Remembering that not having had news of me for so long, you might be in some anxiety with regard to me, I have hastened to set your mind at rest by recording these three consolations. What else I have to tell shall be set out in due order, as follows....[7]
Wei-chih, Wei-chih! The night I wrote this letter I was sitting at the mountain-window of my thatched hut. I let my brush run as my hand willed and wrote at hazard as my thoughts came. When I folded it and addressed it, I found that dawn had come. I raised my head and saw only a few mountain-priests, some sitting, some sleeping. I heard the mournful cries of mountain apes and the sad twitterings of valley birds. O friend of all my life, parted from me by a thousand leagues, at such times as this “dim thoughts of the World”[8] creep upon me for a while; so, following my ancient custom, I send you these three couplets:
I remember how once I wrote you a letter sitting in the Palace at night,
At the back of the Hall of Golden Bells, when dawn was coming in the sky.
This night I fold your letter—in what place?
Sitting in a cottage on Lu Shan, by the light of a late lamp.
The caged bird and fettered ape are neither of them dead yet;
In the world of men face to face will they ever meet again?
O Wei-chih, Wei-chih! This night, this heart—do you know them or not? Lo-t‘ien bows his head.
[1] Other name of Po Chü-i.
[2] Other name of Yüan Chēn.
[3] The extreme North and South of China.
[4] A poet, several of whose short poems are well-known.
[5] The son of Po Chü-i‘s uncle Po Ch‘i-k‘ang.
[6] A famous mountain near Kiu-kiang.