Chang’e
嫦娥
Cháng é
A candle fades as the morning stars recede. Read how an earthbound sleepless night opens into the imagined solitude of Chang'e in the moon.
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Read the original and its translation together. Open a line’s word meanings for a closer look.
About the text and pronunciation
The simplified view changes character forms, not the edition. Notes and sources retain the cited text.
The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.
Word by word, in the order of the line. A gloss is a crib. It is not the translation.
Word meanings — Line 1
- 雲 yún mica
- 母 mǔ mica
- 屏 píng screen
- 風 fēng screen
- 燭 zhú candle
- 影 yǐng light and shadow
- 深 shēn deep
Word meanings — Line 2
- 長 cháng long
- 河 hé river
- 漸 jiàn gradually
- 落 luò sets
- 曉 xiǎo dawn
- 星 xīng stars
- 沉 chén sink
Word meanings — Line 3
- 嫦 cháng Chang
- 娥 é e
- 應 yīng must
- 悔 huǐ regret
- 偷 tōu steal
- 靈 líng divine
- 藥 yào medicine
Word meanings — Line 4
- 碧 bì blue
- 海 hǎi sea
- 青 qīng blue
- 天 tiān sky
- 夜 yè night
- 夜 yè night
- 心 xīn heart
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
雲母屏風燭影深，
長河漸落曉星沉。
嫦娥應悔偷靈藥，
碧海青天夜夜心。
Translation
Candlelight deepens on the mica screen;
the River of Heaven lowers, and dawn stars sink.
Chang’e must regret stealing the elixir:
blue sea, blue sky, her heart night after night.
Try it from memory
After reading, recall the underlined word or phrase in each line. Say its meaning before opening the answer. These prompts use the text edition printed above.
-
Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?
雲母屏風燭影深，
Pronunciation hint
fēng
Reveal meaning and translation
風 — screen
Candlelight deepens on the mica screen;
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
嫦娥應悔偷靈藥，
Pronunciation hint
huǐ
Reveal meaning and translation
悔 — regret
Chang’e must regret stealing the elixir:
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
碧海青天夜夜心。
Pronunciation hint
tiān
Reveal meaning and translation
天 — sky
blue sea, blue sky, her heart night after night.
One more question: what changes?
Compare the opening and closing lines. What changes in the scene, the speaker’s attention, or the feeling? Choose a Chinese word as evidence, then compare your reading with the notes. More than one answer may be reasonable.
Line-by-line notes →Self-check at your own pace. No score or progress is saved. Open only the answers you want included when printing.
Line-by-line notes
Lines 1–2 — How long the night has lasted
雲母 is mica, the material of the screen. The candle gives the first line an interior light. 長河 is the Milky Way, and its setting takes us out into the sky. 漸 slows that change, while 曉 gives the sinking stars a time of day. The two lights let the reader infer a night spent awake. The Chinese leaves the identity of the watcher open.
Lines 3–4 — The heart imagined at a distance
Chang’e is the legendary woman who took an elixir and went to the moon. 應 makes her regret a conjecture, “must regret” in the English. The line that follows moves from a named act, 偷, to blue sea, blue sky, and a heart that has to inhabit that view 夜夜. The English keeps the nouns beside each other and lets the repeated “night after night” extend the one night of the opening.
Form and tone
Four seven-character lines connect an interior night to a mythic solitude. The third line supplies the imaginative turn, while 夜夜 expands one sleepless night into endless recurrence. The title does not require the first two lines to be literal furniture in a lunar palace.
See jueju for the larger formal pattern. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; a historical level/oblique grid is not inferred from those modern tones.
Historical context
The Chang’e story is a legend, and the poem uses it to think about longing and the cost of separation. The speaker’s identity remains open. Neither a specific love affair nor a particular political allegory is established by the four lines alone.
Continue with Li Shangyin and the moon reading path. Compare Autumn Evening and Frost and Moon using the reading connections below.
Sources
嫦娥 — Chinese text. Checked against the linked Wikisource transcription. The transcription records 嫦 and 常 as alternatives in the name; this page selects 嫦 and retains 沉 in line two. Punctuation and line breaks are editorial. Translation, glosses, and reading notes are original to PoemWell.
English translation, gloss, and notes by PoemWell. The translation is original to this site.
The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.
Updated .
Cite this reading
Li Shangyin. “Chang’e” (嫦娥). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/change-li-shangyin
Credit the poet for the Chinese original and PoemWell for this translation and commentary. Use the permanent page link above; source editions are listed separately.