Untitled / Li Shangyin, poem beginning 相見時難別亦難

Li Shangyin's Untitled poem: Text, Pinyin, and Translation

Li Shangyin's Untitled poem: Text, Pinyin, and Translation with original text, pinyin, a literal rendering, a readable translation, source location, key terms, and a careful modern reading.

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Li Shangyin Untitled poem original Chinese pinyin translation meaning

Untitled, Li Shangyin, poem beginning 相見時難別亦難: read "相見時難別亦難，東風無力百花殘。春蠶到死絲方盡，蠟炬成灰淚始乾。曉鏡..." before the English explanation.

Original text

相見時難別亦難，東風無力百花殘。春蠶到死絲方盡，蠟炬成灰淚始乾。曉鏡但愁雲鬢改，夜吟應覺月光寒。蓬山此去無多路，青鳥殷勤為探看。

Xiang jian shi nan bie yi nan, dong feng wu li bai hua can. Chun can dao si si fang jin, la ju cheng hui lei shi gan. Xiao jing dan chou yun bin gai, ye yin ying jue yue guang han. Peng shan ci qu wu duo lu, qing niao yin qin wei tan kan.

Literal layer

Meeting is difficult, and parting too is difficult; the east wind has no strength and the hundred flowers are spent. The spring silkworm reaches death before its silk is exhausted; the wax torch becomes ash before its tears begin to dry. At dawn before the mirror, one only worries that cloudlike hair has changed; chanting at night, one should feel the moonlight cold. Peng Mountain is not far from here; blue bird, be attentive and look in on it for me.

Readable layer

Li Shangyin's Untitled poem turns separation into a chain of difficult images: failed spring wind, spent flowers, silkworm thread, candle tears, changed hair, cold moonlight, and a messenger bird toward Peng Mountain.

Poem on the Double Ninth Festival from The Metropolitan Museum of Art open-access collection — **Poem on the Double Ninth Festival; Chen Chun; John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1913; The Metropolitan Museum of Art.**Poem on the Double Ninth Festival is used as a public-domain poem or landscape surface for line-order reading on Li Shangyin's Untitled poem. The fit is semantic: the page asks readers to inspect Li Shangyin, poem beginning 相見時難別亦難 and the term xiang jian, while the image remains illustrative rather than proof of the exact manuscript, author portrait, or historical scene.

Reader focus

What this page helps you decide

Li Shangyin's Untitled poem is not only a love poem about missing someone. It builds separation through images that nearly consume themselves: spring wind has no strength, flowers are spent, silkworm silk lasts until death, and candle tears dry only when the candle becomes ash. The final blue bird does not solve the distance. It becomes a delicate messenger toward Peng Mountain.

Watch xiang jian, bie, chun can; these terms decide where the literal layer and the readable layer separate.
Compare this page with Wang Wei's Parting and Du Fu's Moonlit Night before using the poem as a simple love quote.

The Poem Before Paraphrase

This block uses Untitled, Li Shangyin, poem beginning 相見時難別亦難 as the anchor, with "相見時難別亦難，東風無力百花殘。春蠶到死絲方盡，蠟炬成灰淚始..." kept in front of the explanation.

Full Poem: The page uses all eight lines because each couplet changes the pressure of separation. The poem begins with meeting and parting, turns to spring exhaustion, then to silkworm and candle images, then to dawn mirror and night chanting, and finally to the mythic messenger bird. A short quotation misses that layered movement.

Meeting And Parting: Xiang jian shi nan bie yi nan makes difficulty double. Meeting is hard, and parting is also hard. The line refuses a simple contrast where union is good and separation is bad. Even meeting carries difficulty because the relationship exists under constraint, distance, or uncertainty.

Spent Spring: Dong feng wu li bai hua can gives spring itself a weakened body. The east wind has no strength, and the flowers are spent. This is not bright spring renewal. The season is already failing. The outer world mirrors the emotional depletion introduced by the first line.

Images, Sound, And Emotional Turn

Silkworm Thread: Chun can dao si si fang jin is one of the poem's most famous images. The silkworm's thread is exhausted only at death. The line suggests devotion, longing, or speech that cannot stop while life remains. It is powerful because si, silk thread, also echoes the sound of longing in later reading traditions, though the page does not force that into the translation.

Candle Tears: La ju cheng hui lei shi gan pairs with the silkworm line. A candle's tears dry only when it has become ash. The image is not only sadness; it is self-consuming duration. The poem makes feeling visible as material depletion: thread drawn out, wax burned down, tears drying only at the end.

Dawn Mirror: Xiao jing dan chou yun bin gai imagines worry before the dawn mirror that cloudlike hair has changed. The poem shifts from symbolic objects to the body. Separation alters time, and time alters the face and hair. The line makes longing not just emotional but visible in aging or changed appearance.

Keep the term set visible here: xiang jian, bie, chun can. The reading changes if one of these terms is translated too smoothly.

Translation Choices To Keep Visible

Cold Moonlight: Ye yin ying jue yue guang han brings the other person into night chanting and cold moonlight. The poem imagines how the beloved might feel. Moonlight is not simply beautiful; it is cold. This keeps the poem close to separation rather than decorative nocturne.

Blue Bird Messenger: Peng shan and qing niao bring in an allusive, mythic register. Peng Mountain suggests an unreachable or otherworldly place; the blue bird can serve as messenger. The poem ends by asking the bird to look in attentively. The request is tender, but it does not erase distance.

Li Shangyin's Untitled poem Reading Payoff: This page differs from Du Fu's Moonlit Night because Li Shangyin's separation is more allusive and image-dense, while Du Fu relocates viewpoint to family. It differs from Wang Wei's Parting because this poem intensifies feeling through self-consuming metaphors rather than mountain restraint. The article gives readers a source-based way to read the imagery without flattening it into a greeting-card line.

The reading should end in one practical move: Compare this page with Wang Wei's Parting and Du Fu's Moonlit Night before using the poem as a simple love quote.

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