You are gone. The river is high at my door.
Cicadas are mute on dew-laden boughs.
This is a moment when thoughts enter deep.
I stand alone for a long while.
...The North Star is nearer to me now than spring,
And couriers from your southland never arrive -
Yet I doubt my dream on the far horizon
That you have found another friend.
Original Poem:
「凉思」
李商隐
客去波平槛，蝉休露满枝。
永怀当此节，倚立自移时。
北斗兼春远，南陵寓使迟。
天涯占梦数，疑误有新知。
Interpretation:
Cool as water on the autumn night, the poet's thoughts are lingering, there is the longing for the faraway friend, there is the sadness of the autumn wind, there is the sadness of the end of the world, this poem is reflecting all the poet's sadness on the autumn night.
When the guests left, the water waves were still parallel to the embankment, and now the cicadas have stopped chirping and the dew is hanging all over the branches. When the water was rising, it was spring and summer, but when the cicadas stopped, it was already late autumn, and the frost condensed the cold dew. The change of the natural landscape figuratively indicates that the friend has been gone for a long time. At this moment, eternal thoughts still lingering in my heart, I leaned against the fence standing in the autumn wind, do not feel that time has passed silently. Poet long immersed in meditation, forgetting everything, see the long thread of its love, its sadness of the complicated.
With a friend far away from ten thousand miles, the message is lost. The Big Dipper is far away in the sky, coupled with the fact that spring has left us a long time ago, from the space, time figuratively implies that the friend and the poet are on different sides of the world. Friends can not see each other, then communication, but the delay in the news of friends. Why is there such a change? It is exactly where the poet is thinking hard.
After losing his friend's information, the poet was born with a sense of loneliness, several times according to the scene in the dream divination, speculation on whether his friend has forgotten himself, suspecting that he misunderstood him to have a new acquaintance. The feelings here are very subtle, suspecting that the old man has a new friend, but also doubting whether his suspicion is correct. The weather has already turned cold. Is it also true that people are cold and distant on earth?
We do not know who is the person who makes the poet miss bitterly, but we feel the poet's depression and loneliness from the poet's back standing in the autumn wind, and from the subtle but strong lyricism in the poem.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Li Shangyin (李商隐), 813-858 AD, was a great poet of the late Tang Dynasty. His poems were on a par with those of Du Mu, and he was known as "Little Li Du". Li Shangyin was a native of Qinyang, Jiaozuo City, Henan Province. When he was a teenager, he lost his father at the age of nine, and was called "Zheshui East and West, half a century of wandering".
