柳宗元　渔翁 AN OLD FISHERMAN
渔翁夜傍西岩宿
晓汲清湘燃楚烛
烟销日出不见人
[矣欠] 乃一声山水绿
回看天际下中流
岩上无心云相逐
An old fisherman spent the night here, under the western cliff;
He dipped up water from the pure Hsiang and made a bamboo fire;
And then, at sunrise, he went his way through the cloven mist,
With only the creak of his paddle left, in the greenness of mountain and river.
...I turn and see the waves moving as from heaven,
And clouds above the cliffs coming idly, one by one.

白居易　长恨歌 A SONG OF UNENDING SORROW
汉皇重色思倾国
御宇多年求不得
杨家有女初长成
养在深闺人未识
天生丽质难自弃
一朝选在君王侧
回眸一笑百媚生
六宫粉黛无颜色
春寒赐浴华清池
温泉水滑洗凝脂
侍儿扶起娇无力
始是新承恩泽时
云鬓花颜金步摇
芙蓉帐暖度春宵
春宵苦短日高起
从此君王不早朝
承欢侍宴无闲暇
春从春游夜专夜
後宫佳丽三千人
三千宠爱在一身
金星妆成娇侍夜
玉楼宴罢醉和春
姊妹弟兄皆列士
可怜光彩生门户
遂令天下父母心
不重生男重生女
骊宫高处入青云
仙乐风飘处处闻
缓歌慢舞凝丝竹
尽日君王看不足
渔阳鼙鼓动地来
惊破霓裳羽衣曲
九重城阙烟尘生
千乘万骑西南行
翠华摇摇行复止
西出都门百馀里
六军不发无奈何
宛转蛾眉马前死
花钿委地无人收
翠翘金雀玉搔头
君王掩面救不得
回看血泪相和流
黄埃散漫风萧索
云栈萦纡登剑阁
峨嵋山下少人行
旌旗无光日色薄
蜀江水碧蜀山青
圣主朝朝暮暮情
行宫见月伤心色
夜雨闻铃肠断声
天旋地转回龙驭
到此踌躇不能去
马嵬坡下泥土中
不见玉颜空死处
君臣相顾尽沾衣
东望都门信马归
归来池苑皆依旧
太液芙蓉未央柳
芙蓉如面柳如眉
对此如何不泪垂
春风桃李花开日
秋雨梧桐叶落时
西宫南内多秋草
落叶满阶红不扫
梨园子弟白发新
椒房阿监青娥老
夕殿萤飞思悄然
孤灯挑尽未成眠
迟迟钟鼓初长夜
耿耿星河欲曙天
鸳鸯瓦冷霜华重
翡翠衾寒谁与共
悠悠生死别经年
魂魄不曾来入梦
临邛道士鸿都客
能以精诚致魂魄
为感君王辗转思
遂教方士殷勤觅
排空驭气奔如电
升天入地求之遍
上穷碧落下黄泉
两处茫茫皆不见
忽闻海上有仙山
山在虚无缥缈间
楼阁玲珑五云起
其中绰约多仙子
中有一人字太真
雪肤花貌参差是
金阙西厢叩玉扃
转教小玉报双成
闻道汉家天子使
九华帐里梦魂惊
揽衣推枕起徘徊
珠箔银屏迤逦开
云鬓半偏新睡觉
花冠不整下堂来
风吹仙袂飘飘举
犹似霓裳羽衣舞
玉容寂寞泪阑干
梨花一枝春带雨
含情凝睇谢君王
一别音容两渺茫
昭阳殿里恩爱绝
蓬莱宫中日月长
回头下望人寰处
不见长安见尘雾
唯将旧物表深情
钿合金钗寄将去
钗留一股合一扇
钗擘黄金合分钿
但教心似金钿坚
天上人间会相见
临别殷勤重寄词
词中有誓两心知
七月七日长生殿
夜半无人私语时
在天愿作比翼鸟
在地愿为连理枝
天长地久有时尽
此恨绵绵无绝期
China's Emperor, craving beauty that might shake an empire,
Was on the throne for many years, searching, never finding,
Till a little child of the Yang clan, hardly even grown,
Bred in an inner chamber, with no one knowing her,
But with graces granted by heaven and not to be concealed,
At last one day was chosen for the imperial household.
If she but turned her head and smiled, there were cast a hundred spells,
And the powder and paint of the Six Palaces faded into nothing.
...It was early spring. They bathed her in the FlowerPure Pool,
Which warmed and smoothed the creamy-tinted crystal of her skin,
And, because of her languor, a maid was lifting her
When first the Emperor noticed her and chose her for his bride.
The cloud of her hair, petal of her cheek, gold ripples of her crown when she moved,
Were sheltered on spring evenings by warm hibiscus curtains;
But nights of spring were short and the sun arose too soon,
And the Emperor, from that time forth, forsook his early hearings
And lavished all his time on her with feasts and revelry,
His mistress of the spring, his despot of the night.
There were other ladies in his court, three thousand of rare beauty,
But his favours to three thousand were concentered in one body.
By the time she was dressed in her Golden Chamber, it would be almost evening;
And when tables were cleared in the Tower of Jade, she would loiter, slow with wine.
Her sisters and her brothers all were given titles;
And, because she so illumined and glorified her clan,
She brought to every father, every mother through the empire,
Happiness when a girl was born rather than a boy.
...High rose Li Palace, entering blue clouds,
And far and wide the breezes carried magical notes
Of soft song and slow dance, of string and bamboo music.
The Emperor's eyes could never gaze on her enough-
Till war-drums, booming from Yuyang, shocked the whole earth
And broke the tunes of The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
The Forbidden City, the nine-tiered palace, loomed in the dust
From thousands of horses and chariots headed southwest.
The imperial flag opened the way, now moving and now pausing- -
But thirty miles from the capital, beyond the western gate,
The men of the army stopped, not one of them would stir
Till under their horses' hoofs they might trample those moth- eyebrows....
Flowery hairpins fell to the ground, no one picked them up,
And a green and white jade hair-tassel and a yellowgold hair- bird.
The Emperor could not save her, he could only cover his face.
And later when he turned to look, the place of blood and tears
Was hidden in a yellow dust blown by a cold wind.
... At the cleft of the Dagger-Tower Trail they crisscrossed through a cloud-line
Under Omei Mountain. The last few came.
Flags and banners lost their colour in the fading sunlight....
But as waters of Shu are always green and its mountains always blue,
So changeless was His Majesty's love and deeper than the days.
He stared at the desolate moon from his temporary palace.
He heard bell-notes in the evening rain, cutting at his breast.
And when heaven and earth resumed their round and the dragon car faced home,
The Emperor clung to the spot and would not turn away
From the soil along the Mawei slope, under which was buried
That memory, that anguish. Where was her jade-white face?
Ruler and lords, when eyes would meet, wept upon their coats
As they rode, with loose rein, slowly eastward, back to the capital.
...The pools, the gardens, the palace, all were just as before,
The Lake Taiye hibiscus, the Weiyang Palace willows;
But a petal was like her face and a willow-leaf her eyebrow --
And what could he do but cry whenever he looked at them?
...Peach-trees and plum-trees blossomed, in the winds of spring;
Lakka-foliage fell to the ground, after autumn rains;
The Western and Southern Palaces were littered with late grasses,
And the steps were mounded with red leaves that no one swept away.
Her Pear-Garden Players became white-haired
And the eunuchs thin-eyebrowed in her Court of PepperTrees;
Over the throne flew fire-flies, while he brooded in the twilight.
He would lengthen the lamp-wick to its end and still could never sleep.
Bell and drum would slowly toll the dragging nighthours
And the River of Stars grow sharp in the sky, just before dawn,
And the porcelain mandarin-ducks on the roof grow thick with morning frost
And his covers of kingfisher-blue feel lonelier and colder
With the distance between life and death year after year;
And yet no beloved spirit ever visited his dreams.
...At Lingqiong lived a Taoist priest who was a guest of heaven,
Able to summon spirits by his concentrated mind.
And people were so moved by the Emperor's constant brooding
That they besought the Taoist priest to see if he could find her.
He opened his way in space and clove the ether like lightning,
Up to heaven, under the earth, looking everywhere.
Above, he searched the Green Void, below, the Yellow Spring;
But he failed, in either place, to find the one he looked for.
And then he heard accounts of an enchanted isle at sea,
A part of the intangible and incorporeal world,
With pavilions and fine towers in the five-coloured air,
And of exquisite immortals moving to and fro,
And of one among them-whom they called The Ever True-
With a face of snow and flowers resembling hers he sought.
So he went to the West Hall's gate of gold and knocked at the jasper door
And asked a girl, called Morsel-of-Jade, to tell The Doubly- Perfect.
And the lady, at news of an envoy from the Emperor of China,
Was startled out of dreams in her nine-flowered, canopy.
She pushed aside her pillow, dressed, shook away sleep,
And opened the pearly shade and then the silver screen.
Her cloudy hair-dress hung on one side because of her great haste,
And her flower-cap was loose when she came along the terrace,
While a light wind filled her cloak and fluttered with her motion
As though she danced The Rainbow Skirt and the Feathered Coat.
And the tear-drops drifting down her sad white face
Were like a rain in spring on the blossom of the pear.
But love glowed deep within her eyes when she bade him thank her liege,
Whose form and voice had been strange to her ever since their parting --
Since happiness had ended at the Court of the Bright Sun,
And moons and dawns had become long in Fairy-Mountain Palace.
But when she turned her face and looked down toward the earth
And tried to see the capital, there were only fog and dust.
So she took out, with emotion, the pledges he had given
And, through his envoy, sent him back a shell box and gold hairpin,
But kept one branch of the hairpin and one side of the box,
Breaking the gold of the hairpin, breaking the shell of the box;
"Our souls belong together," she said, " like this gold and this shell --
Somewhere, sometime, on earth or in heaven, we shall surely
And she sent him, by his messenger, a sentence reminding him
Of vows which had been known only to their two hearts:
"On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life,
We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world
That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,
And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."
Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,
While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever.

白居易　琵琶行并序 THE SONG OF A GUITAR
元和十年，予左迁九江郡司马。明年秋，送客湓浦口，闻船中夜弹琵琶者，听其音，铮铮然有京都声；
问其人，本长安倡女，尝学琵琶於穆曹二善才。年长色衰，委身为贾人妇。遂命酒，使快弹数曲，曲
罢悯然。自叙少小时欢乐事，今漂沦憔悴，转徙於江湖间。予出官二年恬然自安，感斯人言，是夕，
始觉有迁谪意，因为长句歌以赠之，凡六百一十六言，命曰琵琶行。In the tenth year of Yuanhe
I was banished and demoted to be assistant official in Jiujiang. In the summer of
the next year I was seeing a friend leave Penpu and heard in the midnight from a
neighbouring boat a guitar played in the manner of the capital. Upon inquiry, I
found that the player had formerly been a dancing-girl there and in her maturity
had been married to a merchant. I invited her to my boat to have her play for us.
She told me her story, heyday and then unhappiness. Since my departure from the
capital I had not felt sad; but that night, after I left her, I began to realize
my banishment. And I wrote this long poem -- six hundred and twelve characters.
浔言江头夜送客
枫叶荻花秋瑟瑟
主人下马客在船
举酒欲饮无管弦
醉不成欢惨将别
别时茫茫江浸月
忽闻水上琵琶声
主人忘归客不发
寻声暗问弹者谁
琵琶声停欲语迟
移船相近邀相见
添酒回灯重开宴
千呼万唤始出来
犹抱琵琶半遮面
转轴拨弦三两声
未成曲调先有情
弦弦掩抑声声思
似诉平生不得志
低眉信手续续弹
说尽心中无限事
轻拢慢捻抹复挑
初为霓裳後六么
大弦嘈嘈如急雨
小弦切切如私语
嘈嘈切切错杂弹
大珠小珠落玉盘
间官莺语花底滑
幽咽泉流水下滩
水泉冷涩弦凝绝
凝绝不通声渐歇
别有幽愁暗恨生
此时无声胜有声
银瓶乍破水浆迸
铁骑突出刀枪鸣
曲终收拨当心画
四弦一声如裂帛
东船西舫悄无言
唯见江心秋月白
沈吟放拨插弦中
整顿衣裳起敛容
自言本是京城女
家在虾蟆陵下住
十三学得琵琶成
名属教坊第一部
曲罢曾教善才服
妆成每被秋娘妒
五陵年少争缠头
一曲红绡不知数
钿头银篦击节碎
血色罗裙翻酒污
今年欢笑复明年
秋月春风等闲度
弟走从军阿姨死
暮去朝来颜色故
门前冷落车马稀
老大嫁作商人妇
商人重利轻别离
前月浮梁买茶去
去来江口守空船
绕船月明江水寒
夜深忽梦少年事
梦啼妆泪红阑干
我闻琵琶已叹息
又闻此语重唧唧
同是天涯沦落人
相逢何必曾相识
我从去年辞帝京
谪居卧病浔阳城
浔阳地僻无音乐
终岁不闻丝竹声
住近湓江地低湿
黄芦苦竹绕宅生
其间旦暮闻何物
杜鹃啼血猿哀鸣
春江花朝秋月夜
往往取酒还独倾
岂无山歌与村笛
呕哑嘲哳难为听
今夜闻君琵琶语
如听仙乐耳暂明
莫辞更坐弹一曲
为君翻作琵琶行
感我此言良久立
却坐促弦弦转急
凄凄不似向前声
满座重闻皆掩泣
座中泣下谁最多
江州司马青衫湿
I was bidding a guest farewell, at night on the Xunyang River,
Where maple-leaves and full-grown rushes rustled in the autumn.
I, the host, had dismounted, my guest had boarded his boat,
And we raised our cups and wished to drink-but, alas, there was no music.
For all we had drunk we felt no joy and were parting from each other,
When the river widened mysteriously toward the full moon --
We had heard a sudden sound, a guitar across the water.
Host forgot to turn back home, and guest to go his way.
We followed where the melody led and asked the player's name.
The sound broke off...then reluctantly she answered.
We moved our boat near hers, invited her to join us,
Summoned more wine and lanterns to recommence our banquet.
Yet we called and urged a thousand times before she started toward us,
Still hiding half her face from us behind her guitar.
...She turned the tuning-pegs and tested several strings;
We could feel what she was feeling, even before she played:
Each string a meditation, each note a deep thought,
As if she were telling us the ache of her whole life.
She knit her brows, flexed her fingers, then began her music,
Little by little letting her heart share everything with ours.
She brushed the strings, twisted them slow, swept them, plucked them --
First the air of The Rainbow Skirt, then The Six Little Ones.
The large strings hummed like rain,
The small strings whispered like a secret,
Hummed, whispered-and then were intermingled
Like a pouring of large and small pearls into a plate of jade.
We heard an oriole, liquid, hidden among flowers.
We heard a brook bitterly sob along a bank of sand...
By the checking of its cold touch, the very string seemed broken
As though it could not pass; and the notes, dying away
Into a depth of sorrow and concealment of lament,
Told even more in silence than they had told in sound....
A silver vase abruptly broke with a gush of water,
And out leapt armored horses and weapons that clashed and smote --
And, before she laid her pick down, she ended with one stroke,
And all four strings made one sound, as of rending silk
There was quiet in the east boat and quiet in the west,
And we saw the white autumnal moon enter the river's heart.
...When she had slowly placed the pick back among the strings,
She rose and smoothed her clothing and, formal, courteous,
Told us how she had spent her girlhood at the capital,
Living in her parents' house under the Mount of Toads,
And had mastered the guitar at the age of thirteen,
With her name recorded first in the class-roll of musicians,
Her art the admiration even of experts,
Her beauty the envy of all the leading dancers,
How noble youths of Wuling had lavishly competed
And numberless red rolls of silk been given for one song,
And silver combs with shell inlay been snapped by her rhythms,
And skirts the colour of blood been spoiled with stains of wine....
Season after season, joy had followed joy,
Autumn moons and spring winds had passed without her heeding,
Till first her brother left for the war, and then her aunt died,
And evenings went and evenings came, and her beauty faded --
With ever fewer chariots and horses at her door;
So that finally she gave herself as wife to a merchant
Who, prizing money first, careless how he left her,
Had gone, a month before, to Fuliang to buy tea.
And she had been tending an empty boat at the river's mouth,
No company but the bright moon and the cold water.
And sometimes in the deep of night she would dream of her triumphs
And be wakened from her dreams by the scalding of her tears.
Her very first guitar-note had started me sighing;
Now, having heard her story, I was sadder still.
"We are both unhappy -- to the sky's end.
We meet. We understand. What does acquaintance matter?
I came, a year ago, away from the capital
And am now a sick exile here in Jiujiang --
And so remote is Jiujiang that I have heard no music,
Neither string nor bamboo, for a whole year.
My quarters, near the River Town, are low and damp,
With bitter reeds and yellowed rushes all about the house.
And what is to be heard here, morning and evening? --
The bleeding cry of cuckoos, the whimpering of apes.
On flowery spring mornings and moonlit autumn nights
I have often taken wine up and drunk it all alone,
Of course there are the mountain songs and the village pipes,
But they are crude and-strident, and grate on my ears.
And tonight, when I heard you playing your guitar,
I felt as if my hearing were bright with fairymusic.
Do not leave us. Come, sit down. Play for us again.
And I will write a long song concerning a guitar."
...Moved by what I said, she stood there for a moment,
Then sat again to her strings-and they sounded even sadder,
Although the tunes were different from those she had played before....
The feasters, all listening, covered their faces.
But who of them all was crying the most?
This Jiujiang official. My blue sleeve was wet.

李商隐　韩碑 THE HAN MONUMENT
元和天子神武姿
彼何人哉轩与羲
誓将上雪列圣耻
坐法宫中朝四夷
淮西有贼五十载
封狼生 [豸区] [豸区] 生罴
不据山河据平地
长戈利矛日可麾
帝得圣相相曰度
贼斫不死神扶持
腰悬相印作都统
阴风惨澹天王旗
[上朔下心] 武古通作牙爪
仪曹外郎载笔随
行军司马智且勇
十四万众犹虎貔
入蔡缚贼献太庙
功无与让恩不訾
帝曰汝度功第一
汝从事愈宜为辞
愈拜稽首蹈且舞
金石刻画臣能为
古者世称大手笔
此事不系於职司
当仁自古有不让
言讫屡颔天子颐
公退斋戒坐小阁
濡染大笔何淋漓
点窜尧典舜典字
涂改清庙生民诗
文成破体书在纸
清晨再拜铺丹墀
表曰臣愈昧死上
咏神圣功书之碑
碑高三丈字如斗
负以灵鳌蟠以螭
句奇语重喻者少
谗之天子言其私
长绳百尺拽碑倒
粗沙大石相磨治
公之斯文若元气
先时已入人肝脾
汤盘孔鼎有述作
今无其器存其辞
呜呼圣皇及圣相
相与 [火亘] 赫流淳熙
公之斯文不示後
曷与三五相攀追
愿书万本诵万过
口角流沫右手胝
传之七十有二代
以为封禅玉检明堂基
The Son of Heaven in Yuanhe times was martial as a god
And might be likened only to the Emperors Xuan and Xi.
He took an oath to reassert the glory of the empire,
And tribute was brought to his palace from all four quarters.
Western Huai for fifty years had been a bandit country,
Wolves becoming lynxes, lynxes becoming bears.
They assailed the mountains and rivers, rising from the plains,
With their long spears and sharp lances aimed at the Sun.
But the Emperor had a wise premier, by the name of Du,
Who, guarded by spirits against assassination,
Hong at his girdle the seal of state, and accepted chief command,
While these savage winds were harrying the flags of the Ruler of Heaven.
Generals Suo, Wu, Gu, and Tong became his paws and claws;
Civil and military experts brought their writingbrushes,
And his recording adviser was wise and resolute.
A hundred and forty thousand soldiers, fighting like lions and tigers,
Captured the bandit chieftains for the Imperial Temple.
So complete a victory was a supreme event;
And the Emperor said: "To you, Du, should go the highest honour,
And your secretary, Yu, should write a record of it."
When Yu had bowed his head, he leapt and danced, saying:
"Historical writings on stone and metal are my especial art;
And, since I know the finest brush-work of the old masters,
My duty in this instance is more than merely official,
And I should be at fault if I modestly declined."
The Emperor, on hearing this, nodded many times.
And Yu retired and fasted and, in a narrow workroom,
His great brush thick with ink as with drops of rain,
Chose characters like those in the Canons of Yao and Xun,
And a style as in the ancient poems Qingmiao and Shengmin.
And soon the description was ready, on a sheet of paper.
In the morning he laid it, with a bow, on the purple stairs.
He memorialized the throne: "I, unworthy,
Have dared to record this exploit, for a monument."
The tablet was thirty feet high, the characters large as dippers;
It was set on a sacred tortoise, its columns flanked with ragons....
The phrases were strange with deep words that few could understand;
And jealousy entered and malice and reached the Emperor --
So that a rope a hundred feet long pulled the tablet down
And coarse sand and small stones ground away its face.
But literature endures, like the universal spirit,
And its breath becomes a part of the vitals of all men.
The Tang plate, the Confucian tripod, are eternal things,
Not because of their forms, but because of their inscriptions....
Sagacious is our sovereign and wise his minister,
And high their successes and prosperous their reign;
But unless it be recorded by a writing such as this,
How may they hope to rival the three and five good rulers?
I wish I could write ten thousand copies to read ten thousand times,
Till spittle ran from my lips and calluses hardened my fingers,
And still could hand them down, through seventy-two generations,
As corner-stones for Rooms of Great Deeds on the Sacred Mountains.

李颀　古从军行 AN OLD WAR-SONG
白日登山望烽火
黄昏饮马傍交河
行人刁斗风沙暗
公主琵琶幽怨多
野云万里无城郭
雨雪纷纷连大漠
胡雁哀鸣夜夜飞
胡儿眼泪双双落
闻道玉门犹被遮
应将性命逐轻车
年年战骨埋荒外
空见葡萄入汉家
Through the bright day up the mountain, we scan the sky for a war-torch;
At yellow dusk we water our horses in the boundaryriver;
And when the throb of watch-drums hangs in the sandy wind,
We hear the guitar of the Chinese Princess telling her endless woe....
Three thousand miles without a town, nothing but camps,
Till the heavy sky joins the wide desert in snow.
With their plaintive calls, barbarian wildgeese fly from night to night,
And children of the Tartars have many tears to shed;
But we hear that the Jade Pass is still under siege,
And soon we stake our lives upon our light warchariots.
Each year we bury in the desert bones unnumbered,
Yet we only watch for grape-vines coming into China.