Presented to Meng Haoran, Li Bai (Tang Shi #100)

[lnhammer]

I do adore you, Master Meng,
Whose fame is heard by all under heaven.
Red cheeked, you cast off crowns and carriages—
White haired, you lie with pines and clouds.
Drunk in moonlight, often enraptured—
Charmed by flowers, not affairs of princes.
Who can look up to so high a peak?
Disciple bows to your pure spirit.

赠孟浩然
吾爱孟夫子，
风流天下闻。
红颜弃轩冕，
白首卧松云。
醉月频中圣，
迷花不事君。
高山安可仰？
徒此挹清芬。

Li Bai’s reputation is not for his regulated verse, but he could pull it off with flair when he wanted/needed to. We’ve already met another poem of his written to Meng in #268. As for the affairs of princes, Meng famously made only one abortive attempt at getting a government position before retiring to his hometown. Idioms: enraptured is literally “holy” as in intoxicated—a figure that appears frequently from other poets as well as Li Bai—and his spirit is “fragrance.”

—L.

Comments

[sartorias]

LOVE LOVE LOVE

[lnhammer]

I don't have many samples yet, but my impression is that Li Bai is much more free-flowing in his handling of the middle couplets than most poets. Instead of stopping the action for a couple full-stopped lines of (hopefully telling) details, he continues the sense forward while maintaining the required grammatical parallels. Something I want to study and learn from.