Lovely Lady

I Had To Read This For My AP World History Class...

It is a poem written by Du Fu, a Confucian man sometimes considered as China's greatest poet.

Lovely lady, fairest of the time

hiding away in an empty valley;

daughter of a good house, she said,

fallen now among grasses of the wood.

"There was tumult and death within the passes then;

my brothers, old and young, all killed.

Office position -- what help were they?

I couldn't even gather up my brothers' bones!

The world despises you when your luck is down;

all I had went with the turn of the flame.

My husband was a fickle fellow,

his new girl as fair as jade.

Blossoms that close at dusk keep faith with the hour,

mandarin ducks will not rest apart;

but he could only see the new one laughing;

never hear the former one's tears--"

Wthin the mountain the stream runs clear;

out of the mountain it turns to mud.

Her maid returns from selling a pearl,

braids vines to mend their roof of thatch.

The lady picks a flower but does not put it in 

her hair,

gathers juniper berries, sometimes a handful.

When the sky is cold, in thin azure sleeves,

at dusk she stands leaning by the tall bamboo.