c. 830 | Luoyang

Too Late

Bai Juyi apologizes.

Around my garden the little wall is low;
In the bailiff’s lodge the lists are seldom checked.
I am ashamed to think we were not always kind;
I regret your labors, which will never be repaid.
The caged bird owes no allegiance;
The wind-tossed flower does not cling to the tree.

Where tonight she lies none can give us news;
Nor any knows, save the bright watching moon.

Image of Chinese poet Bai Juyi.
Contributor

Bai Juyi

“Losing a Slave Girl.” Like many poets of the Tang dynasty, Bai had a career in the imperial government, holding archival and administrative positions while composing his verse. “Bai regretted not having written more poems on social issues and not having invested those he wrote with greater conviction,” translator Rewi Alley writes of the poet’s attempts to draw attention to corruption and injustice, which led to his brief exile in 815. “One suspects, however, that a number of Bai’s poems of social criticism were dropped from their collected works by later compilers.”