“The brimming waves delight the eye on sunny days;
The dimming hills give a rare view in rainy haze.
The West Lake looks like the fair lady at her best
Whether she is richly adorned or plainly dressed.”

—  Su Shi

"The West Lake, the Beauty" (《饮湖上初晴后雨》) (1073), in Song of the Immortals: An Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, trans. Yuanchong Xu (Beijing: New World Press, 1994), p. 200

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Nov. 9, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The brimming waves delight the eye on sunny days; The dimming hills give a rare view in rainy haze. The West Lake loo…" by Su Shi?
Su Shi photo
Su Shi4
Chinese writer 1037–1101

Related quotes

Karen Marie Moning photo

“Once, long ago in her world, a sunny day in spring was her favorite, but now a sunny day in winter delights her more. It is the perfect metaphor for their love.
Sunshine on ice.
She warms his frost. He cools her fever.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Anastacia photo

“I can see the light of day
Even through the rainy haze.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Dark White Girl
Resurrection (2014)

“She's adorned
Amply that in her husband’s eye looks lovely,—
The truest mirror that an honest wife
Can see her beauty in.”

John Tobin The Honey Moon

The Honeymoon (1805), Act iii. Sc. 4.

“She stopped dead; and the look in her eyes showed plainly she’d just received the import of a crude lesson in economics.”

Keith Roberts book Pavane

Sixth measure “Corfe Gate” (p. 224)
Pavane (1968)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“A lady richly clad as she,
Beautiful exceedingly.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel

Part I
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Christabel

Christina Rossetti photo

“He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Source: An Artist’s Studio

Charlotte Brontë photo

“You ask about Queen Victoria's visit to Brussels. I saw her for an instant flashing through the Rue Royale in a carriage and six, surrounded by soldiers. She was laughing and talking very gaily. She looked a little stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed, not much dignity or pretension about her. The Belgians liked her very well on the whole. They said she enlivened the sombre court of King Leopold, which is usually as gloomy as a conventicle.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Letter to Emily Brontë, (1 December 1843) The life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) by Elizabeth Gaskell.

Ruan Ji photo

“There is a fair woman in the west,
who is as bright as sunlight.
She wears a dress of the finest silk
and jewelry shines from her left, her right.
Her face is a charm, so full of grace,
lightly perfuming the breeze.
Climbing upward, she keeps watch for her loved one,
holding her sleeves, she faces the morning sun.
She hovers, she drifts through the sky,
waving her sleeves, she dances,
flies like the wind, like a cloud, in [a] trance.
Every so often, she glances at me,
but for me this beauty is out of reach.
Left alone, I lament my fate.”

Ruan Ji (210–263) One of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove

Poem XIX, translated by Wu Fusheng and Graham Hartill in The Poem of Ruan Ji (2006), p. 39, as reported in Constructing Irregular Theology (2009) by Paul S. Chung, p. 13

George Chapman photo

“Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair
In that she never studied to be fairer
Than Nature made her; beauty cost her nothing,
Her virtues were so rare.”

George Chapman All Fools

Act I, scene i.
All Fools (1605)

“Her eyes brimful to the verge of weeping.”
Ad primos turgentia lumina fletus.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book II, Line 464

Related topics