The translation of "Commander Bie Zicai" by Fang Yue of the Northern Song Dynasty is: Eighty-nine out of ten things experienced in life are not satisfactory, and there are even fewer things that can be said to others. None. I know my talents but there is no place to display them. Only in dreams can I feel the pride of galloping on the battlefield.
The original text is as follows:
Unsatisfactory things often happen, but they are the same as the speaker.
I know myself as a talented scholar in Jingmen, and I dream of galloping an iron horse to fight in the south of the city.
1. Speaker: tell others.
2. Knowledge: acquaintance, understanding.
3. Fu: a good name for men in ancient times.
4. Iron horse: a war horse wearing an iron frame.
5. South of the city: This refers to the battlefield where the fighting is fierce.
Extended information:
"Farewell Commander" by Fang Yue of the Northern Song Dynasty is a farewell poem.
The first two sentences of the poem lament that life is difficult and good friends are rare. People often encounter many setbacks or tribulations in their lives. "Unfortunate things often happen" expresses a sigh of difficulty in life and also contains a touch of helplessness. There are always some related and contradictory entanglements between people, resulting in many secrets that are inconvenient to talk to others. "There are no two or three people who can talk to each other" expresses a feeling of human isolation and the difficulty of finding a true friend.
These two sentences form an inverse contrast with the contrast between "things often go wrong as expected" and "can be as good as the speaker", which makes the main idea more prominent. The last two sentences say that he has met a close friend, and the difficulties in the past have been eliminated, and he often has the pride of galloping on the battlefield in his dreams.
The couplet "Unsatisfactory things often happen, but the speaker is the same", which has been common in operas and novels since the Yuan and Ming dynasties, is also quoted from Fang Yue's poem "Bie Zicai Commander".