A Song
By Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) [1]
A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind kept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound.
Translation by 蘇曼殊 Su Manshu (1884-1918)[2]
冬日
孤鳥棲寒枝，
悲鳴為其曹。
池水初結冰，
冷風何蕭蕭。
荒林無宿葉，
瘠土無卉苗，
萬籟盡寥寂，
惟聞喧挈皋。[3]
Back translation of Su Manshu’s translation:
A Winter Day
A lone bird perches on a cold branch
Crying with sorrow for its kind.
Pond water begins to form ice;
How desolate is the chilly wind!
A bleak grove, no staying leaf;
A barren land, no flower buds.
Ten thousand sounds all in silence,
[One] only hears the loud well-lever.
Note on Su Manshu’s translation:
In eight pentasyllabic lines with a level-tone rhyme, Su Manshu’s translation may seem reminiscent of wu yan lüshi 五言律詩 (pentasyllabic regulated verse), but a closer look into the tonal scheme indicates that the translation does not follow the tonal rules of regulated verse. In addition, the choice of words and the loose parallelism of the second and third couplets recall ancient-style poetry, creating a poetic mood similar to that of the Gushi Shijiu Shou 古詩十九首 (Nineteen Old Poems).
[1] As first published in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ed., Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: Printed for John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824), 217: https://archive.org/details/posthumouspoemso00shel/page/n5/mode/2up. [2] Su Manshu, Su Manshu quanji 蘇曼殊全集 (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo chubanshe, 2007), vol. 1, 56. [3] Red characters rhyme.
“Han xue shanji tu” 寒雪山雞圖 by Lü Ji 呂紀 (fl. late 15th century)
Picture credit: National Palace Museum, Taipei
Copyright Declaration*:
The texts and images used on the website of Rachelle's Lab are either from the public domain (e.g. Wikipedia), databases with open data licenses (e.g. Shuhua diancang ziliao jiansuo xitong 書畫典藏資料檢索系統, National Palace Museum, Taipei), online libraries that permit reasonable use (e.g. ctext.org), or original work created for this website.
Although fair use of the website for private non-profit purposes is permitted, please note that the website of Rachelle's Lab and its content (including but not limited to translations, blog posts, images, videos, etc.) are protected under international copyright law. If you want to republish, distribute, or make derivative work based on the website content, please contact me, the copyright owner, to get written permission first and make sure to link to the corresponding page when you use it.
版權聲明：
本站所使用的圖片，皆出自公有領域（如維基）、開放數據庫（如臺北故宮博物院書畫典藏資料檢索系統）、允許合理引用的在線圖書館（如中國哲學電子化計劃）及本人創作。本站允許對網站內容進行個人的、非營利性質的合理使用。但請注意，本站及其內容（包括但不限於翻譯、博文、圖像、視頻等）受國際版權法保護。如需基於博客內容進行出版、傳播、製作衍生作品等，請務必先徵求作者（本人）書面許可，并在使用時附上本站鏈接，註明出處。
*Read more about copyright and permission here.