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My body is white; my fate, softly rounded,
rising and sinking like mountains in streams.
Whatever way hands may shape me,
at center my heart is red and true.

— Hồ Xuân Hương Spring Essence (2000)

Thân em vừa trắng lại vừa tròn,
Bảy nổi ba chìm với nước non.
Rắn nát mặc dầu tay kẻ nặn.
Mà em vẫn giữ tấm lòng son.

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Notes from Wikiquote

See popular Vietnamese song (YouTube link) inspired by this poem

Topics

Women

More quotes by Hồ Xuân Hương

Nirvana is here, nine times out of ten.

Spring Essence (2000)

Praise whoever sketched this desolate scene.

Spring Essence (2000)

I see it up there in the corner of my eye:
the General's tomb standing all alone.
If I could change my fate, become a man
of heroic deed, couldn't I do better?

Spring Essence (2000)

To hell with the fate that makes you share a man... You slave like the maid, but without the pay. If I had known how it would go, I think I would have lived alone.

All Hồ Xuân Hương quotes →

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Hồ Xuân Hương (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.