Half the window has a picture of the plum blossom moon, and one pillow is filled with the wind of wavy pine trees. It’s not that guests can’t sleep due to worries, the poetry of this mountain is in this fragrance.
Original text:
"Gift to My Congdi"
Wei and Jin Dynasties: Liu Zhen
There are pines on Tingting Mountain, and there is a stroke in Sese Valley.
The sound of the wind is so strong, and the pine branches are so strong.
The frost is miserable, but the whole year is always upright.
Wouldn’t it be cold? Pines and cypresses have their own nature.
Translation: Pine trees stand tall on the mountains, and the wind howls in the valleys. How fierce the wind is, and how strong the pine branches are! No matter how miserable the sky is with frost, the pine tree's waist will remain straight all year round. Could it be that the pine trees were not exposed to the severe cold? No, it’s because pines and cypresses are born with a cold-resistant nature!
Extended information
The whole poem is centered on the pine tree and is written in a concentrated and compact manner. Chanting is repeated, but it is not monotonous. The words are simple and unpretentious, the style is vigorous and the momentum is powerful. He does not focus on meticulous description, but is good at getting into the core of things layer by layer.
This poem is called "Gift to Brother", but there is no word about brotherhood. After reading it, we feel that we have a deep friendship and a close rapport with the poet. This is because the poet used symbolic techniques and used pine trees to symbolize his interests, sentiments and hopes. Natural things originally come and go on their own and have nothing to do with humans.
But once the poet injects his passionate eyes into the mountains, rivers, trees, wind, frost, thunder and lightning, and collides with certain features in nature that are similar to human beings, moving sparks will burst out. The use of this kind of symbolic technique was not uncommon before Liu Zhen, including Qu Yuan's "Ode to Orange", and after Liu Zhen, it became even more common and formed one of the traditional features of Chinese classical poetry.
It would be difficult for Liu Zhen to express his inner feelings directly, so he used the nobility of pine trees to express his feelings, in order to encourage himself and his disciples. Although there is not a single word about brotherhood in the whole poem, the extraneous meaning is more interesting to appreciate.