| 英譯： |
The fifth year of the new Son of Heaven,
The cyclic year keng-yin;
The season when the handle of the Dipper sticks into Aries,
The month when the pitch-pipe is Yellow Bell.
Ten thousand forest trees stood rigid in the night:
The cold air tensed and strained, solid and windless.
The glittering silver dish came up from the bottom of the sea,
Lighting as it came the east of my thatched cottage.
On heaven's smooth and violet surface the freezing light stopped flowing:
Rays from the ice pierced and crossed the cold glimmer of moonrise.
At first it seemed that a white lotus
Had floated up from the Dragon King's palace.
But this night, the fifteenth of the eighth month,
Was not like other nights;
For now a strange thing came to pass:
Something began to eat into the wheel.
The wheel was as though a strong man hacked off pieces with an axe,
The cassia was like a snowy peak dragged and tumbled by the wind.
The mirror refined a hundredfold
Till it shone right through to the gall
Suddenly was buried in cold ash:
The pearl of the fiery dragon
Which flew up out of its brain
Went back into the oyster's womb.
Ring and disc crumbled away as I watched,
Darkness smeared the whole sky like soot,
Rubbing out in an instant the last tracks,
And then it seemed that for thousands of ages the sky would never open.
Who would guess that a thing so magical
Could be so discomfited?
The stars came out like sprinkled sand
Disputing which could shine the brightest,
And the dim lamps lit by the servants
With a dusky glow like tortoiseshell
This night spat flames as long as the rainbow
Shooting from the houses through holes and cracks into a thousand roads.
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