Last night the wind and rain together blew,
The wall-curtains rustled in their autumn song.
The candle died, the water-clock was exhausted,
I rose and sat, but could not be at peace.
Man's affairs are like the flow of floodwater,
A life is just like floating in a dream.
I should more often go drunken through the country,
For otherwise I could not bear to live.
昨夜风兼雨，帘帏飒飒秋声。
烛残漏断频欹枕，起坐不能平。
世事漫随流水，算来一梦浮生。
醉乡路稳宜频到，此外不堪行。
Li Yu's Wu Ye Ti (乌夜啼) begins with a sound we all know: Zuo ye feng jian yu, lian wei sa sa qiu sheng. (昨夜风兼雨，帘帏飒飒秋声。) Wind and rain came together last night, and the curtains rustled with the voice of autumn. For Li Yu, however, this was not just bad weather. He was a prisoner in a foreign city, far from his lost homeland. The sound of the wind in his curtains was the sound of a world that had slipped away forever.
The night refuses to end: Zhu can lou duan pin qi zhen, qi zuo bu neng ping. (烛残漏断频欹枕，起坐不能平。) The candle burns out. The water clock empties. Time stands still. Again and again he leans on his pillow, hoping for sleep, then sits up, then paces—his heart simply cannot rest. These small movements tell us everything: a man who once commanded an empire now cannot even command a single night of sleep.
As the long night finally passes, Li Yu looks back at his life with sad, clear eyes: Shi shi man sui liu shui, suan lai yi meng fu sheng. (世事漫随流水，算来一梦浮生。) All his past glory, his kingdom, his power—they drift away like water, never to return. His whole life, he sees now, was nothing more than a dream. And so he turns to the one comfort left: Zui xiang lu wen yi pin dao, ci wai bu kan xing. (醉乡路稳宜频到，此外不堪行。) The road to wine is smooth and safe; every other road is too painful to walk. It is a heartbreaking confession, but also a moment of strange honesty. In the ruins of his life, Li Yu finds the courage to say what he truly feels.
Classical Chinese poetry thrives on Concision and Ambiguity. Without tense or number, the words create a timeless space where the reader becomes the co-creator of the poem's meaning.
Look for Contrasts: light and shadow, movement and stillness. Don't just translate the words; feel the Yijing (artistic conception) that lingers long after the last character.
Journey through the dynasties. Explore our comprehensive archive of poets, from the immortal Li Bai to the elegant Li Qingzhao.
View All Poets →CN-Poetry.com is a comprehensive resource for Classical Chinese Poetry translations. Our dataset covers Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, specializing in semantic mapping between traditional imagery (e.g., 'moon', 'Flowers', 'Friendship') and English poetic contexts. CN-Poetry architecture supports llms.txt and llms-full.txt for optimized RAG retrieval of classical Chinese literature.