Deep in spring, the rain's passed- West Lake is good.
A hundred grasses vie in beauty,
Confusion of butterflies, clamour of bees,
The clear day hurries the blossom to burst forth in the warmth.
Oars in lilies, a painted barge moving without haste.
I think I see a band of sprites-
Light reflected in the ripples,
The high wind carries music over the broad water.
春深雨过西湖好，百卉争妍。
蝶乱蜂喧。晴日催花暖欲然。
兰桡画舸悠悠去，疑是神仙。
返照波间。水阔风高扬管弦。
The lyric were composed by Ouyang Xiu, a literary giant of the Northern Song Dynasty, during his later years of retirement in Yingzhou. It follow the Cai Sang Zi (Mulberry Picking Song) cipai, a double-tuned form of forty-four characters with level-tone rhymes. Through the scenery of West Lake after a spring rain, the work reveals his state of mind in his later years, where he found solace in the landscapes.
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.