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King of Lanling: Seeing Spring Depart

By Liu Chenweng Song Dynasty

English Poetic Translation

Watching spring depart.
Spring departs with no path left in the human realm.
Beyond the swing, fragrant grasses stretch to meet the sky,
Who drives the wind and sand to dim the southern shore?
Lingering, what heavy mood is this?
In vain I recall the flying catkins at the sea gate.
Scattered crows cross over, the Dipper turns above a ruined town,
I cannot find the place where we watched the lantern festival.

Spring departs.
Whose suffering is deepest?
Only the feathered geese sinking beyond the frontier,
And the swallows of the rafters left without a master.
In the cuckoo's cry, twilight falls on the long palace gates.
I imagine the jade trees rotting into soil,
While tears pool up like heavy dew.

Seeing travelers off at Xianyang, looking back again and again,
The slanted sun lingers, unable to cross the horizon.
Spring departs.
Will it ever return?
Here Jiang Ling mourns his parting, Yu Xin composes his sorrowful rhapsody.
All day long, wind and rain lash the Su Causeway.
I sigh as my spirit wanders the ancient homeland,
Where the flowers alone remember our former days.
Adrift in this floating life, I look toward my young son,
Sharing the cold, unending night rain.

Classical Chinese & Pinyin

送春去。
春去人間無路。
鞦韆外、芳草連天，誰遣風沙暗南浦。
依依甚意緒。
漫憶海門飛絮。
亂鴉過，斗轉城荒，不見來時試燈處。
春去。
最誰苦。
但箭雁沉邊，梁燕無主。
杜鵑聲里長門暮。
想玉樹凋土，淚盤如露。
咸陽送客屢回顧。
斜日未能度。
春去。
尚來否。
正江令恨別，庾信愁賦。
蘇堤盡日風和雨。
嘆神遊故國，花記前度。
人生流落，顧孺子，共夜雨。

sòng chūn qù.
chūn qù rén jiān wú lù.
qiū qiān wài, fāng cǎo lián tiān, shuí qiǎn fēng shā àn nán pǔ.
yī yī shén yì xù.
màn yì hǎi mén fēi xù.
luàn yā guò, dòu zhuǎn chéng huāng, bú jiàn lái shí shì dēng chù.
chūn qù.
zuì shuí kǔ.
dàn jiàn yàn chén biān, liáng yàn wú zhǔ.
dù juān shēng lǐ cháng mén mù.
xiǎng yù shù diāo tǔ, lèi pán rú lù.
xian yang sòng kè lǚ huí gù.
xie rì wèi néng dù.
chūn qù.
shàng lái fǒu.
zhèng jiāng lìng hèn bié, yǔ xìn chóu fù.
sū dī jìn rì fēng hé yǔ.
tàn shén yóu gù guó, huā jì qián dù.
rén shēng liú luò, gù rú zǐ, gòng yè yǔ.

Philological Direct Translation

Seeing spring go.
Spring goes human world no road.
Swing outside, fragrant grasses connect sky, who sends wind sand darken southern bank.
Lingering what meaning mood.
Vainly remember sea gate flying catkins.
Disordered crows pass, dipper turns city desolate, not see coming time trying lantern place.
Spring goes.
Most who bitter.
Only arrow wild geese sink border, bridge swallows without master.
Cuckoo sound inside long gate twilight.
Think jade trees wither earth, tears plate like dew.
Xianyang sending guests repeatedly look back.
Slanting sun not yet able cross.
Spring goes.
Still come whether.
Just Jiang Ling hate parting, Yu Xin sad fu.
Su embankment whole day wind and rain.
Sigh spirit wander old country, flowers remember previous time.
Life drifting, look at child, together night rain.

Scholarly Exegesis & Cultural Commentary

I. Formal Poetic Architecture & Meter

This lyric is composed to the Song Ci tune pattern titled King of Lanling, a notoriously expansive and structurally complex double-stanza meter consisting of two hundred and forty characters divided across numerous short, shifting cadences. The tune demands abrupt tonal transitions and abrupt shifts in caesura, mirroring the fractured psychological state of the speaker. Liu Chenweng utilizes internal rhymes and cascading parallel clauses to evoke a relentless sense of rushing time, perfectly matching the overarching theme of irreversible historical and seasonal loss.

II. Historical Chronology & Existential Impulse

The poem was written during the tumultuous twilight of the Southern Song Dynasty, an era defined by existential dread, foreign conquest by the Mongol forces, and profound national trauma. As a loyalist scholar living through the collapse of the imperial administration, Liu Chenweng experienced firsthand the devastation of his homeland. The personal grief of displacement, the ruins of familiar urban landscapes, and the severance of familial ties merge into a unified lament for a dying dynasty, mirroring the historical grief of ancient poets displaced by dynastic collapse.

III. Line-by-Line Exegesis & Allusion Decoding

The lyric unfolds through a sweeping structural trajectory, moving from immediate sensory desolation in the opening stanza to historical introspection and domestic sorrow in the closing lines.

Lines 1-2 (Opening Couplet): The poem opens with an abrupt declaration of loss, establishing that spring has vanished without leaving a trace or path for human retrieval in Line 2 ("Spring departs with no path left in the human realm").
Lines 3-4 (First Antithetical Turn): The landscape reflects internal desolation as swinging ropes hang idle against infinite grasses, and atmospheric dust obscures the symbolic southern departure point.
Lines 5-6 (Second Antithetical Turn / Climax): Memory fractures across space and time, juxtaposing floating catkins at sea gates with the desolate ruins of urban festivals past, evoked through Line 7 ("Scattered crows cross over, the Dipper turns above a ruined town").
Closing Lines (Resolving Couplet): The poem anchors its vast historical sorrow into an intimate, heartbreaking domestic frame, concluding with the poet sharing cold isolation and night rain with his young son.

IV. Cultural Symbolism & Key Metaphors

Liu Chenweng employs canonical classical imagery to articulate collective and personal grief without relying on explicit political polemics.

Spring and Department: In classical poetics, the departure of spring serves as the ultimate metaphor for vanishing youth, political disenfranchisement, and the collapse of a golden age.
Cuckoos and Wild Geese: The mournful call of the cuckoo and the lost migratory geese function as traditional emblems of desolate exile, uprootedness, and longing for an unattainable homeland.

V. Philosophical Core & Global Resonance

The philosophical underpinning of the lyric is rooted in the convergence of Confucian moral responsibility and Daoist lament over cosmic impermanence. The poet feels an inescapable ethical burden to bear witness to the destruction of his world, yet is forced to confront the chilling indifference of nature and time. By grounding grand dynastic trauma in the quiet, poignant image of a father and child sitting together in the dark night rain, the poem transcends its specific thirteenth-century context to speak universally of human endurance amidst historical catastrophe.