You sigh, you're full of tenderness,
it's more than you can bear
too many love affairs, too much wind and moon—
and the courtyard is loaded with autumn
the sound of the water-clock's close by—
just outside your bridal chamber
and night by night, next to the lamp,
your hair is turning white.
自叹多情是足愁，况当风月满庭秋。
洞房偏与更声近，夜夜灯前欲白头。
Seven-character poem
This poem comes from the very end of her life. Here Yu Xuanji knows that she is dying. We know this because she uses the same expression here, 欲白头, for wanting to live out a normal life as she did in this poem when speaking of the scholar Li, who died young. Yu Xuanji does not say what she is dying of. But there were plenty of things to die of in her time, as in ours. At this point, the why no longer matters to her. She seems most concerned with the quality of her mind. She does not want to feel fear and regrets, or to be anxious, or to have her mind filled with noise. It need not be her "room" that is noisy. Her inner room could also be her mind. It probably is. But she does want to live out her life. And that won't happen, as we know.
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.
Journey through the dynasties. Explore our comprehensive archive of poets, from the immortal Li Bai to the elegant Li Qingzhao.
View All Poets →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.