c i P oe t ry : s Hor t s ong ly riC s 2594 Do what one may, blossoms will fall;
As if we knew each other, the swallows come back.
6 In the little garden I pace a fragrant path alone.
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浣溪沙 (huàn xī shā)
one tune new song lyric wine one cup 一曲新詞酒一杯 △ (yì qŭ xīn cí jiŭ yì bēi)
last year weather weather old pond terrace 去年天氣舊池臺 (qù nián tiān qì jiù chí tái)
sunset sun west descend what time return 夕陽西下幾時回 △ (xī yáng xī xià jĭ shí huí )
without can bear what flower fall go 無可奈何花落去 (wú kě nài hé huā luò qù)
as if before each other know swallow return come 似曾相識燕歸來 △ (sì céng xiāng shí yàn guī lái)
small garden fragrant path alone pace pace 小園香徑獨徘徊 △ (xiăo yuán xiāng jìng dú pái huái)
The even, seven-character lines of this ci might suggest a similarity to regulated
verse, except for the number of lines (six) and the absence of parallelism in the first
stanza. All three lines of the first stanza are independent strophes disconnected
from one another, so that the reader must construct the relationship between
them. Were the new tune and the cup of new wine situated at the old pond terrace
last year, or are they in the present? Is the sunset of line 3 happening now, or is it
remembered? Or, again, is the sunset adopted simply as a philosophical emblem
of the past and of loss? In contrast to the relative discontinuity of these three lines,
the first two lines of the second stanza are, in fact, a very well regarded parallel
couplet, complete with tonal opposition.
The thoughts of the speaker, who paces alone on the fallen blossoms that make
the path fragrant, remain veiled. The only explicit reference to the speaker’s situa-
tion is in the word “alone,” but several other elements lead us to read this as a
poem about separation grief (notably, a common theme of shi poetry). There is the
practice of sending off a friend with a cup of wine, the recollection of something
that happened “last year,” the question of when something or someone (the sun or
the friend) will come back, the return of the swallows. But the emotion remains at
arm’s length, as vague as the sense of familiarity aroused by the swallows: “as if we
knew each other.”
If each line of the first stanza is disconnected from the next, each line of the sec-
ond stanza approaches the speaker’s emotion from a different direction. Yan Shu’s
poem addresses its subject from without, leaving an empty space at the center
where the complaint (yuan) remains unspoken.
In conclusion, it may be useful to review some characteristics of the shorter, xiao-
ling, ci poems, which have been the subject of this chapter. Generally consisting
of two stanzas (although some have only one), the poems are structurally simpler
than the more elaborate manci (chap. 13). Often the break between stanzas marks
a move from past to present, from interior to exterior, from speech to scene, or
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