P e n ta s y l l a biC Sh i P oe t ry : t He “ni ne t e e n ol D P oe m s ” 105either the Three Hundred Poems [Book of Poetry] or the Lyrics of Chu.”1 In the “Nine-
teen Old Poems,” this all-important theme is explored from the contrasting per-
spectives of the abandoned woman and the wandering man.
Poems 1, 2, 8, 9, 17, 18, and 19 are poems of the abandoned woman. Here, aban-
doned women lament the misery of separation and dwell on the sorrow of aging.
These two motifs figure prominently in poem 1:
C 5. 1
No. 1, On and On, Again On and On [You Go]On and on, again on and on [you go], 行行重行行 (xíng xíng chóng xíng xíng)
2 I cannot but live apart from you. 與君生别離 (yŭ jūn shēng bié lí)
The distance has grown ten thousand li^ and more, 相去萬餘里 (xiāng qù wàn yú lĭ)
4 We are now at opposite ends of the sky. 各在天一涯 (gè zài tiān yì yá)
The road is rugged and long, 道路阻且長 (dào lù zŭ qiĕ cháng)
6 How can I know when we shall meet again? 會面安可知 (huì miàn ān kĕ zhī)
The Tartar horse leans into the north wind, 胡馬依北風 (hú mă yī bĕi fēng)
8 The Yue bird nests among southern branches. 越鳥巢南枝 (yuè niăo cháo nán zhī)
Day by day our parting seems more remote, 相去日已遠 (xiāng qù rì yĭ yuăn)
10 Day by day robe and belt grow looser. 衣帶日已緩 (yī dài rì yĭ huăn)
Drifting clouds hide the white sun, 浮雲蔽白日 (fú yún bì bái rì)
12 The wanderer does not care to return. 遊子不顧反 (yóu zĭ bú gù făn)
Thinking of you makes one old, 思君令人老 (sī jūn lìng rén lăo)
14 Years and months are suddenly gone. 嵗月忽已晚 (suì yuè hū yĭ wăn)
Forget all this—I will say no more about it, 棄捐勿復道 (qì juān wù fù dào)
16 But try my utmost to eat my meals. 努力加餐飯 (nŭ lì jiā cān fàn)
[WX 29.1343]
This poem begins with a poignant moment of reflection by an abandoned
woman. Instead of recounting the story of her husband’s departure, she merely
utters: “On and on, again on and on [you go].” With a doubling of the reduplicative
binome “on and on” (xing xing), she conveys how painful it was to watch her hus-
band disappear down the long road and picture him moving from place to place
on his outbound journey. Then, in lines 3 and 4, she tells us that the journey’s
completion did not end her misery but actually led to another kind of waiting—the
wait for him to return. That proves even more painful than enduring his outbound
trip, since she cannot know when (if ever) he will return. So she sighs, “The road is
rugged and long, / How can I know when we shall meet again?” Apparently what
affects her the most is not so much her husband’s physical separation as her pain-
ful awareness of the slow passage of time, measured by her endless yearning for
his return.
In the second half of the poem the speaker begins to reflect on time’s passage
by measuring it against her own lifespan. Up to line 10, her sense of time is mea-
sured by unhappy events. Time seems to drag because she yearns for an end to the