Six Seven-Character Regulated Verses: Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, and Three Others!

2006/3/22 22:28:06

The First Emperor

Nine provinces, six kingdoms — all the soil of Qín

Ten thousand ages, a thousand autumns — I am the First Emperor

Unified tracks, unified script — the grand unification

Melting weapons, melting iron — the lesser Three Scourges

Clinging to life, trusting in the Isle of Immortals

Steep ranges, vainly flying, walls a hundred feet

They say beneath Lí Mountain the flesh still holds its warmth

Yet in an instant — ash scattered across the yellow sky

Xiùquán

Western winds scatter the Gospel far and wide

The enlightened village scholar transforms into a holy apostle

Destroying Buddha, burying Confucius, worshipping the Lord on High

Raising the altar, preaching the Way, expounding on Jesus

Human suffering in this world — what Lord presides?

The Heavenly Kingdom at peace — yet people made slaves

Dreaming into Nanjīng, a dream it remains

Where dragons coil and tigers crouch — still a dead end

Shùrén (Lu Xun)

Hanging up the healer's pouch — vainly saving dead souls

Furiously turning to the knife of the pen to wake a nation's stupor

Vast wilderness, Wandering — lamenting the unlucky star

Hometown, Morning Blossoms — heralding a new epoch

One person unforgiving — that is true forgiveness

Ten thousand things unsayable — yet finally spoken in rage

Before calamity's waves subsided, the brothers were gone

Spirit banners compete to hang upon Huàchéng's gate

Zhōngzhèng (Chiang Kai-shek)

A petty rogue from the ten-mile foreign quarter

Rising and falling, bowing and posturing — quite the tale

Chasing the deer in the Central Plains, lost in power's games

Playing chess with the world, a losing hand of greed

Zhōuyú and Liàng born in the same age — perhaps no choice

Guān and Zhāng under rival banners — how to bear it?

Pitiful remnant life, imprisoned on a lonely island

Thirty years, gazing only at the blue, blue sea

Rùnzhī (Mao Zedong)

Rùnzhī in youth, defiant of lords and kings

Spirited and impassioned, towering over all nine provinces

Ten thousand miles, driving clouds, exiling foes to a narrow isle

Ten years, stirring tempests, sweeping the entire globe

Once heaven and earth joined forces in common cause

Yet after all, the hero was never truly free

The world split three ways — a scholar-tree ant's dream

The Xiāng River flows on in silence, waters drifting to the void

Bìyún Temple

(Where Yìxiān's Cenotaph Lies)

Western hills, stone pagoda soaring to the vault of sky

Past and present, the splendor of the capital — one gaze into the void

The people's hero, robes and cap buried in jade-green earth

Imperial spirit veins dispersing in the cool breeze

Somber autumn colors beyond the layered groves

Shifting merchant clouds amid ten thousand forms

Succession and decline, rise and fall — birth, purity, end

Turn your head and see once more the sunset's crimson glow