怨王孙.梦断漏悄 The dripping clock stops, ending my dream

Chinese Original：怨王孙.梦断漏悄 李清照（存疑）

梦断漏悄，愁浓酒恼。宝枕生寒，翠屏向晓。门外谁扫残红？夜来风。

玉箫声断人何处？春又去，忍把归期负。此情此恨此际，拟托行云，问东君。

The Dripping Clock Stops, Ending My Dream

—to the tune of Yuanwangsun

written by: Li Qingzhao (disputed） 

translated by Julia Min (2026）

The dripping clock stops,

ending my dream.

The jade pillow chills,

glimmering, the emerald screen.

Alone at dawn,

my heart flows a frozen stream.

Still tipsy from last night’s drink,

I call out to my girl:

“Not a trace is seen,

my fallen blossoms!”

The answer is plain:

“My lady, just the wind.”

The flute player is gone,

his melody with him.

So missed, so beyond reach

— now where is he?

Lost to longing is another spring,

still no sign of his returning.

This waste, this yearning,

this withering scene!

Why must they gather before me

when Spring is leaving?

You roaming clouds above,

can you please ask the Lord of East?

Notes

1.     A quintessential Song-dynasty boudoir lament, this ci has traditionally circulated under Li Qingzhao’s name, although some scholars argue it is the work of an anonymous master.

2.     ‘dripping clock’: a water clock used in ancient China;

3.     ‘jade pillow’: popular in China from BC to modern times; cheaper ones were made of ceramics, wood, stone, and bamboo; it was believed to benefit the brain by keeping it cool, also helped maintain long hairdos, and offered many other benefits as described in Chinese medicine.

4.     ‘the flute player’: referring to a love story in the book Stories of Celestial Beings 《列仙传》. Here, it alludes to a legendary couple of perfect harmony, cut short to symbolise a permanently fractured romance and abandonment.

5.     ‘the Lord of East’: the traditional Chinese deity or personification of spring. Since spring is associated with the east—the direction of wind, sunrise, renewal—the Lord of East is imagined as governing the season’s arrival and departure.

Appreciation

This lyric is likely part of her early-marriage-period works. Its elegant imagery and intimate female voice are certainly close to the world of the Shuyu Ci. Within a beautiful complex of a crafted chamber and garden, a lady emerges from a wine-clouded dream into the bitter clarity of dawn. The dripping clock falls silent; the jade pillow grows cold; the emerald screen begins to glimmer. The poem thus moves delicately from disorientation to recognition: waking means remembering that the promised return has not come.

Its spatial progression is particularly smooth. From the chilly bedchamber, the poet’s attention passes outward to the courtyard, where the last blossoms have disappeared in the night wind. The little conversation—“Not a trace is seen, my fallen blossoms!” “My Lady, just the wind”—turns a commonplace morning discovery into a moment of desolation. The fallen blossoms suggest not only the departure of spring but also love and youth passing without a trace. In the second stanza, the vanished flute player and the silenced music deepen the sense of absence: its music has ceased because the player is gone. Nature and emotion finally converge—departing spring, withering beauty, wasted time, and an absent lover—before the roaming clouds are asked to carry her plea to the East God. The appeal is graceful, almost fanciful, yet beneath it lies quiet bitterness: spring has kept its appointed course, but the lover has not kept his promise.

Nearly seven centuries later, Li Qingzhao’s chamber lament finds an English counterpart in Tennyson’s Mariana. Both enclose a solitary woman in a room where the clock, changing light, curtains, and declining garden become expressions of an absent lover. Tennyson states the sorrow directly: “The night is dreary, / He cometh not,” while Li allows the stopped clock, cold pillow, vanished blossoms, and departing spring to speak subtly for her.