原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
含詞賦 With rhapsody
死復生詩 Verse on Death and Return
萬古江山幾變更，歷來數代敗和成。万古江山几变更，历来数代败和成。
周秦漢晉多奇事，誰似唐王死復生？周秦汉晋多奇事，谁似唐王死复生？
逐句解 Line by line
萬古江山幾變更，歷來數代敗和成。
万古江山几变更，历来数代败和成。
Through myriad ages, how often have rivers and mountains changed hands; down the generations, dynasties have fallen and risen.
變更, biàn gēng, is to alter — 更 here is gēng, to change, not gèng, "still more." 敗和成, "losing and winning," is the fall and founding of dynasties.
周秦漢晉多奇事，誰似唐王死復生？
周秦汉晋多奇事，谁似唐王死复生？
Zhou and Qin, Han and Jin knew many a strange event — but who, like the Tang king, has died and lived again?
Zhou, Qin, Han and Jin between them cover the best part of two thousand years of strange events, and the couplet dismisses the lot. 誰似 uses sì, "who is like." The claim is that nothing in all that history matches this.
The closing quatrain sets the emperor's return against the whole sweep of dynastic history — the endless rise and fall of Zhou, Qin, Han and Jin — in order to insist on its singularity.
It is the conventional historian's gesture about the vanity of worldly power, redirected into a marvel: of all the strange events of the ages, none matches a sovereign who died and came back.