21 September 2025

Introduction

Poetry – arranging words to express intense emotion – is as old as mankind. It is found all over the world and takes many different forms. The essential concerns of poetry are the same everywhere: love, loss, family, nature, joy, suffering, the divine or the absence of the divine. And poetry has a twin sister: music. 

Here are two poems connected with Autumn or with an autumnal feeling, one in Chinese and the other written in English, very close to here. 

POEM 1

水调歌头 (Shuǐ diào gē tóu) Water Song

苏轼 (Su Shi) 

Su Shi was a politician, artist and writer of the Song Dynasty, who lived from 1037 to 1101. He wrote nearly three thousand poems as well as letters and essays. 

明月几时有？

把酒问青天。

不知天上宫阙，

今夕是何年。

我欲乘风归去，

又恐琼楼玉宇，

高处不胜寒。

起舞弄清影，

何似在人间。

转朱阁，低绮户，照无眠。

不应有恨，

何事长向别时圆？

人有悲欢离合，

月有阴晴圆缺，

此事古难全。

但愿人长久，

千里共婵娟。

Water Song

Su Shih (translated by Burton Watson, 1925-2017)

Bright moon, when wast thou made?

Holding my cup, I ask of the blue sky.

I know not in heaven’s palaces

What year it is this night.

I long to ride the wind and return;

Yet fear that marble towers and jade houses, 

So high, are over-cold.

I rise and dance and sport with limpid shades;

Better far to be among mankind.

Around the vermilion chamber, 

Down in the silken windows, 

She shines on the sleepless,

Surely with no ill-will.

Why then is the time of parting always at full moon?

Man has grief and joy, parting and reunion;

The moon has foul weather and fair, waxing and waning.

In this, since ever there has been no perfection.

All I can wish is that we may have long life, 

That a thousand miles apart we may share her beauty.

POEM 2

Darkness Has Cheating Swiftness

Ivor Gurney (1890–1937)

Ivor Gurney was born in Gloucester, a few steps from here, in 1890. He was christened at All Saints Church in Barton Street. He was a choirboy in the Cathedral and went to the Royal Colleg of Music in London, where he began to compose. When the First World War came, he volunteered and began to write poetry. In 1917, he was injured and sent back to England. He tried to restart his career but was badly affected by his experiences and was sent to a lunatic asylum in Dartford. He never saw Gloucestershire again. This poem was probably written in 1919, when he was trying to live off the land, up on the slopes below Crickley Hill. 

Darkness has cheating swiftness

When the eyes rove,

Opens and shuts in long avenues

That thought cannot prove.

Darkness shuts in and closes;

There are three ghosts

Different in one clump of hedge roses

And a threat in posts

Until one tops the road crest,

Turns, sees the city lie

Long stretched in bright sparkles of gratefullest

Homecalling array. 

黑暗来得狡猾又匆忙 (Darkness has cheating swiftness)

艾佛·格尼著 (by Ivor Gurney, translated by Lee Yoong Shin)

黑暗来得狡猾又匆忙

当双眼四处张望

漫长小径忽明忽暗

思绪难以丈量。

黑暗开启了又合拢，

那里有三个幽灵在动

藏在玫瑰丛里各不同

木桩亦是危机重重。

直到登上山坡

转身，看见城市安卧

最为感激的是万家灯火

呼唤着回家的你我。

Part 2

POEM 3

子夜吴歌·秋歌 (Autumn Night Song)

李白 (by Li Bai)

Li Bai is one of the most acclaimed poets of the Tang dynasty, living from 701 to 762. He left around 1,000 poems and was championed in the West by Ezra Pound, an American writer and editor of great influence. 

长安一片月，

万户捣衣声。

秋风吹不尽，

总是玉关情。

何日平胡虏，

良人罢远征。

Autumn Night Song 

by Li Bai (701–762AD), translated by Rewi Alley 

Changan flooded by moonlight

and I in the evening listening

to women from

many homes, pounding clothes

by the water. Chill blows the

autumn wind, ever growing

colder; yet each is anxious

for her lad out at the Yumen Pass

each wondering when we shall

defeat the enemy who drives in

so that he can return and

no longer be a soldier.

POEM 4

The Road Not Taken 

Robert Frost (1874–1963)

Robert Frost was born in 1874 in San Francisco. He was a schoolteacher with aspirations to be a poet when he came to England in 1912. He settled near Dymock, Gloucestershire, where he met the young English poet Edward Thomas and wrote this, perhaps his most famous poem, about their wanderings in the woods. Thomas was killed in France in April 1917.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

未走过的路 (The Road Not Taken)

Robert Frost (1874–1963), translated by Lee Yoong Shin (dates)

黄叶林中有两条岔路，

可惜我无法两者皆行

身为旅人，我伫立良久

尽可能远望其一末处

直到它隐没于灌木林；

但我踏上了另一条路，

它碧草萋萋，引人前行，

多像是我向往的旅途；

来往的旅人匆匆赶路

留下几近相同的足迹，

但清晨的落叶铺满两径

金黄，尚未被脚印摧残。

啊，我将原路留待他日行！

然而路径延绵无止境

谁知此路可否能回返？

当时光已滴答地飞过

我将幽幽地把往事述：

林中有两条岔路，而我 –

我择了幽静的路而探索，

从此决定了人生的迥殊。

(Optional) POEM 5

I Built Myself A House of Glass

Edward Thomas (1878–1917)

Edward Thomas was born in London to Welsh parents. He began as a literary journalist and reviewer, only turning to poetry a few months before joining the army to fight and die in World War I. He had met Robert Frost in Dymock. This poem is from a notebook in Oxford University’s library and seem seems to have been written in June 1915 in Hucclecote, now a suburb of Gloucester. 

I built myself a house of glass:
It took my years to make it:
And I was proud. But now, alas!
Would God someone would break it.

But it looks too magnificent.
No neighbour casts a stone
From where he dwells, in tenement
Or palace of glass, alone.

我盖了一座玻璃屋 (I built myself a house of glass)

爱德华·托马斯著            (by Edward Thomas, translated by Lee Yoong Shin

我盖了一座玻璃屋：

它花了我多年心血：

我曾引以为傲，如今却感到痛苦！

多期盼上天能派人将它击裂。

可它看起来太辉煌。

没人愿向它掷石头

从他们居住的简陋住房

或玻璃宫殿，终是独自一个头。