In life, we often dreamed of each other,
Not knowing we truly knew one another.
Now separated by the dark and light realms,
Dream-souls strive in vain.
Well aware dreams are useless,
If not in dreams, when to meet?
What night is tonight?
Dreaming of meeting you.
Faintly, your old dress and adornments,
Dim, your former face and bearing.
Not speaking of the gap of life and death,
Only saying we must part.
Taking apart broken needlework,
Folding old bed curtains.
Caressing the child, urging again and again,
Tears falling in thousands.
Urging: only this daughter,
Sighing you never had a son.
Still mindful she's tender and naive,
Cannot endure cold and hunger.
You again are careless in affairs,
Attending to yourself still neglectful.
Moreover bound by official duties,
How can long care for private matters?
Others parting while alive,
Servants often deceive.
With you here, perhaps there was reliance,
Going out, to whom should she be entrusted?
Finished speaking, weeping choked sobs,
I too shed streaming tears.
Shocked by grief, suddenly awake,
Sitting or lying like mad, dazed.
Moonlight half the bed dark,
Insect sounds in deep grass shift.
Mind and soul arise in sequence,
Long doubting waking from dream.
Silent, deeply imagining,
Tears fall like melting ice.
A hundred years, forever parted,
One dream, why so grievous?
Grieve for your beloved daughter,
Abandoned, not following me.
Chang'an farther than the sun,
Mountains and rivers among clouds.
Even if I grew wings,
Nets and snares would bind me.
Tonight tears fall scattered,
Half from the pain of parting in life.
Moved by your spirit beneath the springs,
Stirs my thoughts by the river.
One river cannot be crossed,
The Yellow Springs, moreover boundless.
How can this feeling end?
How pursue this dream?
Sitting till dawn about to break,
River wind chants in the tree branches.