312 t He F i v e Dy na s t i e s anD t He s ong Dy na s t y
no. 3 其三 (qí sān)
There has always been the long and short-lived, 從來有脩短 (cóng lái yŏu xiū duăn)
2 Who would dare ask azure heaven to explain? 豈敢問蒼天 (qĭ găn wèn cāng tiān)
I’ve seen all other men’s wives, 見盡人間婦 (jiàn jìn rén jiān fù)
4 None is as beautiful and good as she. 無如美且賢 (wú rú měi qiĕ xián)
All those dull people who live to old age, 譬令愚者壽 (pì lìng yú zhĕ shòu)
6 Why couldn’t she borrow some of their years? 何不假其年 (hé bù jiă qí nián)
How could such a treasure worth several cities 忍此連城寶 (rĕn cĭ lián chéng băo)
8 Be buried in the underworld of the Nine Springs? 沉埋向九泉 (chén mái xiàng jiŭ quán)
[QSS 5:14.2837–2838]Mei Yaochen (1002–1069), the author of this series of three poems, is known for
having broadened the subject matter of poetry to include topics that had been
viewed as too mundane and “common” to be fit for poetic treatment. He is also
known for having cultivated a plain style of language, relatively free from orna-
ment or literary pretension, that compliments the types of subjects he often wrote
about.
The poetic series, consisting of at least two poems and sometimes running up
to one hundred, is quite common in Chinese verse. Surely one reason poets used
it is that most verse forms in Chinese are short (eight lines or fewer) and preclude
treating a subject from more than a single perspective. The series allowed the poet
to do so. In “Lament for My Wife,” Mei Yaochen took advantage of this feature of
the series. Each poem has its own focus. The first presents the essential facts of
the tragedy that has befallen him, and his thoughts move from his wife’s untimely
death (she was thirty-seven and had been married to him, as he tells us, for seven-
teen years) to his own mortality. The second poem centers on his loneliness now
that she is gone. In fact, Mei Yaochen and his family were traveling by boat from
his provincial assignment back to the capital when his wife fell ill and died. One
of Mei Yaochen’s sons died shortly thereafter, presumably of the same sickness.
In the third poem, the poet reflects on the seeming unfairness of her fate. Having
opened with the thought that it is pointless to ask heaven why some die young
and others live long, Mei Yaochen proceeds to do just that. Obviously, he is still
unreconciled to her death and cannot get over the feeling that it should not have
happened. The “treasure” referred to in line 7 is the famous jade disk fashioned by
Bian He (ca. sixth century b.C.e.) in ancient times. The jade was so coveted by the
king of Qin that he offered fifteen cities for it to the king of the neighboring state
of Zhao.
When Mei Yaochen wrote this series of poems on his wife’s death, he was doing
something that earlier poets had done. The best-known precedents are those by
Pan Yue (247–300), included in the influential sixth-century anthology Wen xuan
(Anthology of Refined Literature), and Yuan Zhen (779–831), and it is instructive
to read Mei Yaochen’s poems against those earlier works. Both Pan Yue and Yuan
Zhen had waited for some time before writing their laments. Pan Yue’s poems are