In the mountains, the joy of longing for home
Is all expressed as cries of homesickness.
You are birds of this mountain,
How can you bear the name 'lost home'?
It must be because this mountain path
Has seen travelers depart since ancient times.
Gloomy sorrow stirs the harmonious air,
Making you produce such sounds.
Though I have left my hometown,
I have not lost the feeling for it.
Joy and sorrow lie within the heart,
What can glory or disgrace startle?
A floating life dwells in the vast world,
A few feet suffice to lodge the form.
When the body is at ease, the form is happy,
Why find joy only in the capital?
Life is the root of the Way,
Death is Heaven's balance.
Why ask about far or near,
Or speak of short-lived or long-lived?
Look at Minister Zhao,
Eighty years old, yet light of limb.
Twenty years in Jiaozhou,
Then once to Chang'an city.
In Chang'an but a moment,
He set off again for Jiaozhou.
More years in Jiaozhou passed,
Then moved to guard Guang and Jing.
Returning to court under a new emperor,
He stands prominent among high ministers.
His skin bears no miasmic hue,
His diet is healthy and peaceful.
In Chang'an, within a day and night,
The dead fall like shooting stars.
Hearses exit from the four gates—
What has this to do with miasma's cling?
Moreover, I am but thirty-two,
Not halfway through a hundred years.
The road to Jiangling is near,
Chu's customs, clouds and waters clear.
I long imagine the Jade Spring Temple,
Long have I heard of Xian Mountain's Pavilion.
This journey will be full of experience,
How could I lack heart for appreciation?
Red berries daily fill my belly,
Green streams each morning clear my head.
Open the door to await guests,
Send letters to reassure brothers.
At leisure, exhaust the four tones' rhymes,
In boredom, read through the nine divisions of scriptures.
All outside the self is to be accepted,
Before my eyes, I follow what I pursue.
This resolve has long been fixed,
Who can seek temporary glory?
Therefore my office is very small,
I do not fear the tilt of power.
To devote one's heart is not hard,
Cunning deceit is the gods' punishment.
All things have their innate nature,
How much more the human spirit!
Gold buried shows no color of earth,
Jade fallen makes no sound of tile.
A broken sword still has an inch of sharpness,
A shattered mirror still holds a shard of brightness.
I can be captured as a prisoner,
I can be slain as a soldier.
But my heart will never die,
It pierces metal and stone with sincerity.
This sincerity fears not arriving,
When sincerity arrives, the Way also prospers.
How trivial, the birds all over the mountain—
Their noisy cries are not worth hearing.