文天祥·《金陵驿》英译

草合离宫转夕晖，孤云飘泊复何依？<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

山河风景原无异，城郭人民半已非。

满地芦花和我老，旧家燕子傍谁飞？

从今别却江南日，化作啼鹃带血归。

Written at the Jinling Hostel¹

Wen Tianxiang

O’ergrown with grass is the Imperial Villa²

Against the shifting sunset glow.

Now like a lone cloud drifting, am I sure

My orientation I still know?

The countryside, the landscape, indeed show

No difference from what they’re before,

But half the people in town and suburb

Are like they used to be no more.

Reed-catkins everywhere—in harmony

With my own gray old age in plight;

And swallows seeking their old homes in vain,

Where will they, hovering, alight?

From south of th’ Yangtse once I depart,

My spirit will only return transformed

Into the calling Cuckoo³—dripping blood from the heart.

1. On his way as a prisoner of war to the Yuan capital Yanjing, Wen Tianxiang had stopped in Jinling (now Nanjing, Jiangsu Province), at the Post Hostel. This poem was composed there.

2. Palacial residences outside the capital for the emperor’s short sojourn on his inspection tours around the country. There was one such in Jinling in the Southern Song Dynasty.

3. Du Yu, the legendary emperor of Shu (now chiefly Sichuan Province) at the end of Zhou Dynasty (11^th-3^rd century B.C.), fell in love with his prime minister’s wife. He died in frustration and his soul was incarnated into the bird cuckoo, which, in Chinese folklore, keeps singing on until blood drips out of its throat.