<Header>
<Author: 李商隱>
<Title: 錦瑟>
<Format: 七言律詩>
<Year: 1940>
<BookName: Selection from the Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty>
<Translator: Soame Jenyns>
<TranslatedTitle: The Inlaid Lute>
<BookPage: 109-110>
<UsedPage: 2>
<Feature: 4>
<End Header>
<Poem>
錦瑟無端五十絃，
一絃一柱思華年。
莊生曉夢迷蝴蝶，
望帝春心託杜鵑。
滄海月明珠有淚，
藍田日暖玉生煙。
此情可待成追憶，
只是當時已惘然。
<End Poem>
<Translation>
THE brocade-embroidered lute had fifty strings, no one knows why;
Each string and each support made one think of the years of one’s prime.
Chuang Tzŭ dreamt at morning he was a butterfly.
After death, the soul of the Emperor Wang took up its brief springtime abode in the body of a nightjar,
While in the wide ocean under the bright moon the mermaids drop their tears which become pearls.
Why at Lan T‘ien in the warm sunshine does jade engender mists?
Can we hope for these kinds of portents to come again?
Or are they only things that had form once but have vanished away?
<End Translation>