Lord Li's Lyrical Poem, #3

This is a poem on Autumn. Some say that Lord Li wrote this for his first queen, Empress Zhou. The lines follow her from early in the morning, as she did her hair, to late at night that day, as she sleeplessly sat by the window making sighs.

Empress Zhou was a famous beauty at her time. She was engaged to Lord Li when they were both at the age of 18, she died at the age of 28. She was an extraordinarily good Pipa player and dancer, an expert on perfume making and was very interested in poetry as well. Their 10 years of marriage left us many a uniquely touching love poem. This is believed to be one of them.

But some commentators claim, that by describing the sleepless beauty, the poet was actually expressing his own worry and upset. The poem was written shortly after his enthronement in 962, when Southern China under his reign was facing severe military threats from the north, as well as numerous economic and political problems from within.

There had been a long tradition of using the image of a beauty to express the writer's own feelings and thoughts in Chinese literature. It is highly likely that Lord Li here did the same thing. He was an unmatchably talented poet and musician, yet he was barely competent as a politician, let alone a ruler. The passive attitude of avoiding the troubles and hiding into his own creative world comes up again and again in his works.

This romantic detour from reality inspired many of his famous poems, while leading to the fall of his Kingdom in the end.


Through your thick hair a jade pin goes by,

like a spindle,

weaving together the dark clouds in the sky.

You put on a light colored shirt,

and a thin silk skirt.

You paint your eyebrows dusky brown,

those gentle curves,

for some reason they always frown.


Across the thin bamboo curtain,

whistles the Autumn wind,

on the wide banana leaves,

echoes the Autumn rain.

And the raindrops trickle on,

throughout the sleepless night.

While all you can do my love,

is sitting by the cold window,

with a long and faint sigh.