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14. A Farmstead by the Wei River | Wang Wei

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English translation

The setting sun lights the village; through the long lane the cattle and sheep come home.

The poem opens on the act of returning, and every couplet after it writes the same thing: something on its way back.

An old man thinks of the herd boy, leaning on his stick at the brushwood gate.

"Thinks of" happens in the mind, "waits" happens at the gate. The one he waits for is the boy who took the animals out; the line joins the cattle and sheep of the couplet before, all of them moving toward the same door.

Pheasants call and the wheat comes into ear; the silkworms sleep and the mulberry leaves thin out.

No people here, only what the fields are doing: the wheat rising, the silkworms sleeping. Sleeping is the stage before they shed their skins; the thinning leaves mean this round of feeding is nearly done.

The farmers come in with hoes over their shoulders; meeting, they talk and linger.

This is the first human sound in the poem, and Wang Wei does not report a word of it — only the unwillingness to break off.

At this I envy their ease, and with a heavy heart I hum "Shi Wei".

"At this" gathers the four couplets before it and points at exactly what has been described. "Shi Wei" is a poem in the Book of Songs with a refrain that asks: it is getting dark, why not go home?

赏析 · Commentary

八句写的是同一个动作 · Eight Lines, One Action

全诗十句，前八句都在写「归」。牛羊归巷，老人候门等孩子归，麦子归穗，蚕归眠，农夫归村。王维没有给这些景致另找线索，他让每一句都落在同一个动作上，而且始终不点破。直到末联用「即此」一收，读者回头看，才发现一路都是归。这样，末联的羡慕就有了确切的对象：不是田家，是那种各有所归的状态。

Eight of the ten lines are about coming home. Cattle and sheep into the lane, an old man at the gate waiting for a boy, wheat coming into ear, silkworms going to their sleep, farmers back from the fields. Wang Wei gives the scene no other thread. Every line lands on the same action, and he never names it. Only the closing "at this" gathers them up, and the reader looking back finds the word running through all of them. The envy of the last couplet then has a definite object: not farm life, but a condition in which everything has somewhere to return to.

人到第四联才开口 · Voices Only in the Eighth Line

前六句全是物和动作——牛羊、老人、牧童、野鸡、蚕、桑叶。人的声音第一次出现是第八句，王维还是没把那句话写出来，只写了说完之后不肯散的样子。整首诗里最响的是野鸡的叫声。这样安排，全诗一直安静，等到末联王维自己出声，「怅然吟式微」，前面攒下来的静都压在这一句上。

The first six lines are objects and motions: animals, an old man, a boy, pheasants, silkworms, leaves. Human speech arrives in the eighth line, and even there Wang Wei does not tell us what was said — only that the men were unwilling to leave off. The loudest thing in the poem is a pheasant. The arrangement keeps the whole poem quiet, so that when the speaker finally makes a sound of his own in the last line, the stillness of everything before rests on that one line.

为什么引《式微》 · Why the Poem Quotes "Shi Wei"

末联说羡慕田家的闲逸，借的是《式微》。《式微》里反复问一句：天都黑了，为什么还不回去。王维把它放在羡慕之后，等于拿这话问自己一遍。他并不是要去当农夫，前八句写得那样清闲，他也清楚田家并不真的闲；他羡慕的是有处可归，而他自己卡在官与隐之间，两边都不落地。张九龄罢相之后他这种处境一直没变，这首诗里只露了这一句。

The last couplet envies the farmers their ease and borrows the "Shi Wei" to say it. That poem repeats one question: it is getting dark, why not go home? Wang Wei puts the quotation after his envy, which is to ask the question of himself. He is not proposing to become a farmer; his own eight lines are calm enough to show that farmers are not truly idle. What he envies is having somewhere to return to. He himself is caught between office and retirement with no ground under either foot, a position unchanged since Zhang Jiuling lost the chancellorship, and this poem lets one line of it show.

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