Lyric has always played a big part of literature all over a world. Basically, lyrics are formed in different ways among different countries and cultures. However, there are always something in common. Lyric would commonly have meter or rhythm to achieve the fluency. Besides, usually, it’s a way to express the mood and emotion either directly or indirectly. Thus, by tracing the writer’s emotion, we can find something beneath the lyric. This time, I will compare to lyrics, find what’s common and what’s common. One lyric, Spring Prospect, is from Chinese poet Tu Fu. The other one is from Japanese poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. I am a Chinese who knows a few Japanese. Hence, I will take the advantage of my Asian background to analyze those two great lyrics. One thing I want to claim is the Spring Prospect is not translated very well. Despite it’s very accurate but it lost lots of verse compare to the original one.

The Spring Prospect was written when Tu Fu was suffering from the collapse of his life. His political ambition has nowhere to place and the country he loved was rapidly going downhill. He wrote the lyric to express his sadness. At the first line, he wrote The nation shattered, hills and streams remain addressed the mood of that time. Then he wrote even though is spring time but the surroundings are a mess. It’s parallel to the first line. At the great depression, no one could take care of the beauty that it should be.  Then he used flowers draw tears and birds alarm the hearts to address his depress and anxiety. Same as last two lines, rather than directly address that he is too old and too much stressed, he said his hair was white and too few to hairpin up. (In ancient China, both male and female would have long hair)

The next lyric is in a much easier mood, Japanese poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro wrote a song of love. Kakinomoto first described the surroundings to create quite, silence mood. The great novelist Natsume Soseki had said, Japanese wouldn’t directly say “I love u”, instead they may say “It’s beautifully the moon tonight”. Kakinomoto wrote

Now as the moon, sailing through the cloud rift

Above the mountain of Yakami,

Disappears, leaving me full of regret,

So vanishes my love out of sight;

This part expresses his love in a very art way which he used in many places.

Comparing these two lyrics, they both have more context than literal wording. When Tu Fu said a letter from home worth ten thousand in gold, it means both the difficulty of delivery due to the mess and his nostalgia. Based on the same culture background, these to lyric technology highly same.