A silver candle's autumnal glow is cold on the painted screen. A small fan of light gauze flaps at the drifting fireflies. On the Heavenly Stairs the dim night is as cool as water. She lies and watches the stars of the Herdboy and the Weaving Girl.
This poem, called Autumn Night, by the Tang dynasty poet Tu Mu (803-852), refers to one of the most popular Chinese myths about the stars: the Herdboy and the Weaving Girl.
Look up at the night sky in early fall and the brightest star you see is Vega, the star of the Weaving Girl. To the east is the Milky Way, called the Heavenly or Silvery River by the Chinese. A bit to the southeast, just across the Milky Way at its broadest point, are three stars in a row, part of Aquila. The bright one in the middle, with a slight yellow glow, is Altair, the Herdboy's star.
Around these two stars the ancient Chinese wove a beautiful myth of thwarted love, giving rise to the Chinese Valentine's Day and inspiring poets and artists through the ages.
The myth goes like this: The Weaving Girl, the granddaughter of the Celestial Emperor, lived to the east of the Heavenly River, where she wove on her loom the gorgeous Clothes of Heaven: the rosy dawn, the brilliant sunset, the lovely rainbow, and the fleeting, ever-changing clouds. The beautiful girl worked industriously day after day, and as she grew up, like young ladies in the world below, she began to look forward to marrying the beau of her dreams and tasting the sweet and bitter flavor of love.
The Herdboy was a poor orphan in the mortal world whose only means of support was an old ox. Then one day the Weaving Girl and some celestial fairies came down to a nearby stream to bathe. At the ox's urging, the Herdboy stole the Weaving Girl's clothes, whereupon they met, fell in love, and married. They lived together happily, he plowing and she weaving, and soon enough had a son and a daughter. But the Celestial Emperor, having found them out, sent down some demigods and the Queen Mother of the West, who escorted the Weaving Girl back to the Heavenly Court to be tried.
Left behind with no way to follow, the Herdboy was heartbroken. But the old ox, just before it died, told him that if he flayed off its skin and cast it over his shoulders, he could fly up to the sky. The Herdboy did as the ox had told him and, carrying his two children with him in a pair of baskets, went to the heavens to look for his wife.
But just as he was about to reach her, the Queen Mother suddenly pulled a gold pin from her hair and drew a line in the air with it. A Heavenly River with billowing waves appeared, leaving the Herdboy and the Weaving Girl separated on either shore, weeping. At last, moved by their plight, the Celestial Emperor granted them special permission to meet once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, crossing the Heavenly River on a bridge of fluttering magpies.
This touching story has struck a responsive chord in the hearts of lovers through the ages, and has figured in countless poems and songs, many of enduring quality.
One of the earliest, and best, is an anonymous poem from the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 A.D.) included in The Nineteen Ancient Poems:
Far, far away, the Herdboy Star; Bright, bright, the Girl of the Heavenly River. Slender, slender, she plies her white hands; Click, clack, working the loom's shuttle. All day long, not a pattern finished; Her tears fall down like rain. The River of Heaven is clear and shallow; What a little way keeps them apart! Brimming, brimming, a single stream between; They gaze and gaze and cannot speak.
This poem, in a mere 50 characters, movingly relates the heartache of the separated lovers in clear, unadorned, yet deeply expressive language. Note how it falls into three parts: the first two lines presenting the characters, the next four focusing on the Weaving Girl and her inconsolable sorrow, and the last four dwelling on their hopeless situation, ending on a note of despair.
How many similarly "star-crossed" lovers have found themselves in situations that they felt to be equally as hopeless! The story and the characters are mythological, but the feelings are true to life and timeless.
Another moving poem, which looks at the theme in a rather different way, is The Magpie Bridge Immortals by Ch'in Kuan (1049--1100) of the Northern Sung:
The woven clouds are exquisitely worked; The drifting stars express their longing; In the dark she crosses the distant, distant River of Silver.
In the Autumn wind and jade-like dew when once they meet, They are better off than untold many in the world below.
Their tender feelings seem like water; Their happy time, a dream. How can she bear to look at the road back across the Magpie Bridge?
If a couple's love were this imperishable What need they be together day and night, nitht and day?
The first stanza refers to the one night every year when the Weaving Girl is allowed to cross the Magpie Bridge over the Milky Way and visit her lover. In the second stanza, the celestial lovers are better off than "untold many" in two senses: many lovers, separated by death or other circumstances, cannot meet even once a year, while others, even though sharing their lives together, do not understand how to cherish the fortune that is granted to them.
The next stanza describes the fleeting joys of the lovers' tryst and their sorrow at parting. The last stanza addresses lovers in the human world, consoling them in separation and urging them to take the faithful, steadfast love of the heavenly couple as a model for their own.
Finally, The Song of Unending Sorrow by the T'ang poet Po Chu-i (772-846) has these lines:
On the seventh day of the seventh month, in the Palace of Long Life, We told each other secretly at midnight, all alone That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one, And to grow together on the earth, two trees with branches intertwined.
The seventh day of the seventh lunar month, the Chinese Valentine's Day, is August 12th this year. How pleasant that night to savor some old poems, recall this story, and "look up at the stars of the Herdboy and the Weaving Girl"!
