Facing Hardship and Death: Two Poets, Two Paths, One Fate

In ancient China, where medical knowledge was limited, hardship, aging, and death remained constant themes—yet poets faced these inevitabilities with strikingly different spirits, often reflected in their poems. 

江汉   The Jiang and Han Rivers
作者：杜甫   （Author: Du Fu, 8th century)

江 汉 思 归 客    Jiang Han feel return guest
乾 坤 一 腐 儒。heaven earth one pedantic scholar
片 云 天 共 远   piece cloud sky together distant
永 夜 月 同 孤。long night moon together alone
落 日 心 犹 壮   fall sun heart still strong
秋 风 病 欲 苏。autumn wind illness will revive
古 来 存 老 马   old come keep old horse
不 必 取 长 途   not need use long trip

Translation:

Where the Han and Yangtze meet: a homesick traveler.
Between Heaven and Earth: a quibbling scholar,

I become one with a scrap of cloud in the distant sky.
I am alone with the moon in the endless night.

The sun sets, but my heart remains ambitious.
The autumn wind blows, but I will recover from my illness.

From ancient times, old horses were kept
Because they were the ones who knew the way home.

秋来     The Arrival of Autumn

作者：李贺 （Author: Li He, 9th century)

桐风惊心壮士苦， parasol wind startle heart strong person bitter
衰灯络纬啼寒素。 feeble light cicadas cry cold white/clothes
谁看青简一编书， who read green bamboo slip one compile/volume book
不遣花虫粉空蠹。 no dispatch flower insect powder in vain moth-eaten
思牵今夜肠应直， think of connect today night bowel should straight
雨冷香魂吊书客。 rain cold fragrant soul pay tribute book guest
秋坟鬼唱鲍家诗， autumn tomb ghost sing Bao family poem
恨血千年土中碧。 hatred blood thousand year soil inside green jade

Translation：

The wind through the parasol trees startles a strong man’s heart,
And makes him bitter.
In the dying candle light, crickets cry out,
Warning us to weave winter clothes.
Oh, who will read this book of poems, written on green bamboo?
And keep the flower moths from turning it to dust?

This night of longing makes my intestines go limp.
But in the cold rain, a fragrant spirit comes to comfort me.
Among the autumn tombs, ghosts sing poems in the style of Bao Zhao.
After a thousand years, the blood of a wronged man
Turns to jade deep in the earth.

Translation Notes:

These two poems present a stark contrast to one another. The first was written by Du Fu, one of the most renowned poets of the Tang Dynasty and Chinese literary history. He wrote the poem at age 57, just two years before his passing, having endured immense hardship―poverty, illness, and years of wandering in southern China with no hope of returning to his northern hometown. Despite these struggles, Du Fu conveys his hope to recover from his illness, reflecting his enduring spirit.

The last couplet of the poem references an ancient Chinese legend from the Spring and Autumn Period, more than a thousand years before Du Fu’s time. Duke Huan of Qi, a famous ruler, led an expedition against the State of Gu Zhu, a war that extended into winter. On the return journey, his army lost its way. Acting on his advisor’s suggestion, the Duke placed old horses at the front of the procession, relying on their wisdom to navigate home. The strategy succeeded, and they safely returned. Du Fu uses this tale as a metaphor, indicating that although he is aged and ill, his experience and wisdom remain valuable. Although we try to hew very closely to the original text, we thought that the reason for keeping old horses around (they know the way home) was important enough to the meaning of the poem to justify adding a line affirming the value of the old animals. Our other translation choices also seek to emphasize the optimism and sense of personal agency of Jiang and Han Rivers. In lines three and four, the “I” is implied, and the verb tense is unspecified. We used the present tense because it gives greater immediacy, and we chose the words “I become” to give the lines a sense of vigor, which we thought suited the poem’s triumphant conclusion.

The second poem was penned by Li He, a young poet from the Late Tang Dynasty. Li was not allowed to sit for the official government exams because of a naming taboo ― the name of the highest degree obtained from the official government exam sounds very similar to the given name of Li’s father. In ancient China, the practice of sons using titles or names similar to their fathers’ would be considered unfilial. Li passed away at the age of 26, left behind more than 200 poems, many of which featured ghosts and death.

The poem is imbued with despair. In the first stanza, the literal translation is that cicadas cry for winter clothes, but we do not believe that Li He was anthropomorphizing crickets; we think he meant that the crickets signified that winter was coming and warm clothes would be needed. Although the mention of intestines becoming straight or limp is not common, Chinese poetry often refers to broken or twisted bowels or intestines to signify a broken heart. In line six, the word “diao”(translated as comfort) is usually used in the context of a living person visiting someone’s grave to pay tribute to the dead. Here Li uses it to refer to the “fragrant spirit” (the dead) coming to comfort him, even though he is still alive―yet he writes as if he himself belongs among the dead, immersing the poem in an overwhelming sense of despair.

The last line of the poem mentions an exiled scholar from the Zhou Dynasty, over a thousand years before Li He’s time. Falsely accused, the scholar died in exile, and his blood, preserved in a box, reportedly transformed into jade within three years―a phenomenon referenced in ancient Chinese literature as “jade green blood.” The phrase came to symbolize someone who sacrificed himself and died for a good cause. Even in modern China, the concept of “jade green blood” is commonly used by writers ― for example, Jin Yong, a novelist famous for writing “martial arts and chivalry” novels, wrote a novel in the 1950s named “Bi Xue Jian” (the literal translation of the novel’s name is Jade Blood Sword).

Interestingly, in Western culture, “green blood” is often associated with extraterrestrials rather than martyrdom. For example, Vulcans and Romulans in Star Trek are described as having green blood, an entirely different symbolic meaning from its use in ancient Chinese literature.

We also attach another version of the translation by Elizabeth Smithrosser. We thought her translation of line three to five of the original is very striking “Who will see to it that the young bamboo is bound together as a book, And not left to the dappled silverfish To chew into holes and dust, Like tonight’s snaking thoughts unravel my innards?” and that her linkage of the silverfish with Li He’s sad thoughts is not too much of a liberty. We encourage readers to compare other translations with ours.