The Beauty - Du Fu

She is a young woman of matchless beauty
Living unnoticed in a lonely valley.
The daughter of a good family, she says,
But ruined now, with woods and weeds for company.
When battle-havoc raged in the Guan Zhong,
All her brothers met their death there:
What availed their high official rank?
She could not even gather their bodies for burial.
lt is the world's way to despise the luckless;
Fortune is like a flickering candle-flame.

Her husband is a fickle, callous fellow
And his new love beatltiull as jade.
Even dusk-closing flowers follow their nature;
Mandarin ducks never roost apart.
But he only notices his new love's smile —
l-low should he hear his old love's weeping?
Spring water runs clear in the hills
But away from the hills it turns muddy.

When her little maid returns from selling her pearls
They pull down creepers to mend the cottage thatch.
She plucks a flower, but not to wear in her hair,
And gathers cypress in armfuls.
Her sky-blue sleeves are thin for the cold air;
In the twilight, she still stands beside the tall bamboos

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Du Fu (712 - 770) China
Source: The British Museum Book of Chinese Love Poetry, edited by Jane Portal, British Museum Press, 2004