Liu Yuxi 劉禹錫
poet · official · Tang China · 772–842
A poet who joined a reform that failed and was sent from one frontier post to another for more than twenty years. He wrote unbowed poems all the same.
Posts
c. 810 · In his years of demotion
Since ancient times people have met autumn with sorrow at its loneliness. I say an autumn day is better than a spring morning. In the clear sky one crane climbs, parting the clouds, and carries my poem with it up into the blue.
自古逢秋悲寂寥，我言秋日勝春朝。
晴空一鶴排雲上，便引詩情到碧霄。"Autumn Song," the first poem, in the Complete Tang Poems
815 · Liu Zongyuan died at Liuzhou four years later, and the two never met again
From the age of twenty we carried our elders' worries together. At the fork in the road I look back, and it is all so far away. If we could only plough side by side and grow old like that, we would look at each other's yellowed hair and let everything rest.
弱冠同懷長者憂，臨岐回想盡悠悠。
耦耕若便遺身老，黃髮相看萬事休。"Answering Liu of Liuzhou Again"
c. 822 · The word for "fair weather" sounds the same as the word for "feeling," so the last line also reads: they say there is no feeling, and yet there is
The willows are green, the river runs level, and I hear him singing out on the water. Sun in the east and rain in the west: they say it is not fair weather, and yet it is fair.
楊柳青青江水平，聞郎江上唱歌聲。
東邊日出西邊雨，道是無晴却有晴。"Bamboo Branch Song," first of two, in the Complete Tang Poems
c. 824 · Said to have been written while demoted to the provinces
A mountain need not be high: with an immortal on it, it has a name. Water need not be deep: with a dragon in it, it has power. This is a humble room, but my virtue makes it fragrant.
山不在高，有仙則名。水不在深，有龍則靈。斯是陋室，惟吾德馨。"Inscription on a Humble Room"
826 · In answer to the poem Bai Juyi made for him at that table
Beside the sunken boat a thousand sails go by. Before the sick tree ten thousand trees are in spring. Today I have heard you sing one song, and for a while, with this cup of wine, I take heart.
沈舟側畔千帆過，病樹前頭萬木春。
今日聽君歌一曲，暫憑杯酒長精神。"Answering Letian's Poem Given at Our First Meeting, at a Banquet in Yangzhou"
c. 826 · Black Robe Lane, in Nanjing, was where the greatest families of the Six Dynasties lived
By Red Bird Bridge the wild grasses flower; at the mouth of Black Robe Lane the evening sun slants. The swallows that once flew before the halls of the Wangs and the Xies now fly into the homes of ordinary people.
朱雀橋邊野草花，烏衣巷口夕陽斜。
舊時王謝堂前燕，飛入尋常百姓家。"Black Robe Lane," in the Complete Tang Poems
late 830s · In answer to Bai Juyi's poem. The last line is widely known in another reading, "turned to rose clouds, it still fills the sky"; the text here follows the Complete Tang Poems
Who does not wish to live long? Yet once old, who will pity you? The body thins and the belt is taken in again; the hair thins and the cap sits askew. I put books aside to spare my eyes, and burn more moxa as the years ask. But having seen affairs, one understands affairs; one reads people as one reads a stream. Think it through and it is all good fortune; let this go and the heart is free. Do not say the sun is late among the mulberries and elms: a faint glow still fills the sky.
人誰不願老，老去有誰憐。
身瘦帶頻減，髪稀冠自偏。
廢書緣惜眼，多炙爲隨年。
經事還諳事，閱人如閱川。
細思皆幸矣，下此便翛然。
莫道桑榆晚，微霞尚滿天。"Answering Letian's Poem on Old Age," in the Complete Tang Poems
1 in 100 Billion · The social network of those who came before us