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(A repost with significant revisions.)
Only we who are posted far from home
Are so surprised by these fresh signs of the season:
White clouds, red clouds—dawn sets out from the sea ...
Plum trees and willows—spring moves across the river ...
The lovely weather prompts the oriole ...
The clearing sunlight turns the duckweed green ...
Then suddenly I hear an old song’s tune
And think of home, wanting to dry my tears.
和晋陵路丞早春游望
独有宦游人，
偏惊物候新。
云霞出海曙，
梅柳渡江春。
淑气催黄鸟，
晴光转绿苹。
忽闻歌古调，
归思欲沾巾。
The “matching” game is replying to a previous poem using the same rhyme words (which, as a reminder, are all the even lines for this form), also sometimes called “harmonizing” with it. In this case, the first poem is lost. Written in the extreme south, while in exile-by-provincial-demotion in what’s now northern Vietnam. Idiom: dry my eyes is literally “wet a cloth.” (The poet, a founder of the Tang style as we know it, also happens to have been the grandfather of Du Fu.)
---L.
Only we who are posted far from home
Are so surprised by these fresh signs of the season:
White clouds, red clouds—dawn sets out from the sea ...
Plum trees and willows—spring moves across the river ...
The lovely weather prompts the oriole ...
The clearing sunlight turns the duckweed green ...
Then suddenly I hear an old song’s tune
And think of home, wanting to dry my tears.
和晋陵路丞早春游望
独有宦游人，
偏惊物候新。
云霞出海曙，
梅柳渡江春。
淑气催黄鸟，
晴光转绿苹。
忽闻歌古调，
归思欲沾巾。
The “matching” game is replying to a previous poem using the same rhyme words (which, as a reminder, are all the even lines for this form), also sometimes called “harmonizing” with it. In this case, the first poem is lost. Written in the extreme south, while in exile-by-provincial-demotion in what’s now northern Vietnam. Idiom: dry my eyes is literally “wet a cloth.” (The poet, a founder of the Tang style as we know it, also happens to have been the grandfather of Du Fu.)
---L.