I sit here alone, mourning for us both.
How many years do I lack now of my threescore and ten?
There have been better men than I to whom heaven denied a son,
There was a poet better than I whose dead wife could not hear him.
What have I to hope for in the darkness of our tomb?
You and I had little faith in a meeting after death-
Yet my open eyes can see all night
That lifelong trouble of your brow.
Original Poem:
「遣悲怀 · 其三」
元稹
闲坐悲君亦自悲， 百年都是几多时？
邓攸无子寻知命， 潘岳悼亡犹费词。
同穴窅冥何所望？ 他生缘会更难期。
惟将终夜长开眼， 报答平生未展眉。
Interpretation:
This is the third song of “An elegy. It writes about self-pity, from the present to the future, and from the illusion of the future to the inexorable, with grief soaking through the lines.
In the first line, sadness leads to the following. Why do you feel sorry for yourself? The second sentence answers the question, because even if one lives a hundred years, there is too little time.
The first line quotes two allusions, Deng You and Pan Yue. Deng You, a Jin man, gave up his son to protect his nephew during the war, and he was so kind-hearted, but he had no son in his life, is this the arrangement of fate?
A turn of the pen, from despair out of hope, but hope that after death can be buried with the couple, the next life as husband and wife again. But calmly thought, this is only a vain fantasy, and thus more desperate: the dead long gone, the past can never make up for everything.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Yuan Zhen (元稹), 779-831 A.D., was a native of Luoyang, Henan Province, who was poor in his early years, but later became an official and finally died of a violent illness. He was friendly with Bai Juyi and often sang with him, and was known as “Yuan Bai”.
