薛涛·《别李郎中》英译

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安仁纵有诗将赋，一半音词杂悼亡。

A Farewell for Mr. Li, Bureau Director   

Xue Tao

A phoenix leaves his mate as wutong-blossoms fall, ¹

Sadder still when he climbs the peaks of Qin.

Though Anren has poems he’s about to write,

Half his lyrics are mixed with elegies.²

1. The legendary phoenix would nest only in a wutong tree (Sterculia platanifolia, the “scholar’s tree” or “parasol tree”). The wood of the wutong makes the finest musical instruments.

2. Anren was the style name of Pan Yue (247300), a famous poet of the Jin period. The prevailing mood in many of his compositions was one of grief: his elegies (lei) were among the best known of the genre, and some twenty of his surviving tetrasyllabic or pentasyllabic poems are on sorrow or bereavement. His “Three Poems on My Deceased Wife” were especially acclaimed.

（Anthony C. Yu 译）