Qiū Jǐn [秋瑾] (1875-1907), hero and martyr of the first urprisings leading to the smiting of Qing Imperial China, was not only a warrior but also a poet. Her untimely execution deprived her of witnessing the Forbidden City fall, but it could not erase her daily appreciation and sensibility, too broadly given away in correspondence, and discrete scratchings on the paper. Thus she wrote, travelling alone and undercovered:
Murmuring to my shadow
I act oddly not because I'm drunk
or we'll soon part
I have, instead, a citadel of sorrow
right smack in my heart
Separated from friends and kin; all alone;
My sorrow is a secret all my own
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