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The cassia sprouts two or three new branches,
The orchid opens four or five new petals.
It’s time—and yet my lord has not returned;
The spring wind’s disciple is this laughing one.
鲍令晖寄行人一首
桂吐两三枝，
兰开四五叶。
是时君不归，
春风徒笑妾。
The speaker uses the humble pronoun used by women, rendered as "this one". "New" is interpretive padding in both of the first two lines, added to fill out the meter (even though I don't even come close to regular in the last line). It might be more idiomatic to render "two or three" as "a few" and "four or five" as "several," but that weakens the clear progression. In modern Mandarin, the tree literally "vomits" the branches, which is … startling. Bao Linghui, a younger sister of renowned poet Bao Zhao, flourished around 464.
---L.
The orchid opens four or five new petals.
It’s time—and yet my lord has not returned;
The spring wind’s disciple is this laughing one.
鲍令晖寄行人一首
桂吐两三枝，
兰开四五叶。
是时君不归，
春风徒笑妾。
The speaker uses the humble pronoun used by women, rendered as "this one". "New" is interpretive padding in both of the first two lines, added to fill out the meter (even though I don't even come close to regular in the last line). It might be more idiomatic to render "two or three" as "a few" and "four or five" as "several," but that weakens the clear progression. In modern Mandarin, the tree literally "vomits" the branches, which is … startling. Bao Linghui, a younger sister of renowned poet Bao Zhao, flourished around 464.
---L.