlit gold,

Their plumage fades their eyes, shaded.

No longer scan the flock of wild swans,

White and soaring into the racing clouds.

（Peter Stambler 译）

Parrots live in western lands

hunters bring them back in nets

courtesans tease them dawn to dusk

somewhere behind palace curtains

they're given a golden cage

but locked away their plumage fades

not like wild geese and swans

flying up in the clouds

（Red Pine 译）

The parrot's home is the Western land,

But with forester's snare it can be caught and brought here.

The beautiful women will play with it night and day;

In and out it will go, amid their rooms' screens.

As a gift, a gold cage to store it away;

Locked in! It will lose its feathered clothes1.

Much better to be a goose or a crane,

Soaring and drifting up in the clouds.

1. Yü-i ("feathered clothes") are things the immortals wear. It comes to mean the robes of a Taoist priest.

（Robert G. Henricks 译）

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