In the bamboo grove by the clean poolside I stay;
Separated from you by towns, I miss you far away.
The autumn gloom undispersed and late frost remain;
Only the withered lotus listen to the rain.
Original Poem:
「宿骆氏亭寄怀崔雍崔衮」
李商隐
竹坞无尘水槛清，相思迢递隔重城。
秋阴不散霜飞晚，留得枯荷听雨声。
Interpretation:
This poem was written in 835 A.D. When Li Shangyin left Cui's family and stayed in the garden pavilion of Luo's family, he missed Cui Yong and Cui Gun, his cousins, and wrote this poem. In the poem, Li Shangyin's nostalgia for his cousins Cui Yong and Cui Gun was expressed in the poem, and the poet's own feeling of being out of place in the world was also expressed in the poem.
In the first two lines, the bamboo forest surrounds the Luo Pavilion, and the scenery outside the pavilion is new after the rain. The love of love flies to a faraway place, but it is separated by a heavy high city.
In the beginning of the poem, the Luo Pavilion, bamboo, water, the pavilion set off a particularly quiet and elegant, the poet in the middle of it, quite away from the hustle and bustle of the feeling. Then write the poet's thoughts of friends, the poet's eye of the Luo's Pavilion and Cui's brother's Chang'an, the interval between the city, a long way, the poet's thoughts are like a wandering silk floating in the wind, leisurely floating to the friend's Chang'an.
The last two lines: the sky in late fall is hazy, frosty season also came late. The lotus leaves in the water have long been withered, leaving only a few withered leaves for people to listen to the sound of rain drops.
It was already late in the fall, but the weather was cloudy for days, pregnant with rain, so the frost also came late. The poet is traveling in the temporary accommodation Locke's Pavilion, hazy weather, looking around a misty, would have been due to lovesickness and Geng not sleep people, the mood can not help but be more bleak, and this mood in turn increase the concentration of lovesickness.
Autumn leaves listening to the rain hit the dead lotus flavor, the poet would like to have been more than once to appreciate. Autumn rain, sprinkled on the dead lotus, issued a piece of staggered sound, not a beautiful interest. The dead lotus gives a sense of decay and valor, but the arrival of the autumn rain, so that they are such a traveler who misses his friends and can not sleep at night, because they can listen to the clear rhyme of the dead lotus autumn rain and slightly comforting thoughts, a little relief from loneliness.
The whole poem to the scene to send feelings, bamboo dock, pavilion threshold, running water, withered lotus and other extremely ordinary scenery, sketched out a quiet and wonderful mood.
Poem translator:
Xu Yuan-chong (许渊冲)
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".
