In the Jin, year Guichou, late spring, the Orchid Pavilion first convened.
Gathering sages, facing steep peaks and lofty hills, with lush woods, tall bamboos, and flowing streams.
Unfettered feelings, though lacking strings or flutes, a cup, a verse—a day so fine.
Within the cosmos vast, the mind roams free, such joy is truly sweet.
Consider how life's fellows cast off form.
Or in a room, words shared, the bosom opens wide.
Stillness and stir differ, yet in their fitting hour, delight ignores old age's approach.
But weariness, where next to go?
Feelings shift with events, sorrows intertwine.
In a glance, past traces often turn to dust.
Moreover, scenes agreed upon will change, all ends in cessation—long years, brief days, how many remain?
Vainly, the ancient shifts to now, time fades, matter transforms—O grief, none greater than life and death.
Each time I read old texts and mourn the past, a sigh arises.
And I lament my own heart's failure to grasp it.
Counting Peng's age or early death—both empty, equal in the end.
Today viewing the past is like a tally; later views of now will mirror this.
Thus I briefly record what contemporaries tell, imagining times and matters changed.
Those who come after, reading these words, will drift in thought, moved by this scene.