A Spring Sigh
- Poetry of Jin Changzu

Five-character-quatrain

This poem was likely composed during the turbulent frontier wars of the Tang Dynasty, portraying a young wife's profound longing for her husband stationed far away in Liaoxi. With remarkable economy of language, the poet captures the quiet suffering of ordinary lives disrupted by war. Though brief, it stands as a masterpiece of Tang "boudoir lament" poetry.

This poem concerns a standard figure in this type of poetry, a lonely woman who is despondent over the absence of a husband or lover, probably a soldier who has gone to Liaoxi in present-day Mongolia. She chases away the orioles to stop their singing in the first couplet. The second couplet gives the reason. The bird songs interrupted her sweet morning dream to see her husband in the far away land. The words and phrases tug at her heart.