The Jidang Flower (地棠)地棠

In my youth I was wildly dissolute and loved to go seeking flowers, but all that is past — now that I am old, what can be done? My eyes have grown dim and cannot tell even the five colors apart; I look at red and take it for purple, and so keep going wrong. In my garden, on a patch of ground no bigger than a single mat, there is a yellow flower — do you know what it resembles? Dimly, at first, I took it for a rose, but someone told me that what the world calls jidang (地棠) is this. Only when all the flowers have bloomed does heaven at last grow idle, yet this flower only now opens its calyx — whom does it wait for, to show itself? I rub my eyes and take covetous delight in it once more, regretting only that I could not set it on a jade terrace that holds spring back, greets the sun, and stands cool and high, driving the dust away. I long to call you here quickly, before it withers, but am ashamed that my jar is not full of green wine. So lovely, so lovely — it truly has the bearing of an immortal; how do I know it has not gathered its essence from Mount Langfeng (閬風山) and the isle of Penglai (蓬萊)? To cast out so charming a form — where is the man who would do it? Only the Tang emperor of old, being fond of shunning things, would not come near it. You alone searched the old story to its root and called it by its old name, and the flower, as if glad, took on a new smile. By nature I have never liked mixed colors; be it scarlet or crimson, I would turn them all away. Only one unswayed, like you, is worth keeping at last — why has this flower never been planted at your house? Happily there were my fourteen rhymes, and from them you got a painterly piece — how swiftly you drew its likeness! Polishing and retouching the writing, you added to the flower's worth, and sitting there made the eoryu flower (御留花) be cast out instead.