Li Shangyin

Oh, when shall we be trimming wicks again together in your western window?
When shall I be hearing your voice again all night in the rain?

Li Shangyin (Chinese: 李商隐, c. 813–858), courtesy name Yishan (義山), was a Chinese poet of the late Tang Dynasty.

Quotes

• 君问归期未有期，巴山夜雨涨秋池。
  何当共剪西窗烛，却话巴山夜雨时。
  • You ask when I'm coming: alas, not just yet......
    How the rain filled the pools on that night when we met!
    Ah, when shall we ever snuff candles again,
    And recall the glad hours of that evening of rain?
    • "Souvenirs" (《夜雨寄北》), in Gems of Chinese Literature, trans. Herbert A. Giles
  • Variant translation:
    • You ask me when I am coming. I do not know.
      I dream of your mountains and autumn pools brimming all night with the rain.
      Oh, when shall we be trimming wicks again together in your western window?
      When shall I be hearing your voice again all night in the rain?
      • "A Note on a Rainy Night", in Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty, trans. Witter Bynner

• 留得残荷听雨声。
  • Leave the withered lotus to hear the patter of rain.
    • As quoted in Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760) by Cao Xueqin, ch. 40, translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang in A Dream of Red Mansions, Vol. II (Foreign Languages Pr., 1978), p. 1129

• Literature endures, like the universal spirit,
  And its breath becomes a part of the vitals of all men.
  • As quoted in The Jade Mountain (1929) by Witter Bynner, p. viii

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Li Shangyin at Wikipedia
• Poems by Li Shang-yin at Poem Hunter