18. Staying at Master Ye's Mountain Hut, Waiting for Ding the Elder Who Never Came | Meng Haoran
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
夕阳度西岭，群壑倏已暝。
English translation
The setting sun crosses the western ridge, and the valleys go dark all at once.
"Crosses" gives the sun's motion over the ridge, "all at once" the speed of the dark. The poem opens with the hour already well advanced, and the waiting is implied from the start.
Original Chinese text
松月生夜凉，风泉满清听。
English translation
Moon among the pines brings out the night's cool; wind and spring fill the ear with clarity.
The two lines split between two senses — coolness on the skin, fullness in the ear. The verb for filling turns sound, which has no shape, into something with capacity.
Original Chinese text
樵人归欲尽，烟鸟栖初定。
English translation
The woodcutters are almost all gone home; birds in the dusk have just settled.
"Almost" and "just" both mark things barely finished or barely begun. The people are nearly back, the birds have only now come down, everything is closing up, and the poet alone is still waiting.
Original Chinese text
之子期宿来，孤琴候萝径。
English translation
This man promised to come and stay the night; a lone lute waits on the path through the vines.
The last line hands the waiting over from the man to the lute. The instrument is his own; saying that the lute waits moves the awkwardness of standing there onto an object.
赏析 · Commentary
时间一直是往下走的 · The Hour Keeps Sinking
四联里时间只朝一个方向走：日落、入夜、人散、鸟栖。孟浩然不在任何一处说自己在等，他让景物替他记时。等到「之子期宿来」给出理由，前面三联的每一样收尾就都变成了落空。等一个人最难的不是没来，是周围的东西一件件安顿下来，只剩你还没着落。
In all four couplets the hour moves in one direction only: sun down, night in, people scattering, birds settling. Meng Haoran never says he is waiting; he lets the scenery keep time for him. When the third couplet finally gives the reason, every closing thing in the earlier lines turns into a missed expectation. What is hard about waiting is not the absence; it is that everything around you settles one by one while you are left unplaced.
凉和满，各占一句 · Cool and Full, One to Each Line
第二联写感觉，但不混在一起：上句是身上的凉，下句是耳朵里的满。凉从月来，满从风水来，两样都无形，却被写得能上身、能装满。这一联全诗最静，也最出声。孟浩然用「满清听」三个字，把夜里所有响动收进耳朵，前面日落的动和后面人鸟归栖的动，都在这一句里安静下来。
The second couplet writes sensation without mixing the senses: coolness on the skin in one line, fullness in the ear in the other. The cool comes from the moon, the fullness from wind and water; both are shapeless, yet here one lands on the body and the other fills it to the brim. These two lines are the quietest and also the most audible in the poem. With three characters about a full and clear hearing, Meng Haoran gathers every sound of the night into the ear, and the motion of the sunset before and the settling of men and birds after both go still inside that line.
把等的人换成等着的琴 · Handing the Waiting to a Lute
末联两句一交代原因，一交代处境。约好来住的人没来，诗人没有写自己站在路口、也没有写心生埋怨，只写一张琴在藤萝小径上候着。琴不会觉得难堪，说它在等，就把整首诗的等待从人身上卸下来，挂在物件上。诗到这里停住，丁大究竟来没来，孟浩然没再给一句。
The last couplet gives first the reason and then the situation. The man who promised to come has not; the poet does not describe himself standing at the fork, nor does he complain, he only leaves a lute waiting on the vine-covered path. A lute cannot feel awkward, and saying that it waits lifts the whole poem's waiting off the person and hangs it on a thing. The poem stops there. Whether Ding ever came, Meng Haoran does not add a word.