Sunday, August 1, 2021

Life's Too Short And So Are Dreams


1 夜闌焚香參玉兔 Deep into the night, burning incense and praying to the moon,
2 瓊花艷影何須妬 Envy not the beauty of the Queen of the Night in the shadows.
3 人生夢短醉良宵 Life's too short and so do dreams, so let'
s be drunk this fine night,
4 莫待年華明朝盜 Wait not till daybreak robbing thy youth away.

1 Incense in the form of joss sticks is an integral part of Chinese way of burning offerings to the gods.

2 The flower is half hidden in the shadows like a coy beauty and that makes it look seductive.  It is not the poet who is in the shadows admiring its beauty.  This explicit in the original version but not in the translation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyllum_oxypetalum

3 Refers to the one night bloom of the flower, i.e. that youth is such a fleeting time.

4 明朝 does not mean Ming Dynasty but the next morning, hence the tone for 朝 is of a higher tone.

Friday, July 30, 2021

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