As image is an important element in poetry, its translation has always been the focus and difficulty in translating poems. To our delight, cognitive metaphor theory provides a new perspective for poetic image translation. In cognitive linguistics, poetic image is essentially a conceptual metaphor mapped from the source domain “image” to the target domain “idea”. Therefore, the translation methods of poetic image depend on corresponding mapping relationships in two cultures. From the perspective of cognitive metaphor theory, we studied the translation of flower image which is popular in classical poetry, and summed up five translation methods of poetic image , namely, literal translation, literal translation plus interpretation, changing image to express meaning, expressing meaning without image and transliteration plus interpretation. The study aims to provide a reference for poetic image translation and spread Chinese traditional culture.