The North Wind's Journey
The candle dragon dwells in a cold, shadowed gate,
Yet its light can still bring on the dawn.
Why can't the sun and moon shine upon this place?
Only the howling north wind comes rushing from the sky.
On Mount Yan, snowflakes fall as large as mats,
Each one blown down onto Xuanyuan Terrace.
In Youzhou, a pining wife in the twelfth month
Stops singing and smiling, her brows drawn in grief.
Leaning by the gate, she watches passersby,
Thinking of her husband suffering in the Great Wall's bitter cold.
When he left, he took his sword to save the frontier,
Leaving behind a tiger-patterned golden quiver.
Inside were a pair of white-feathered arrows,
Now webbed over by spiders and coated in dust.
The arrows remain, but their owner died in battle and will never return.
Unable to bear the sight of them, she burns them to ash.
Even the Yellow River could be dammed with handfuls of earth,
But no amount of snow and rain from the north wind can lessen her grief.
