To the Cicada [Tang Poems]

— Li Shangyin

High, you can’t eat your fill;

In vain you wail and trill.

At dawn you hush your song;

The tree is green for long.

I drift as water flows;

And waste my garden grows.

Thank you for warning due,

I am as poor as you.

Note

Li Shangyin (c. 813–858) was one of the most sophisticated and emotionally resonant poets of the late Tang Dynasty, known for his dense symbolism, introspective tone, and fusion of personal sorrow with philosophical depth. His poetry often uses natural imagery – notably insects, flowers, and celestial bodies – to express feelings of isolation, moral integrity, and unappreciated virtue.

His poem “The Cicada” is a powerful example of this technique. On the surface, it describes a cicada perched high in a tree, singing endlessly yet going unheard and unfed – its song growing faint by dawn, its surroundings lush but indifferent. But the cicada is also a metaphor for the poet himself: morally upright (“high” in both position and principle), yet struggling to survive, and wasting his voice in protest that changes nothing.

The middle couplet shifts to autobiography: Li compares his low-ranking official post to a drifting tumbleweed (“thin office, still adrift like a twig”), while back home, his ancestral garden has long been overgrown – suggesting both physical neglect and the loss of roots or purpose. 

In the final lines, he addresses the cicada directly: “I’m grateful you warn me so clearly – / for I, too, live in utter purity, with my whole family in poverty.” “Purity” here carries double meaning: material poverty and moral incorruptibility. The poem thus becomes a quiet declaration of ethical resolve amid hardship.

蝉
— 李商隐

本以高难饱，

徒劳恨费声。

五更疏欲断，

一树碧无情。

薄宦梗犹泛，

故园芜已平。

烦君最相警，

我亦举家清。