Qing Yu An: Ripples Pass By Hengtang Road

Ripples pass by Hengtang road, only watching the fragrant dust depart. With whom shall I spend these silken, splendid years? By the moonlit bridge and flowered courtyard, behind the latticed windows and vermilion doors, only spring knows the place. Fleeting clouds drift slowly at dusk over the fragrant marsh, my colorful brush newly inscribes lines of heartbreak. I ask, how much of this idle sorrow is there? A river of misty grass, a city full of windblown catkins, the rain of the plum-ripening season. Hè Zhù uses the late spring scenery to write of an unresolvable longing. The subject of the poem watches the beloved depart, leaving behind only the melancholy of a youth wasted. In the second half, the longing transforms into mist-like grass filling the river, willow fluff blown by the wind throughout the city, and the continuous rain during the plum-ripening season. The most famous part is the concluding three lines, which use misty grass, windblown catkins, and plum rain to symbolize sorrow, turning abstract emotions into boundless, present imagery. The brilliance of this poem lies in its indirect expression of sorrow's depth; instead, the entire world takes on the shape of that sorrow. Especially 'the rain of the plum-ripening season,' which not only marks the time but also describes the lingering, unceasing texture of the sorrow.