foxam's bid
Wine untouched and prose barely drafted,
Let me make a spring outing to Penglai first.
I want no dew in Buddha's porcelain vase,
But ask for the immaculate plum from Lady Frost.
The snowy redness was carried away by the temporal chill,
And the flower left part of its indifferent fragrance here like cloud in purple .
But who loves the poet's shoulders, as thin as the branches, most?
My tainted clothes tells me it's the mosses in her temple.
H. Bencraft Joly's version,
The wine bottle is not opened, the line is not put into shape,
To fairyland I speed to seek for spring, and 12th moon to find.(???)
I will not beg the high god for a bottle of dew,
But pray Shuang O to give some plum bloom beyond the rails.
I come to the world and, in the cold, I pick out some red snow.
I leave the dusty sphere and speed to pluck the fragrant purple clouds.
I bring a jagged, but who in pity sings my shoulders thin?
On my clothes still sticketh the moss from yon Buddhistic court.
David Hawkes' version,
Wine not yet broached nor verses yet composed,
In quest of spring I sped to Elysium.
Twas not the balm from Guanyin's vase I craved,
Across the threshold, but her plum.
A frozen worldling, for red flowers I begged;
The saint cut fragrant cloud and gave me some.
Pity my verse so angular and thin,
For the convent snow has soaked to the skin!
【本文翻译仅为外语学习及阅读目的，原文作者个人观点与译者及译言网无关】
