On Lantern Festival by riverside at night,
The moon frost-white
Shone on the beauties fair and bright.
Fragrance exhaled and music played under the tent,
The running horses raised no dust on the pavement.
Now I am old in lonely hillside town,
Drumbeats and flute songs up and down
Are drowned in prayers amid mulberries and lost.
The lantern fires put out, dew falls with frost.
Over the fields dark clouds hangs low:
It threatens snow.
灯火钱塘三五夜。明月如霜，照见人如画。
帐底吹笙香吐麝。此般风味应无价。
寂寞山城人老也。
击鼓吹箫，乍入农桑社。
火冷灯稀霜露下。
昏昏雪意云垂野。
The Lantern Festival falis on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month.
Composed in 1075 during Su Shi's tenure as prefect of Mizhou, this cí articulates the cultural dislocation of a southern literatus governing northern hinterlands. Written on the Lantern Festival—China's most exuberant urban celebration—the poem constructs a diptych contrasting Hangzhou's sensory splendor with Mizhou's rustic austerity. Through this juxtaposition, Su Shi pioneers a new lyric mode: the "nostalgia of governance," where personal memory and official duty collide.
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.
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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