Lamenting for Kao Ch'ing-ch'iu, Chi-ti
1
In lamplight, I open your book, and start to weep:
my wife and children, startled, wonder what is wrong.
My friend of the river is dead today,
and I have dug the poems he sent me out of a box.
2
When I first got the news, it was hard to believe;
with you gone, who can I talk to about poetry?
Your son and daughter are little children:
the thousand poems you have left behind — to whom
should they be entrusted?
3
What can be said of the meaning of your life?
No salary, no land — how sad it was!
But there is your fame which will never fade,
like the yüeh-fu of Han or the poetry of T'ang!
In lamplight, I open your book, and start to weep:
my wife and children, startled, wonder what is wrong.
My friend of the river is dead today,
and I have dug the poems he sent me out of a box.
2
When I first got the news, it was hard to believe;
with you gone, who can I talk to about poetry?
Your son and daughter are little children:
the thousand poems you have left behind — to whom
should they be entrusted?
3
What can be said of the meaning of your life?
No salary, no land — how sad it was!
But there is your fame which will never fade,
like the yüeh-fu of Han or the poetry of T'ang!
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