Quote by Xu Zhimo: “I came gently, gently, just as I came; I waved gently, and went away.”

This is one of the most beloved farewell poems in Chinese literature. The speaker takes nothing and leaves nothing behind — no claim, no trace. It is a meditation on graceful departure and non-attachment, touching something universal about how to leave well.

Xu Zhimo wrote Saying Goodbye to Cambridge Again in 1928 after a brief return visit to Cambridge, where he had studied in the early 1920s. China was in a period of intense political turbulence — the Northern Expedition was consolidating Nationalist power — and Xu's poetry offered a refuge of lyrical, personal emotion at odds with the era's political noise.

Chinese poet of the early twentieth century, a central figure in Chinese Romantic poetry and a founder of the Crescent Moon Society literary group. He studied at Cambridge University, where the English countryside inspired some of his most celebrated verse, including the poem Saying Goodbye to Cambridge Again. He died in a plane crash in 1931 at age 34.