Partridges represent separation, sadness, love and lovesickness in poetry. Partridges are birds, and are as famous as cuckoos, mandarin ducks, swallows, swan geese, etc., all of which are favored by poetry. Most prolific in the south, it is shaped like a hen and cries: "Brother, brother". The song is sad and sad, and the male and female like to sing in pairs.
One is parting. "The Song of Xiangjiang River" written by Zhang Ji of the Tang Dynasty: "The Xiang River is broad in autumn when there is no tide, and the moon sets in the middle of Hunan. Passengers send their hair. Send people's hair, send them back, and partridges fly in the vast expanse of white duckweeds." The image of partridge is used to express the sorrow of separation.
The second is sadness. Because of its mournful sound, it often represents difficult situations and melancholy moods. You Dong of the Qing Dynasty wrote in "Hearing the Partridge": "In the sound of partridges, the sun is setting in the west, and the heads of soldiers on the roads are all bowed. The mountains are blocked all over the place, so for whom are they crowing to their heart's content?" In the sound of partridges, people on the road are walking in front of the road. It is unpredictable and the miserable desperation is evident. The image of "partridge" that appears in ancient poems often conveys a sense of sadness. For example, in Li Bai's "Looking at the Past in Yue Zhong", "The palace ladies are like flowers filling the spring palace, but now only partridges are flying."
The third is love. Because the male and female like to sing to each other and sing in harmony, it is often used as a metaphor for the husband's singing and the wife's following, and the man's joy and the woman's love. The image is like "swallow" and "mandarin duck". Liu Yuxi of the Tang Dynasty wrote "Treading Lyrics": "The moon rises over the spring river on the embankment, and the girls walk hand in hand on the embankment. I sing all the new lyrics of "happy but not seen", and the red clouds reflect the trees and the partridges sing." Use the harmony of the partridges to complement "happy but not seen" The loneliness. For example, the partridges in Wen Tingyun and Li Xun's poem "Bodhisattva Man" all have this image, such as "double golden partridges", "double flying partridges", etc., to mention a few.
The fourth is lovesickness. Caused by love, the pain of separation and sadness arise spontaneously, which is the culmination of the above. Li Yi's "Partridge Ci": "The bamboo branches of the Xiang River are mottled, and the golden-winged partridges fly. The Xiangyun is everywhere, where does the man return from?" The woman in the boudoir misses her lover far away. The pain of lovesickness is implicit and rhyming.