Birthday poem · October 15Cold Dew, the 17th solar term: temperatures drop and the dew turns cold.

Birthday poem card for October 15: “Boating on Dongting Lake” by Li Bai. Birth character 色, colour.

Birth character

色 sè · colour

色 first meant the colour of a face; it came to mean colour and scenery.

春色滿園關不住
“But the spring that fills the garden can't be locked in” — Ye Shaoweng, ‘Visiting a Garden, No One Home’

Other dates with this poem: August 10

The poem

“Boating on Dongting Lake” 陪族叔刑部侍郎曄及中書賈舍人至遊洞庭

  1. 南湖秋水夜無煙On the South Lake, autumn water, no haze at night;
  2. 耐可乘流直上天how I wish I could ride the current straight to heaven.
  3. 且就洞庭賒月色For now, let's buy the moonlight on Dongting on credit,
  4. 將船買酒白雲邊and row our boat to buy wine beside the white clouds.

Li Bai 李白 · Tang dynasty · 701–762 · seven-character verse

English translation by Poetune.

Why this poem

Li Bai boating on Lake Dongting at night, wanting to buy wine at the edge of the clouds.

This day in the Chinese calendar

Solar term: Cold Dew.

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