[dsrguru]

I'm not sure who the poet was, but here's an old Chinese poem that I love. My translation doesn't quite do it justice, but...

少小離家老大回 鄉音無改鬢毛衰 兒童相見不相識 笑問客從何處來

I left my hometown as a young boy and returned as an old man.

The local speech hadn't changed, but the hair on my head had.

The children looked at me but recognized me not.

Laughing, they asked from where this visitor had come.

[peri]

Do you mind sharing the original author's name? It sounds gorgeous, but I can only read Japanese, so I'm not sure if I'm just completely wrong in getting the images from the Chinese.

[contingencies]

Search engine yielded both the rest of the poem and the identity of the author.

少小離家老大回，鄉音無改鬢毛衰。 兒童相見不相識，笑問客從何處來。

(as above)

離別家鄉歲月多，近來人事半消磨。 惟有門前鏡湖水，春風不改舊時波。

I have left home for so long, society has lost its meaning. There are only the waters of Mirror Lake before the door, and the spring winds cannot change the ripples of the past. [my translation]

The author is Hè​ Zhī​zhāng​ (賀知章), a Tang Dynasty poet. The poem comes from the second part of his book Images of Homecoming (回鄉偶書). He is one of the Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup (ie. alcohol-loving Tang poets): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals_of_the_Wine_Cup

Coming from Japanese or modern Chinese you can use http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php to understand the relationships between words. Also try http://chinesenotes.com/classical_chinese.php for grammatical background. More Tang poems @ http://chinesenotes.com/classics.php

[davorb]

Can you recommend a good English-language collection of his works? The poem you wrote was amazing.

[peri]

Thanks so much! I only got a brief overview of Chinese poetry in school, so getting to appreciate more is really awesome.