The Jade Mountain/An Elegy

by Yuan Zhen

AN ELEGY

I

O youngest, best-loved daughter of Hsieh,Who unluckily married this penniless scholar,You patched my clothes from your own wicker basket,And I coaxed off your hairpins of gold, to buy wine with;For dinner we had to pick wild herbs—And to use dry locust-leaves for our kindling.. . . Today they are paying me a hundred thousand—And all that I can bring to you is a temple sacrifice.

II

We joked, long ago, about one of us dying,But suddenly, before my eyes, you are gone.Almost all your clothes have been given away;Your needlework is sealed, I dare not look at it. . . .I continue your bounty to our men and our maids—Sometimes, in a dream, I bring you gifts.. . . This is a sorrow that all mankind must know—But not as those know it who have been poor together.

III

I sit here alone, mourning for us both.How many years do I lack now of my threescore and ten?There have been better men than I to whom heaven denied a son,There was a poet better than I whose dead wife could not hear him.What have I to hope for in the darkness of our tomb?You and I had little faith in a meeting after death—Yet my open eyes can see all nightThat lifelong trouble of your brow.

(115)