English Rendering
First, the sorrowful poet chanted his dirge—
Then came the cricket’s whispered lament,
Dripping with dew on bronze doorplates,
Seeping through moss-choked stone wells,
In all the places it once sang.
A mournful tune, like pleading.
Sleepless, the longing wife rises
To pace by her loom.
Winding screen-painted hills—
What loneliness aches in the cooling night?
Rain taps softly at the west window.
For whom does this chirping start and stop,
Matching the pound of laundry mallets?
At frontier inns, it greets autumn;
In abandoned palaces, it mourns the moon—
A thousand other heartbreaks unfold.
The Book of Odes once casually praised it.
Children laugh, lighting lanterns by the fence—
But when its song is strung into zither strings,
Note by note, the sorrow deepens.
