Skip to main content

The Son of Heaven's Angel

忽聞海上有仙山， 山在虛無縹緲間；
樓閣玲瓏五雲起， 其中綽約多仙子。
中有一人字太真， 雪膚花貌參差是。
金闕西廂叩玉扃， 轉教小玉報雙成。
聞道漢家天子使， 九華帳裡夢魂驚。
攬衣推枕起徘徊， 珠箔銀屏迤邐開，
雲鬢半偏新睡覺， 花冠不整下堂來。

Just then he hears that in the ocean is a mountain of divinities, upon which from void and haze a tower rises artfully into the rainbow clouds.  In that tower live many fairies full and fair, among whom is a person whose style is Great Truth.  Her skin is not unlike the snow, and flowers cannot far surpass her face.  At the west wing of the Golden Watch he bows before the door of jade, and word is passed to Little Jade to call on the the twin [maids].  On hearing of Han's angel, behind the sumptuous canopy the dreaming soul is roused.  She grabs her clothes and throws the cushions off; she rises and begins to pace -- the curtain of pearls and silver screen are pushed aside.  The cloudy tresses yet are half distraught with sleep, and she comes down into the hall with garlands all in disarray.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sample Essay On Shakespeare's Fifth Sonnet (For My Students)

The theme of Shakespeare’s 5 th Sonnet is saving time. In the poem, Shakespeare talks about how time makes beautiful things ugly. He compares growing old to the way that summer changes into winter. Though in the summer there are many beautiful flowers, in the winter all of these beautiful flowers are gone and there is “bareness every where” (8). The winter is so empty that we could almost forget there had ever been flowers at all – if we didn’t “distil” (13) the beauty of summer to make perfume. What Shakespeare means is that we need to find a way to remember being young (the summer) so that when we are older (in winter) we will still be able to remember being happy. We could do this by having children, who will look like us and make us remember who we were when we were young. I just explained the theme of Shakespeare’s poem and summarized the poem. Now I will talk about how he communicates his theme. First, Shakespeare uses metonymy to help us understand how beautiful we ar...
Post a Comment
Read more

Genre -- In General

I've spent a bit of time recently watching YouTube videos related to the question of what makes something an RPG.  Since studying literary theory in college, I've become skeptical that you can give clean-cut definitions of the various genres.  I think two works belong to the same genre if they are similar enough across various dimensions.  The problem with similarity is that it's vague.  Everything is similar to everything else in some way, just on a general metaphysical level, and once you get to the products of human culture, each of them is much more like each of the others than it is different.  So arguments about genre tend to fixate on arbitrarily selected differences the importance of which are then magnified to the level of dogma. I believe there is no one difference that will always make X a member of genre G rather than genre G'.  The products of culture are descriptively rich, and there are any number of relevant features that make our experien...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Empty Gesture

He finds that with propriety he cannot write about his own life.  He acts against people, but he would not make those people conscious witnesses of his actions.  He seals himself away from others, both by the barriers he places in their way and by the silence he erects to guard those barriers.  It is the assault of an animal -- the very thought is contained in the action, and the thought is nothing besides, or at least has no other expression than, that action. To the departed: it was a matter of drifting, it was a matter of harm.  The harm became a wound, the wound scarred, the scar is a rift.  I think of it like a gap that fills up with all the hostilities of the world.  It is something radical and diseased, and I want no part of it.  I also would like to be someone else.  There is now what is for me an insurmountable investment of pain required to cross it, so I would rather call it a loss.  But I feel the pain enough to remark it. ...
Post a Comment
Read more