Beyond Seeing
- Poetry of Shen Quanqi

《古意呈补阙乔知之》

English Rendering

A girl of the Lu clan who lives in Golden-Wood Hall,

Where swallows perch in pairs on beams of tortoiseshell,

Hears the washing-mallets' cold beat shake the leaves down.

...The Liaoyang expedition will be gone ten years,

And messages are lost in the White Wolf River.

...Here in the City of the Red Phoenix autumn nights are long,

Where one who is heart-sick to see beyond seeing,

Sees only moonlight on the yellow-silk wave of her loom.

Beyond Seeing by Shen Quanqi
Beyond Seeing by Shen Quanqi

Original Text (中文原文)

卢家少妇郁金堂,海燕双栖玳瑁梁。

九月寒砧催木叶,十年征戍忆辽阳。

白狼河北音书断,丹凤城南秋夜长。

谁为含愁独不见,更教明月照流黄?

Analysis & Context

Folk-song-styled-verse

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.

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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.