Mutual Longing: Sitting at the Window While the Sun Sets

COOL POEMS: Introduction > THE POEMS

Topics: Mutual Longing

Author: Mei Yaochen (1002-1060)

Sitting at the Window While the Sun Sets

If feelings are tender they can’t be uttered
While the evening sun hangs in the window;
What I’m thinking, what you’re thinking,
Our mutual longing; only each of us knows.

Comments: Though this poem consists of but twenty characters, it’s meaning is rich. We must first understand that the setting sun in post-Tang China, as in Romantic period Europe, often was associated with deep feelings of longing and melancholy. This is why tender feelings can’t be uttered before a setting sun—the emotion would be too great to bear. The third line reveals (in Chinese at least) that this particular poem is written in the voice of the woman. It is she who understands from hard experience that, though the lovers’ longing is mutual, in the end the pain is born separately by each.

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