I removed the makeup in deep night,
Faded the plum flowers worn on my hairs,
I was awaken by the left fragrance of the flowers,
you're too far,even in the dream,i still couldn't see your silhouette.
Quiet people,cold crescent,
the wind closed the beady curtain.
I fondled those withered plum flowers,
smelt the fragrance of the sweet memories,
how are you?i was haunted by the love day and night.
夜来沉醉卸妆迟。
梅萼插残枝。
酒醒熏破春睡，梦远不成归。
人悄悄，月依依。
翠帘垂。
更挼残蕊，更捻余香，更得些时。
Composed around 1127 shortly after the fall of Northern Song and the first Southern Song emperor was throned. It was a period of turmoil due to the Jin’s invasion. With the loss of their capital, the new court became mobile from place to place in the south. Jiangning ( later Jiangkang, today’s Nanjing) was one of the temporary court venues. Qingzhao’s husband was appointed the Mayor of Jiangning, so the couple had to leave their Qingzhou home ( in today’s Shandong Province) to the mercy of the Jin army who burned everything to ashes in the same year, so she was told later on. For our poet, it’s the home where they had over ten years’ happy marriage life, the home with ten households of their valuable collections, and ultimately the best memories of her lifetime. And this is only the beginning of her miseries, and the starting point of a dividing line in her literature topics and intellectual sentiments, which offers a glimpse of the shifting among the intellectuals and officials. It’s a song of a collective voice illuminating not only the war’s tragedies and their irreparable effects, but the hopes and disappointments of generations onwards.
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