Qu Yu Guan (Clouds Drift over Long Pass) - Liu Yong
/曲玉管(陇首云飞) - 柳永/
Where Distant Passes and Fading Hopes Converge
【Original Chinese】
曲玉管(陇首云飞)
陇首云飞，江边夜泊，
高城不见，只见寒星几点。
关山梦断残更起，
衾枕萧疏，无奈客程相逼。
寥落雄关千里，
试凭双泪掩。念旧游、自是随风渐远。
重寻夜夜归来路，
但愁日暮苍茫，又是断魂时节。
【Literal English Translation】
Qu Yu Guan (Clouds Drift over Long Pass)
Clouds fly above the Long Pass, and night falls along the riverbank.
The tall city walls remain unseen; only a few cold stars glimmer.
Dreams of distant frontiers shatter with the last watch,
Blankets and pillows feel lonely—how can I resist the press of journeying on?
A once-mighty pass now stretches desolate for a thousand miles;
I can only hide my tears. Memories of our past roaming drift away on the wind.
Though I try each night to find my way back in dreams,
I fear the dusk’s vast gloom, for at that hour, longing cuts deepest once more.
曲玉管(陇首云飞)
陇首云飞，江边夜泊，
高城不见，只见寒星几点。
关山梦断残更起，
衾枕萧疏，无奈客程相逼。
寥落雄关千里，
试凭双泪掩。念旧游、自是随风渐远。
重寻夜夜归来路，
但愁日暮苍茫，又是断魂时节。
【Literal English Translation】
Qu Yu Guan (Clouds Drift over Long Pass)
Clouds fly above the Long Pass, and night falls along the riverbank.
The tall city walls remain unseen; only a few cold stars glimmer.
Dreams of distant frontiers shatter with the last watch,
Blankets and pillows feel lonely—how can I resist the press of journeying on?
A once-mighty pass now stretches desolate for a thousand miles;
I can only hide my tears. Memories of our past roaming drift away on the wind.
Though I try each night to find my way back in dreams,
I fear the dusk’s vast gloom, for at that hour, longing cuts deepest once more.
In this ci poem set to the tune “Qu Yu Guan” (曲玉管), Liu Yong conjures the stark solitude of travel through remote frontier regions. The opening lines paint a scene of near-complete darkness by the river, with clouds sweeping across the Long Pass (陇首)—a location historically tied to frontier vigilance. The result is an austere image of night, cold stars, and the faint suggestion of a city wall the poet cannot see.
The poet’s personal desolation reflects in the scattered hints of a “dream broken in the last watch” and the chill emptiness of bedding. This dual emphasis—on a stark outer world and an equally bleak inner landscape—is quintessential to Liu Yong’s style, where physical travel across distant lands mirrors the emotional distance from loved ones.
Midway through, the poem turns to the desolate expanse of “a once-mighty pass,” now seemingly abandoned to echoes of the past. By referencing tears that cannot be stayed and memories “drifting away on the wind,” Liu Yong underscores how fleeting moments of camaraderie or love can feel against the vastness of land and time. The desire to “each night find my way back in dreams” signals a profound longing to restore what the poet has lost.
In the final lines, dusk’s arrival becomes a trigger for fresh heartache. For many Tang and Song poets (including Liu Yong), twilight or sunset at a frontier outpost served as a powerful reminder of home’s distance. It’s a moment when the mind returns to absent friends or family, intensifying the traveler’s sense of isolation. The phrase “longing cuts deepest once more” echoes a widely shared sentiment in classical Chinese poetry: that each day’s end reopens the ache of separation.
Stylistically, the poem exemplifies ci tradition in its melodic structure and careful interplay of landscape imagery with personal sorrow. The allusions to unpassable distances, star-strewn skies, and an inaudible fortress might also invoke a broader meditation on impermanence. Taken together, “Qu Yu Guan (Clouds Drift over Long Pass)” offers a vivid portrait of solitary wandering, revealing how physical and emotional frontiers can merge into a single, haunting experience of longing.
Key points
• Depicts a remote frontier setting (Long Pass) as a mirror of the poet’s inner desolation.
• Uses darkness (nightfall, cold stars) and unseen city walls to heighten the sense of separation.
• Highlights how each dusk renews the traveler’s yearning for home or absent companions.
• Demonstrates Liu Yong’s ci style: seamlessly blending stark imagery with deeply personal reflections.
