Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元
prose writer · exile · Tang China · 773–819
A prose writer banished to the southern frontier when a reform failed, who died without ever returning.
Posts
c. 810 · In exile at Yongzhou
On a thousand hills no bird flies. On ten thousand paths no footprint is left. A lone boat, an old man in straw cape and hat, fishing alone in the cold river snow.
千山鳥飛絕，萬逕人蹤滅。
孤舟蓑笠翁，獨釣寒江雪。"River Snow," in the Complete Tang Poems
c. 810 · In a district where delivering poisonous snakes freed a man from taxes, on meeting one who had lost his grandfather and father to the snakes and still could not give up the work
Who would have known that the poison of taxes is worse than this snake!
孰知賦斂之毒有甚是蛇者乎！"The Snake Catcher"
815 · Exiled together and recalled after ten years, only to be sent still farther away: on parting from Liu Yuxi at Hengyang
For twenty years we shared everything. This morning, at the fork in the road, we suddenly go east and west. If the emperor's grace should let us go home to the fields, let us be old men in neighbouring houses in our last years.
二十年來萬事同，今朝岐路忽西東。
皇恩若許歸田去，晚歲當爲鄰舍翁。"Parting Again from Mengde"
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