[updated September 2022]
Mizhou Lantern Festival: (Butterflies Love Flowers)
密 州 上 元: 蝶 恋 花
灯 火 钱 塘 三 五 夜
明 月 如 霜，照 见 人 如 画。
帐 底 吹 笙 香 吐 麝
更 无 一 点 尘 随 马。
寂 寞 山 城，人 老 也！
击 鼓 吹 箫，却 人 农 桑 社。
火 冷 灯 稀 霜 露 下
昏 昏 雪 意 云 重 野。
Mi Zhou Shang Yuan: Die Lian Hua
Deng huo qian tang san wu ye
Ming yue ru shuang zhao jian ren ru hua.
Zhang di chui sheng xiang tu she
Geng wu yi dian chen sui ma.
Ji mo shan cheng ren lao ye !
Ji gu chui xiao que ren nong sang she.
Huo leng deng xi shuang lu xia
Hun hun xue yi yun chong ye.
Mizhou Lantern Festival: (Butterflies Love Flowers)
In Hangzhou, the lantern festival fifteen days after New Years
Moonlight shines like frost so one can see people like a painting.
Rich families raise their canopies, a smell of incense and songs from wind instruments
Here, very little dust behind and around the horses.
Mizhou solitary, desolate mountains outside the city walls, the people are also old !
Their festivals only have drums and flutes to commemorate and mark the growing seasons of a rural society.
So cold here with frost and dew, and few lamps.
The town barely lit in the snow, layers of clouds across the open and empty countryside.
Notes:
(Butterflies Love Flowers): The name of the poem’s melody.
Lantern Festival: Festival of lantern lights on the first full moon of the lunar New Year.