Turkestan
- Poetry of Chen Tao

《陇西行-其二》

English Rendering

Thinking only of their vow that they would crush the Tartars- -

On the desert, clad in sable and silk, five thousand of them fell....

But arisen from their crumbling bones on the banks of the river at the border,

Dreams of them enter, like men alive, into rooms where their loves lie sleeping.

Turkestan by Chen Tao
Turkestan by Chen Tao

Original Text (中文原文)

誓扫匈奴不顾身,五千貂锦丧胡尘。

可怜无定河边骨,犹是春闺梦里人。

Analysis & Context

Seven-character-quatrain

Reader's Companion

The Essence of the Verse

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.

Reading Between the Lines

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.

The Masters' Directory

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 Chinese Poems in English  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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.