Five Juéjù From Li Bai

Yellow Crane Tower:
Farewell to Meng Haoran on his Trip to Guangling

To Yellow Crane Tower and the West you wave goodbye
Under March mist's blossoms you descend towards Yangzhou
Your lone sail vanishes into the shadows of jade mountains
Until all I see is the Yangtze flowing to the edge of the sky


黄鶴樓送孟浩然之廣陵

故人西辭黃鶴樓
煙花三月下揚州
孤帆遠影碧山盡
惟見長江天際流



Visit to Lu Shan: Waterfall

Sun lights the violet mist of Incense Stove Mountain
Far off I see a waterfall hanging above a stream
It flies out spreading down three thousand feet
I think it is the Silver River falling from Seventh Heaven


望廬山瀑布

日照香爐生紫煙
遙看瀑布掛前川
飛流直下三千尺
疑是銀河落九天



Night Thoughts

Across the floor bright moon so bright
I think it is hoarfrost on the fields
I lift my head to gaze at the bright moon
I hang my head thinking of home


夜思

床前明月光
疑是地上霜
舉頭望明月
低頭思故鄉



Descent to Jiangling

Dawn farewell to Baidi among the glowing clouds
Three hundred miles to Jiangling in one day's float
Monkeys howl from both shores without stop
Already my skiff has passed ten thousand rows of mountains


下江陵

朝辭白帝彩雲間
千里江陵一日還
兩岸猿聲啼不住
輕舟已過萬重山



For Wang Lun

Li Po climbs aboard wishing to leave
Suddenly from shore the sound of footfalls and song
Peach Blossom Pool is a thousand feet deep
Doesn't touch how Wang Lun's farewell makes me feel


贈汪倫

李白乘舟將欲行
忽聞岸上踏歌聲
桃花潭水深千尺
不及汪倫送我情



Translated by Andrew Haley


Lǐ Bái (李白), known in the West as Li Po, was born to exiles in present-day Kazakhstan in 701. He spent his youth in Sichuan, near Chengdu, studying Taoism and other subjects. Rather than sit for the civil service exam, Li Bai left Sichuan at the edge of twenty-five, sailing down the Yangtze River. For thirty-five years, he led an itinerant, drunken, profligate and prolific life -- never settling anywhere for long, and writing upwards of a thousand poems which are considered among the apex of Chinese literature. Li Bai drowned in the Yangtze in 762, trying to drunkenly embrace the moon. He was returning to Sichuan after a life of exile.

The poems here are juéjù -- a poetic form popular in the Tang era. They are quatrains with either seven or five syllable lines, an aaba rhyme scheme and a distribution of tones that seeks to give the poems a tonal regularity. Heavily influenced by Taoism and Chán -- a Chinese prototype of Zen that flourished in the Tang dynasty -- juéjù strive to "see the big within the small" (小中見大).