Wei Zhuang

The land of mulberry is in the boundless sea;

Your home's farther east to the land of mulberry.

Who would arrive with you at the land of your dreams?

A sail unfurled in wind, a boat steeped in moonbeams.

Here I am, on a spring excursion,

With apricot flowers blown full on my head.

In that young fellow in yonder path—

More than romance and love, I have read.

If I could just be married to him,

My destiny would be for e'er set.

Granted: he might at last forsake me.

I'd have nothing whate'er to regret.

Though a shower bends the river-grass, a bird is singing,

While ghosts of the Six Dynasties pass like a dream

Around the Forbidden City, under weeping willows

Which loom still for three miles along the misty moat.

Far through the night a harp is sighing

With a sadness of wind and rain in the strings....

There's a solitary lantern, a bugle-call --

And beyond Terrace Tower down goes the moon.

...Fragrant grasses have changed and faded

While still I have been hoping that my old friend would come....

There are no more messengers I can send him,

Now that the wildgeese have turned south.

All men will say the Southern land is fair,

A wanderer is willing to spend his whole life there.

He'd like to see spring water bluer than the sky 

And,listening to rain,in painted ship to lie.

The wine-shop waitress looks like the moon bright,

Like snow or frost congealed her arms are white.

Till he grows old,from South lands he won't part,

To leave this land for home would break his heart.