Morning light like flight is still tolerable,
Evening watches like arrows allow no lying down.
In Qianwei, the city's water clock drips frequent,
Each and every one passes by the pillow.
One night, how many watches?
One watch, how many sounds?
Youth vainly ages in the mirror,
White hair emptily grows from sorrow.
Once I glimpsed the east neighbor girl in the capital,
Comparing herself to a peach blossom, promised in the mirror.
One morning she married a garrison soldier,
Shouldered spear, gone a thousand miles to guard autumn frontiers.
Leaving, they thought it days or months,
After parting, life or death both unknown.
Wind startled the rouge into her cicada-wing hair,
Sorrow sent the mirror's flower secretly falling from the branch.
The year before, going out on a Chang'an road,
I saw a woman, head snow-white.
At noon, leaning on a staff resting in tree shade,
Vaguely her appearance seemed familiar.
To me she sighed and spoke alone,
"Once I lived next door to your family.
Back then I married a garrison man,
Often over the wall I mocked my lord husband."
Flowers bloom, leaves fall, how time shifts,
Counting on fingers, it must be thirty years.
Eyebrows like garlic leaves, same as withered leaves,
Vermilion strings on the lute become broken strings.
The precious mirror from her wedding still exists,
Magpie shadow, water chestnut flower, full of light.
In dreams she long sighs over many separations,
In sorrow, unaware her face has changed.
Sighing, how much can a human life hold?
Glad your appearance has not been wasted.
Because you dismounted and looked back at me,
I ask to play the Heartbreak Song of Qingmen.