113. Returning to South Mountain at Year's End | Meng Haoran

这两句表面谦卑，实际一肚子不平。「明主」是圣明的君主，「弃」却是弃置不用——把「明」和「弃」放在一起，就露出了反意：若真是明主，为何会弃我？何况自己并非「不才」。据说唐玄宗读到这两句很不高兴，说「卿不求朕，朕未尝弃卿，奈何诬我」。这个故事未必可靠，但它抓住了这两句的要害——牢骚藏在谦辞里，皇帝也读得出。

These lines look humble and are full of grievance. A wise ruler is set beside cast off — with wise and cast off together, the irony shows: if he were truly wise, why cast me off? And he is not in fact untalented. Xuanzong is said to have been displeased by the lines, saying you did not seek me, and I never cast you off, so why wrong me. The story may not be reliable, but it has caught the point — the complaint hides in the modest words, and even an emperor reads it.

题目点明「岁暮」，全诗的时间感都压在这个节点上。第三联尤其明显：白发病年老，青阳逼岁除，一个在催人，一个在逼年。这两句把时间拟人化了，好像它们在主动追赶。这样的写法让归隐不那么从容——不是因为看破才归山，是因为年纪和处境逼着自己回头。末联睡不着觉，正是这份压迫感的结果。

The title names year's end, and the whole poem's sense of time presses on that point. The third couplet is clearest: white hair hurries age, young spring presses the year to its close — one urging the man, one pressing the year. The lines personify time as if it were actively pursuing. So written, the retreat is not serene — not withdrawal from insight but a turning back forced by age and circumstance. The sleeplessness of the last couplet is that pressure's result.

孟浩然一生几乎都在隐居，但他并不是没有求仕之心。他曾赴长安应试不第，也曾向张九龄等人投赠求荐，这首诗里「北阙休上书」的「休」字，正说明他此前的确不断上书。求而不得，才转而说「还是回去吧」。理解这份不甘，才能明白为什么归隐诗里会有牢骚——归隐对他来说，一半是选择，一半是退路。

Meng Haoran spent nearly his whole life in retreat, yet he was not without the wish for office. He sat the exams at Chang'an and failed, and he sent poems seeking recommendation to Zhang Jiuling and others; the word no more in no more memorials shows he had indeed been writing them. Seeking and failing, he turned to saying he would go back. Grasp that reluctance and the grievance in a retirement poem makes sense — for him, retreat was half a choice and half a fallback.