Song of Everlasting Sorrow
The Song of Everlasting Sorrow is a poem dating from the time of the Dragonblooded Shogunate, by the renowned poet Bai Juyi. It is considered a classic of Shogunate narrative poetry, ability to recite it considered a sign of culture, its tale and imagery inspiring numerous derivative works from tapestries to gardens to plays (the most well-regarded of which is the Palace of Eternal Life). The poem, based on historic events, tells the story of a Shogun who falls into passionate love with a concubine, failing to pay attention to her responsibilities, resulting in corrupt favoritism, increasing unrest, her ouster from power, and refusal of her troops to fight for her serve until they put the concubine (blamed for the deteriorating situation) to death. In love, though her armies are re-invigorated and retake the capital, the Shogun pines for her lost consort, whose spirit has passed into eternal ghostly sorrow. The lesson of the poem is that romantic love is a terrible shadow upon one’s heart… it causes one to lose sight of what is truly important, and can cause great losses in one’s life, but even when one retains rank and position in spite of this shadow one’s life will contain nothing but pain and suffering, lasting to the end of Creation and beyond.
In the present day, the Song of Everlasting Sorrow remains in the curriculums of Lookshy and the Scarlet Empire, the latter of which favours recitations in primary school and as part of Dynastic wedding ceremonies.
Dragons’ Shogun yearning, for beauty that shakes Creation,
Reigned for many years, searching but not finding,
Until a child of the court, hardly yet grown,
Raised in seclusion, unseen by anybody,
But with heavenly graces that could not be hidden,
Was chosen one day for the Imperial household.
If she turned her head and smiled she cast a deep spell,
Beauties of Five Directions vanished into nothing.
Hair’s cloud, pale skin, shimmer of gold moving,
Flowered curtains protected on cool spring evenings.
Those nights were too short. That sun too quick in rising.
The Shogun neglected the world from that moment,
Lavished her time on her in endless enjoyment.
She was her springtime mistress, and her midnight tyrant.
Though there were three thousand youths all of great beauty,
All her gifts were devoted to one person.
Mount Meru rose high in the clouds.
The winds carried soft magic notes,
Songs and graceful dances, string and pipe music.
She could never stop herself from gazing at her.
But Creation reels. War drums cross Black Mountain,
Drown out ‘The Feathered Coat and Rainbow Skirt’.
Great Swallow Pagoda and Hall of Light,
Are bathed in dust - the army fleeing Southwards.
Out there Shogunal banners, wavering, pausing
Until by the crossing of claimants,
The army stopped. No one would go forward,
Until horses’ hooves trampled willow eyebrows.
Flower on a hairpin. No one to save it.
Gold and jade phoenix. No one retrieved it.
Covering her face the Shogun rode on.
Turned to look back at that place of tears,
Hidden by a yellow dust whirled by a cold wind.
As the East waves green, the West flows blue,
The Shogun’s love remained, deeper than the new.
White moon of loneliness, cold moon of exile.
Bell-chimes in evening rain were bronze-edged heartbeats.
So when the chariots turned again northwards
The Shogun clung to trampled dust, never desiring
To leave that place of memories and heartbreak.
Where is the white jade in heaven and earth’s turning?
Lakes and gardens are still as they have been,
Blooming hibiscus, sculpted willows.
A flower-petal was her face, a willow-leaf her eyebrow,
How could it not be grief just to see them?
Plum and pear blossoms blown on Wood winds
Maple trees ruined in rains of Water.
Palaces neglected, filled with weeds and grasses,
Mounds of red leaves spilled on unswept stairways.
Burning the midnight light she could not sleep,
Bells and drums tolled the dark hours,
The Stars of Heaven bright before dawn,
The porcelain Mandarin Ducks frosted white,
The chill covers of Halcyon blue,
Colder and emptier, year by year.
And the loved spirit never returning.
A dark sage walked the paths of Sorcery,
He with his powerful mind knew how to reach the Spirits.
The Courtiers troubled by the Shogun’s grieving,
Asked the sage if he might find her.
He opened the sky-routes, swept the air like lightning,
Looked everywhere, on earth and in Heaven,
Scoured the Endless Chaos, and all that was Elsewhere,
But failed in either to find the one he searched for.
Then he heard tales of a land beyond
In dark mists, enchanted, eternal,
High towers and houses of screaming metal,
The ghosts of the lost walking between them,
Among them one they called The Ever Faithful,
With her face, of flowers and of snow.
She left her dreams, rose from her pillow,
Opened mica blind and crystal screen,
Hastening, unfastened, clouded hair hanging,
Her light cap unpinned, ran along the pavement.
A breeze in her gauze, flowing with her movement,
As if she danced ‘Feathered Coat and Rainbow Skirt’.
So delicate her jade face, drowned with tears of sadness,
Like a spray of pear flowers, veiled with springtime rain.
She asked him to thank her Love, her eyes gleaming,
She whose form and voice she lost at parting.
Her joy had ended when she left the light of Sol,
Nights were long in the World Below.
When she turned her face to look back earthwards
And see Meru- only mist and dust-clouds.
So she found the messenger her lover’s gifts
With deep feeling gave him lacquer box, gold hairpin,
Keeping one half of the box, one part of the hairpin,
Breaking the lacquer, splitting the gold.
‘Our spirits belong together, like these precious fragments,
Sometime, in earth or heaven, we shall meet again.’
And she sent these words, by the sage, to remind her
of their midnight vow, secret between them.
‘On that Seventh night, as the Ewer poured upon the Lovers,
In the silent Palace we declared our dream was
To fly together in the sky, two birds on the same wing,
To grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree.’
Earth fades, Heaven fades, at the end of days.
But Everlasting Sorrow endures always.
