East of Luoyang City are plum and peach blossoms,
Flying hither and thither, onto whose door will it land?
Ladies of Luoyang with such fair faces,
Yet deep sighs follow the sight of fallen flowers.
As this year’s flowers wilt, our faces will also change,
But who will be here to witness next year’s falls?

Having seen pines and oaks cut into firewood,
And heard dry fields turn into seas.
No more past dwellers in Luoyang City’s east,
While present ones still facing the spring breeze.

Year after year, days after days,
The flowers seem the same,
Days after days, years after years,
The people never stay.

The tide of the Spring River rises to sea-level,
The bright moon in the sea also arises with the surge,
Drifting with the waves for thousands of miles;
Which part of the River is without moonlight?
The river winds around lush fields;
In the moonlight, flowers and forests appear as a silver sheet of ice.
The frost in the air unnoticingly disappears;
The silver dune on the sandbar no longer seen.
The river and the sky are of one color, speckless;
The moon hangs lonelily in the glistening white sky.
Who was the first to see the moon from the riverbank?
And when did the moon first shine on people?
For endless generations of human life,
Year after year, the moon still remains alike.
No one knows who on the river the moon waits for,
Only that the water in the Yangtze River flows away.

── from Quan Tang Shi
(Complete Collection of Tang Poems)