47. Qingping Yue (Wang Anguo)

本页依《宋词三百首》署名王安国[1]；上阕四句，声音在前，颜色在后。起句不写人，先写莺：春天留不住，话倒是被黄莺说尽了。「费尽」两字把徒劳写成声音上的操劳，莺鸣被当成一次没能成功的劝留，落空的其实不是鸟，而是想留春的人。第三句镜头落到地面：满地残红，「宫锦污」用宫中的织锦来比落花——再华美的料子，沾了污渍也只能摊在那里。因果放到句末：「昨夜南园风雨」晚一步补出，满地狼藉先给足，缘由才交代，语气只是平平陈述，没有直接喊出惜春的痛。

This page follows the Songci Sanbai Shou in attributing the ci to Wang Anguo [1]. In the first stanza sound comes before color. The poet does not open with a person but with orioles: spring will not stay, and the birds have, figuratively, said everything they could. The phrase 费尽 (to exhaust) turns wasted effort into an audible one — the oriole's song is cast as a plea for spring that simply fails, and what is left empty is not the bird's throat but the listener's wish. Then the camera drops to the ground, where fallen petals are compared to stained palace brocade: however splendid the fabric, once soiled it can only lie there. Only in the final line is the cause given — last night's wind and rain in the south garden. The damage is shown first and explained afterward, and the tone stays at level statement, without an open cry of grief.

下阕换人换声。前阕的鸟声已经说完，这里琵琶刚上手：「小怜[2]初上琵琶」。「初」字给出时间感——曲子才起，叙述者已经在听。「晓来思绕天涯」把琵琶声和心事并置：天刚亮，思绪却已经绕到天边那么远。词没有说明小怜是谁、听的人在何处、两人是什么关系，正因什么都不交代，声音、清晨和天涯才连成一个开放的画面：近处一件乐器，远处一个没有着落的方向。画堂朱户也在同一画面里，只是它此刻还只作为「不肯」的对象出现。

The second stanza changes both voice and sound. The orioles' arguments are spent; now a pipa has just been taken up: 小怜[2]初上琵琶. The word 初 (just now) supplies a time sense — the tune is only beginning, and someone is already listening. 晓来思绕天涯 sets the music and the mind side by side: dawn has barely come, yet the thoughts have circled out to the horizon. The ci never says who Xiaolian is, where the listener stands, or what relation joins them; precisely because nothing is spelled out, sound, early morning and a distant horizon lock into one open picture — a musical instrument close at hand, a direction with no fixed address. The painted hall and vermilion gates belong to the same frame, but for now they appear only as what is not entered.

结句把「不肯」落到一样轻的东西上：「杨花[3]」。它不进画堂朱户，只在春风里自来自去。「自在」落在全词收尾处——莺费力，残红由风雨摆布，琵琶声里绕着心事，唯独杨花无牵无挂。它和小怜是什么关系，词里没有说：可以读成一处对照，也可以只读作暮春收尾的一个画面，两读都通，不必坐实。末句另有「梨花」异文——梨花是静的白，杨花是飞动的絮，一字之差，决定结尾是静景还是飘絮。也可以把末句读作不受朱门拘束的姿态；这只是一种读法，词句没有说明作者的现实经历，也没有明言杨花与作者操守之间的对应关系。

The final line lets something weightless carry the refusal: poplar catkins [3]. They do not go into the painted halls and vermilion gates; they drift wherever the spring wind takes them. 自在 (at ease, on its own) falls at the close of the whole piece — the orioles have labored, the fallen reds were wrecked by weather, the pipa carries someone's thoughts, and only the catkins are unencumbered. How they relate to Xiaolian the poem does not say: one may read the ending as a contrast, or simply as a late-spring closing image; both readings hold, and neither needs to be settled. There is also a variant here — some texts read 梨花, pear blossom. Pear blossom is a still white, poplar catkins a drifting floss, and the single character decides whether the last scene rests or flies. The close may also be read as an image of freedom from the painted halls and vermilion gates. That is one possible reading; the ci does not describe the author’s own circumstances or explicitly connect the catkins with his personal conduct.