Translation:Phoenix Pin

紅酥手，黃藤酒，滿城春色宮牆柳.

東風惡，歡情薄，一懷愁緒，幾年離索. 錯、錯、錯！

春如舊，人空瘦，淚痕紅邑鮫綃透.

桃花落，閒池閣. 山盟雖在，錦書難托. 莫、莫、莫！

Lily hands, rippling wine,

The town is filled with Spring like willows waving by.

Biting east wind, happiness thin,

a chest full of sorrow, years of separation.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!

Spring is like before; the girl is pale and thin in vain.

Through the sheer silks, it’s the tearful eyes brimming.

Peach blossoms falling, glimmering pound freezing,

Paramount promise is still, glorious book hard to sustain.

Moan, moan, moan!

This poem is the tear of his real love story (see his marriage). In this poem, "Biting east wind" is a metaphor for traditional Chinese view about women. This view breaks his first marriage. "Glorious book" is another metaphor for his ambition of unifying China. But he doesn't seem to be successful in either of them (marriage and career). He also uses antithesis, which is very popular in Chinese poetry. It matches both sound and sense in two poetic lines, like "a chest of sorrow" pairing "years of separation" and "paramount promise" pairing "glorious book". The sounds are perfectly matching each other in Chinese. This poem falls in the first period of his works.