Matching the Rhymes of Bai Letian's Fifteen Poems Written in Illness (次韻和白樂天病中十五首)次韻和白樂天病中十五首
予本嗜詩。雖宿負也。至病中尤酷好。倍於平日。亦不知所然。每寓興觸物。無日不吟。欲罷不得。因謂曰此亦病也。曾著詩癖篇以見志。盖自傷也。又每食不過數匙。唯飮酒而已。常以此爲患。及見白樂天後集之老境所著。則多是病中所作。飮酒亦然。其一詩略云。我亦定中觀宿命。多生債負是歌詩。不然何故狂吟詠。病後多於未病時。酬夢得詩云。昏昏布衾底。病醉睡相和。服雲母散詩云。藥消日晏三匙食。其餘亦倣此。予然後頗自寬之曰。非獨予也。古人亦爾。此皆宿負所致。無可奈何矣。又白公病暇滿一百日解綬。予於某日將乞退。計病暇一百有十日。其不期相類如此。但所欠者。樊素，少蠻耳。然二妾亦於公年六十八。皆見放。則何與於此時哉。噫。才名德望。雖不及白公遠矣。其於老境病中之事。往往多有類予者。因和病中十五首。以紓其情。
I have always delighted in poetry; this too is an old debt of mine. In illness I have come to love it still more fiercely, twice as much as in ordinary times, and I myself do not know why. Whenever a mood rises in me or I am struck by some thing, not a day passes without my chanting; I would stop, and cannot. So I have said that this too is a disease, and once wrote the piece "The Poetry Affliction" (詩癖) to show what I meant — grieving, that is, over myself.
Again, at each meal I cannot get down more than a few spoonfuls and only drink wine, and I have always taken this for a worry. Yet when I looked at what Bai Letian (白樂天) wrote in old age in his latter collection, most of it was composed in illness, and so it was with his drinking too.
One of his poems says, in brief: "I too in meditation have looked upon my former lives, and the debt run up over many lives is song and poetry. Were it not so, why should I chant as though mad, more after falling ill than before I was ill?" In the poem answering Mengde (夢得) he says, "Dim and dark beneath the hempen quilt, sickness and drunkenness and sleep mingle together," and in the poem written while taking mica powder he says, "The medicine's force fades, and late in the day I eat three spoonfuls." The rest is much like this.
Only then did I take some comfort in myself, saying: it is not I alone — the ancients were so too, and all of this is brought on by an old debt, about which nothing can be done.
Again, Lord Bai loosed his seal-cord when his sick leave had filled a hundred days; and I too mean to beg leave to retire on a certain day, and reckoning up my sick leave it comes to a hundred and ten days. Unplanned as it was, the likeness runs this far. The only thing I lack is a Fansu (樊素) and a Xiaoman (少蠻). Yet those two concubines too were all sent away when the Lord was sixty-eight, so what have they to do with this present time?
Ah — in talent, in name, and in the esteem of others I fall far short of Lord Bai; but in the matters of illness in old age there is often much in him that is like me. So I answer his fifteen poems written in illness, and thereby loosen what is in my heart.
Interlinear notes 1
幷序
A preface is attached as well.