Re-reading Dream of the Red Chamber...
Flower Burial Song
Meanwhile Tai-yi had disappeared and Pao-yi knew she was avoiding him. He decided to wait a couple of days for the storm to blow over before approaching her again. Then lowering his head he noticed the ground was strewn with balsam and pomegranate petals.
“She’s too angry even to gather up the blossoms,” he sighed. He gathered up the fallen flowers in his gown and made his way over to the small hill across a stream and through an orchard towards the mound where Tai-yi had buried the peach blossoms.
Just before rounding the hill by the flowers' grave he caught the sound of sobs on the other side. Someone was weeping there in a heart-rending fashion. He paused to listen and this is the song he heard:
As the flowers fall and scatter across the sky
Who pities the faded colours and the vanished fragrance?
A girl in her room mourns the passing of spring.
No relief from anxiety her poor heart knows.
With a hoe in her hand she steps across the doorway
To bury the fallen petals.
When spring is over, beauty too withers and dies.
Who then will care for the fallen flowers?
