135

From the “Nineteen Old Poems” Green, Green Riverside Grass

Anonymous (Han)

Green, green riverside grass,

Lush, lush willow in the garden,

Sleek, sleek a girl upstairs,

White, white faces her window.

Fair, fair her rouge and powder face,

Slim, slim she shows her white hand.

Once I was a singing-house girl,

Now I am a playboy’s wife.

A playboy roves, never comes home,

My empty bed is hard to keep alone.

Translated by Anne Birrell

 

This is the second of the celebrated “Nineteen Old Poems,” an anonymous set of fine poems in the new pentasyllabic form evidently dating from the Eastern Han period, although eight of them have been attributed to Mei Ch’eng of the Western Han period (see selection 124). It was imitated numerous times by later poets in succeeding centuries.