ChineseStudy

4. Tune: Imperial Street Walk (Fan Zhongyan)

Contents

Text

English translation

Leaves drift onto the fragrant stone steps. In the still night, their cold, broken rustle is all that can be heard. The pearl curtain is raised, but the jade-like chamber stands empty; the pale sky lets the Milky Way seem to trail down to earth. Each year on this night, moonlight lies bright as silk, while the beloved remains a thousand miles away.

Grief has already broken the heart, leaving no way to drink oneself into forgetfulness; before the wine reaches the lips, tears have come. A dying lamp flickers beside the tilted pillow, and the speaker knows loneliness in sleep all too well. This sorrow settles on brow and heart alike, with nowhere to escape it.

词句注释 · Notes

上片 · First stanza

上片以落叶声衬夜静，再写卷帘后空楼与银河，空间由近及远。月色年年相似，人的距离却无法缩短；“长是人千里”把景物中的清冷落到离别处境。

The stanza begins with the rustle of leaves against deep silence, then moves from an empty room to the Milky Way. The moon returns each year, but distance does not lessen; the last phrase turns the cool scenery into the fact of separation.

下片 · Second stanza

下片从饮酒无效写到残灯孤枕，把难眠落实为眼前细节。“眉间心上”兼写外在神情与内在愁思；结尾不是抽象感叹，而是指出离愁无处可避。

The stanza shows that wine cannot blunt grief, then anchors sleeplessness in the flickering lamp and solitary pillow. “On the brow and in the heart” joins visible expression to inward pain; the ending states that sorrow has no place from which it can be avoided.

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