A fresh breeze carries pleasant thoughts,
Those who meet it find a moment's joy.
Yet it cannot relieve hunger or thirst,
It merely flutters the lapels of one's robe.
All things are valued for their usefulness,
But poetry, when judged by use, has none.
A poem finished, I chant it to myself,
In dejection, perhaps a glimmer of hope dawns.
One's person and reputation do not intertwine,
The two are like stars Shen and Shang, forever apart.
Slowly, fair judgment will come,
Spanning vast ages, enduring for a hundred generations.
For the man himself, it brings no benefit,
Only the overgrown grass upon his grave.
Who knows, in the annals of history,
Whose fragrance will truly be remembered?
Yet it is enough to chasten worldly customs,
To say, 'Herein lies an undying light.'
In life, his writings were deemed verbose, scraps of paper,
Like weeds among the grain.
Only after his time did they flourish greatly,
Every household treasuring verses like stars in the Milky Way.
If you wish to know such men,
In recent times, think of Su and Huang.
As for the deeds of harsh officials,
Truly, they are not rare or strange events.
Common fellows come before me,
With words they have no way to express.
Their folly is best left alone,
Why then should one be angered?
Do not be like the solitary Bamboo Prince,
Who marked the bounds of life within the cosmos.
Not only befriending woodcutters and herdsmen,
But vast and obscure, blurring the lines of kin and stranger.
Birds do not disrupt their flight formations,
Beasts do not disturb their own herds.
In the mountains, it is a lofty ambition,
Out of the mountains, it becomes a mere blade of grass.
It is not enough to wither a Xie An,
But perhaps fitting to describe a Yin Hao.
For he, too, had his cherished thoughts,
Not necessarily expressed in gaunt and withered verse.