Showing posts with label Moon in Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moon in Poetry. Show all posts

Friday, 18 August 2023

Ancient Poems about Loneliness and the Moon

Two ancient poems: both are about sleeplessness, erotic loneliness and lunar movements. The first poem is sometimes attributed to Sappho (Voigt 168B) and sometimes regarded as a fragment of a folk song:

δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα
καὶ Πληΐαδες· μέσαι δὲ
νύκτες, παρὰ δ᾿ ἔρχετ᾿ ὤρα,
ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω.

(‘The moon and Pleiades
sink down, it is the middle
of the night, time passes,
and I sleep alone.
’)
The second is the final poem in the anthology Nineteen Old Poems (古詩十九首), preserved in the Wen Xuan (文選, c. 520-530 AD), though it likely dates further back to the Han dynasty:
明月何皎皎,照我羅牀幃。
憂愁不能寐,攬衣起徘徊。
客行雖雲樂,不如早旋歸。
出户獨彷徨,愁思當告誰?
引領還入房,淚下沾裳衣。

(‘The white moon shines brightly, illuming the weaves of my bed-curtains.
Sorrowful, I cannot sleep; taking my clothes, I rise up and walk.
The guest’s journey is said to be a good one, but it is not as happy as the return home.
Alone and indecisive I leave the house, to whom can I relate my sadness?
I look forward, but return to my room; falling tears moisten my robes.
’)

Notes:
The narrator of the Greek poem is a woman, indicated by the gender of the adjective μόνα ('alone'). In the Chinese poem, the speaker could be a man or a woman.

My translations.