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絕代有佳人， 幽居在空谷；
自云良家子， 零落依草木。
關中昔喪亂， 兄弟遭殺戮；
官高何足論？ 不得收骨肉。
世情惡衰歇， 萬事隨轉燭。
夫婿輕薄兒， 新人美如玉。
合昏尚知時， 鴛鴦不獨宿；
但見新人笑， 那聞舊人哭？
在山泉水清， 出山泉水濁。
侍婢賣珠迴， 牽蘿補茅屋。
摘花不插髮， 采柏動盈掬。
天寒翠袖薄， 日暮倚修竹。

Who is lovelier than she?
Yet she lives alone in an empty valley.
She tells me she came from a good family
Which is humbled now into the dust.
...When trouble arose in the Kuan district,
Her brothers and close kin were killed.
What use were their high offices,
Not even shielding their own lives? --
The world has but scorn for adversity;
Hope goes out, like the light of a candle.
Her husband, with a vagrant heart,
Seeks a new face like a new piece of jade;
And when morning-glories furl at night
And mandarin-ducks lie side by side,
All he can see is the smile of the new love,
While the old love weeps unheard.
The brook was pure in its mountain source,
But away from the mountain its waters darken.
...Waiting for her maid to come from selling pearls
For straw to cover the roof again,
She picks a few flowers, no longer for her hair,
And lets pine-needles fall through her fingers,
And, forgetting her thin silk sleeve and the cold,
She leans in the sunset by a tall bamboo.