Thin wine, yet it can flush the face.
Coarse cloth, yet it can keep off the cold.
Plain wife, yet in poverty we find joy.
Life is but a vain sorrow, the road is hard;
If desires don't stray outward, the heart finds peace within.
Why strive with utmost cunning for wealth and rank?
It's like a monkey washing itself, seeking a thorn's tip.
Have you not seen the poor scholar, steadfast in his integrity,
With books piled before him, sitting content by his jar-window?
Hemp fields can provide clothes, sorghum fields can yield wine.
Mending clothes with needle and thread, urging on the cup, beating the earthen jar.
With his wife who shares his humble lot, he relies on her companionship.
No one glares in anger, no affairs drag him by the elbow.
This boundless joy is far from exhausted,
A single body easily content within heaven and earth.
East in the lane, there's Master Bi,
In joy, how can he be the same?
His house is quite grand with pavilions,
His garden too has flowers and plants.
When we meet, we open the wine jar at once,
Stroking my beard, I pour out my heart.
Orchids fragrant, chrysanthemums fair, plums hold spring's promise,
Brushing green, evening red, each in its own way fine.
Lacking love, one might still give a hempen robe,
For drunkenness, why not capsize the headgear?
Master Bi, my joy is joy at ease.
A cup shared with my wife, coarse clothes covering my body.
Your joy, Master Bi, is joy in surplus,
Singing girls can be charming and graceful.
Wine vessels answer to your beck and call,
In the land of drunken ease, spacious and idle, I too can partake.
If served by beauties that topple cities like Golden Valley,
And drinking the nine-brewed liquor of Yicheng,
Clad in fox-white, wrapped in silken robes,
Singing at dawn, feasting at dusk, in extreme revelry and pleasure,
Gluttonous, sluggish, proud before wife and children,
Outwardly rich and glossy, inwardly withered and dry.
I do not wish for what they have, just as they do not envy me.
Master Bi, you are of my kind,
Singing wildly, rising to dance,
Toasting in turn, urging each other on.
Indeed, unaware of the beauty of Nanwei or the ugliness of Momu,
Or the nobility of dragon robes versus the lowliness of short hemp.
They pride in their possessions,
Like vinegar flies skimming the sky.
Greedy in their grasping,
Like snails locked in combat.
All the more I know the heart's contentment and joy,
No endless roads,
No burning within,
No broad thoroughfares.
Master Bi, you lead, I follow, reed pipe answers to panpipe.
In later years, fulfilling my original wish,
Old, why not sing the song of return?
In the dust of the world, no expansive feelings,
Yet among men, there are shared delights.
The aspirations from all four directions,
Now a single nest can be prepared.
Nor do I wish for beams of gold, pillars of cassia,
But a thatched cottage of three rooms near where you dwell.