永遇乐 . 明月如霜 The Moon’s Frost White

永遇乐. 明月如霜

(彭城夜宿燕子楼，梦盼盼，因作此词)

原文：苏轼

英译：闵晓红

明月如霜，好风如水，清景无限。

曲港跳鱼，圆荷泻露，寂寞无人见。

紞如三鼓，铿然一叶，黯黯梦云惊断。

夜茫茫, 重寻无处，觉来小园行遍。

天涯倦客，山中归路，望断故园心眼。

燕子楼空，佳人何在，空锁楼中燕。

古今如梦，何曾梦觉，但有旧欢新怨。

异时对、黄楼夜景，为余浩叹。

The Moon’s Frost White

- to the tune of “Everlasting Joy”

Chinese original: Su Shi ( 11th century)

English version: Julia Min

The moon’s frost white,

the wind, freshly cool.

An endless stillness —

till a fish breaks the winding pool.

Dews slide down lotus leaves,

a loneliness without form.

Three drumbeats from the dark mist;

Then, one leaf falls.

I’m startled awake from a deep sleep,

a familiar sadness seizes me.

Out in the garden I seek:

Where is she—the beauty of my dream?

I feel her everywhere,

yet nowhere can she be retrieved.

The night stretches long,

far beyond my reach.

Weary of the world, a wanderer

strains his heart’s eye of hope

towards the western mountains,

seeking a sign of home.

The Swallow Pavilion, long empty

—where’s the beauty?

Dust keeps its promises within;

only abandoned nests remain.

Past and present,

just dreams that never cease.

What gathers in the mind —

old memories and new regrets.

Someday, some visitor

will climb my Yellow Pavilion.

Before such a midnight scene,

I wonder, will he sigh for me?

Appreciation:

According to a story passed down from the Tang dynasty, the Swallow Pavilion complex was built in Pengcheng (present-day Xuzhou) for Guan Panpan, a renowned singer and dancer and the beloved concubine of a military governor traditionally identified as Zhang Jianfeng. Later scholarship, however, suggests that the man may actually have been his son, Zhang Yin. With swallows gathering beneath its eaves, the pavilion acquired the name. After Zhang’s death, Panpan continued to live there for more than ten years, refusing to remarry and remaining faithful to his memory. Her story became an enduring poetic symbol of lost love, fidelity and happiness that could never be recovered.

This ci lyric was composed in 1078, shortly after Su Shi completed his own architectural project, the Yellow Pavilion, during his tenure as governor of Xuzhou. According to the traditional preface, Su Shi spent a night in the Swallow Pavilion and dreamed of the brief appearance of Panpan’s spirit. Awakened suddenly, he walked throughout the little garden, searching for the beauty of his dream but finding her nowhere. The bright moon, a recurring motif in Chinese poetry, evokes the memory of a love once whole but now far beyond reach.

Su Shi’s status deepens the poem’s melancholy. His position at court had become increasingly precarious amid fierce factional conflict. Daoist thought offered him solace, turning his mind towards nature and towards the western mountains of Sichuan. Throughout his life, the same tension persisted: whether to devote himself fully to official service or withdraw into reclusion. Yet Su Shi was ultimately a man shaped by his age and its currents—deeply engaged with the world and unable to relinquish public responsibility entirely for a Daoist life apart.

The Swallow Pavilion also becomes a mirror of Su Shi’s own place in time. Past, present and future fold into one another. The poem thus moves beyond private sorrow towards a larger meditation on the dreamlike nature of human life, in which old joys and new regrets succeed one another without anyone ever fully awakening.

A Western analogue may be found in Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, where reflection before a familiar landscape becomes a meditation on memory, loss and the divided self across time. Both poets discover that a place is never merely a place: it gathers vanished lives, former selves and intimations of those who will come after.

Reference:

1. 古诗文网https://so.gushiwen.cn/

2. ChatGPT

3. All pictures are selected from google search.

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