春夜喜雨

Last night, at about 8:00pm, a bright lightning stroked in front of the window, followed by a loud thunder. I didn’t realize it was lightning until I heard the thunder. After the quite winter, those things are just not showed up at the first thought of my mind. Early spring greets us at night with light and sound. Quite surprising, actually, quite shocking when it was almost close to bed time.. He he…Listening to the rain falls, I could not stop but thinking about a poem, a Chinese poem. It seems I haven’t read any Chinese books for too long. But this poem, I could just remember. And here it is :
春夜喜雨Delighting in Rain on a Spring Night
杜甫 Dù Fǔ
好雨知时节, A good rain knows its proper time;
当春乃发生。It waits until the Spring to fall.
随风潜入夜，It drifts in on the wind, steals in by night,
润物细无声。Its fine drops drench, yet make no sound at all.
野径云俱黑，The paths between the fields are cloaked with clouds;
江船火独明。A river-skiff’s lone light still burns.
晓看红湿处，Come dawn, we’ll see splashes of wet red –
花重锦官城。The flowers in Chengdu*, weighed down with rain.
This poem is written by Du Fu(712-770, Dang Dynasty) , a well-known Chinese poet, who wrote over one thousand poems during his life and made a great contribution to the Chinese poem history. I searched on the internet and found the translation. It was translated by Brendan O’Kane. But I do feel that reading the English version doesn’t impress me a lot. This poem is expressing the excitement when the poet sees the rain falling in Spring. For we have a Chinese saying: 春雨贵如油 (Literally speaking , it means that the rain in spring is much expensive than oil.). So, when the poet sees this, he feels very happy. The rain comes right before the farming starts.
More information about Du Fu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Fu
Here are some pics about this great poet.