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A quiet night—no neighbors anywhere:
I dwell in the wilderness, my family poor.
Within the rain, the trees have yellow leaves.
Beneath the lamp, this man has whitening hair.
Because I’m alone, I’ve long since sunk in sadness,
Ashamed you visit me so frequently.
But all my life, I’ve had a part of you—
It’s like this: we’re Cai Clan relatives.
喜外弟卢纶见宿
静夜四无邻，
荒居旧业贫。
雨中黄叶树，
灯下白头人。
以我独沉久，
愧君相访频。
平生自有分，
况是蔡家亲。
As in #146, this is a younger maternal cousin. This is the Lu Lun who wrote #145—put this and that poem together, and you can get quite the shippy triangle going. Annent that, lost in translation: the cousin is addressed with an honorific you, literally “my lord/prince.” Added in translation: in sadness, to explicate the type of “sinking.”
Nerdy grammar note: at this time, 是 had not developed the modern meaning “is,” but instead almost always is the pronoun “this,” often used as a coordinate pronoun. The last line illustrates the sort of constructions from which the modern meaning developed. As a result, if you use the modern meaning, you won’t misread it badly, except to make it read a bit more awkward than it actually is.
—L.
I dwell in the wilderness, my family poor.
Within the rain, the trees have yellow leaves.
Beneath the lamp, this man has whitening hair.
Because I’m alone, I’ve long since sunk in sadness,
Ashamed you visit me so frequently.
But all my life, I’ve had a part of you—
It’s like this: we’re Cai Clan relatives.
喜外弟卢纶见宿
静夜四无邻，
荒居旧业贫。
雨中黄叶树，
灯下白头人。
以我独沉久，
愧君相访频。
平生自有分，
况是蔡家亲。
As in #146, this is a younger maternal cousin. This is the Lu Lun who wrote #145—put this and that poem together, and you can get quite the shippy triangle going. Annent that, lost in translation: the cousin is addressed with an honorific you, literally “my lord/prince.” Added in translation: in sadness, to explicate the type of “sinking.”
Nerdy grammar note: at this time, 是 had not developed the modern meaning “is,” but instead almost always is the pronoun “this,” often used as a coordinate pronoun. The last line illustrates the sort of constructions from which the modern meaning developed. As a result, if you use the modern meaning, you won’t misread it badly, except to make it read a bit more awkward than it actually is.
—L.