(On the 19th day of the 10th month of the 2nd year of Ta-li I saw in the house of Yuan T'e, an official of Kuei-chou, a girl named Li from Lin-ying dance a sword dance. I admired her skill and asked her who had taught her. She said the lady Kung-sun. I remembered that in the third year of K'ai-yuan at Yen-ch'eng, when I was a small boy I had seen lady Kung-sun dance. She was the only one in the Imperial theatre who could dance this dance. Now she is aged and unknown and even her pupils have passed the heyday of their beauty. I wrote the poem to express my sorrow. The work of Chang Hsu of the Wu district, the great master of grass writing, was improved by his having been present when the lady Kung-sun danced in the Yeh district. From this may be judged the art of Kung-sun.)
OF old times there was a beautiful courtesan Kung-sun,
When she danced the sword dance everyone was moved;
Those who saw her were massed like the hills tense with emotion;
Heaven and earth swayed in sympathy up and down.
For she flashed like the arrow with which the archer Yi shot down the nine suns
And soared as a crowd of spirit kings astride their winged dragons.
She began like a thunder clap with all the anger of rolling echoes,
She finished like the waters of the river and sea shining calm and still on a summery day.
Her red lips, her pearl sleeves are things of the past,
But in the evening of her life there was a pupil to carry on her fragrant traditions.
When the beautiful dancer of Lin-ying, now her successor, danced in Po Ti
She danced wonderfully to the music and her skill triumphed.
When I talked with her we found a common background of memory.
Overcome by memories the episode was coloured with an added poignancy.
Ming Huang posessed over eight thousand such girls, of whom Kung-sun excelled all as a sword dancer.
The passage of fifty years is gone as the turn of the hand,
Wind and dust in continuous storms have darkened the Imperial palaces,
The children of the pear garden have drifted away like smoke,
The remnant of that galaxy of beauty look forward to the bright cold of a winter's day.
The trees already meet to the south of the tomb of Ming Huang.
On the stone walls of Ch'u-t'ang the grasses rattle in the wind.
Tonight as this splendid feast, as the song of the tortoise-shell zither and the pipes drew to its close,
At the very moment of my ecstacy came sadness; while the moon comes out in the east
An old man like myself does not know where to go.
With blistered feet I stumble among the wild hills, yet I regret my haste.
From the book, _Selections from the Three Hundred Poems of the T'ang Dynasty_ (London: John Murray, 1940), translated by Soame Jenyns.
Note: The T'ang dynasty lasted from 618 to 907 A.D.
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