Having caressed the dancers in the vernal breeze,
You're ravished amid the merry-making trees.
How can you wail until clear autumn days are done
To shrill like poor cicadas in the setting sun?
Original Poem:
「柳」
李商隐
曾逐东风拂舞筵，乐游春苑断肠天。
如何肯到清秋日，已带斜阳又带蝉。
Interpretation:
When the poet was young, he was full of fantasies and confidence, and had great ambitions, just like the spring willow overflowing with vitality. However, due to party strife, the poet has been living a sunken life, the poem experienced glory and blight changes in the autumn willow, it is the poet's self-inflicted waning, sighing at the real portrayal of the world.
The first two lines: you have been with the east wind lightly flicked the song and dance feast, when it is the blossom of spring, people in the Leyouyuan play.
These two sentences with anthropomorphic techniques, said willow branches follow the east wind, become passive for active, the image is more vivid and lovely, showing the willow branches of the vitality of the lovely. Spring willow long, swinging in the wind, the poem is more likely to let people imagine that the wind and the willow is a wine feast above the dancing beauty, green sleeves green skirt, swinging left and right, very nice.
The last two sentences: and why are you willing to endure to the fall ah, now it is already the sunset, the autumn cicadas chirping scene.
The two lines read together, we can explain this way: how do you want to be in a clear fall day, both with the yellowing sun, and with the cold cicadas chirping? The poet put the slanting sun shining willow, autumn cicadas chirping willow anti-said poetic willow tree in leading them, the image of the willow came to the fore.
From the creative point of view, the poet in the selection of materials on the idea is quite a lot of effort, the whole poem carved, natural.
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".
