116. Lodging by the Tonglu River, Sent to Old Friends at Guangling | Meng Haoran
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
山暝听猿愁，沧江急夜流。
English translation
The mountain darkens, and the gibbons cry as though grieving; the dark-blue river hurries through the night.
Ming is the dimming of light after sundown. With the word chou — grief — the gibbon's cry stops being mere sound and becomes a carrier of feeling. The second line writes the water's haste, and the haste is the speaker's too.
Original Chinese text
风鸣两岸叶，月照一孤舟。
English translation
Wind sounds through the leaves on both banks; moonlight falls on a single lonely boat.
The first line is heard, the second seen. The word gu — alone — sets the situation: the speaker is on the water, by himself.
Original Chinese text
建德非吾土，维扬忆旧游。
English translation
Jiande is not my native soil; I think of old friends at Weiyang.
Jiande is the district along the Tonglu River, where the poet was then staying; Weiyang is Yangzhou. The two lines set where the body is against where the heart is.
Original Chinese text
还将两行泪，遥寄海西头。
English translation
All the same I send these two lines of tears far off to the western edge of the sea.
Yangzhou lies east by the sea, hence "the western edge." Tears cannot be posted, and the poet says send anyway; that is where the poem's final weight sits.
赏析 · Commentary
一个「愁」字定了全诗的音 · One Word Sets the Pitch: Grief
开篇的猿啼本是无心的自然声响，作者用「愁」字替它定了性，整首诗的调子由此确定。接下来风吹叶、月照舟，都是围绕着这个孤独的人展开的环境。第三联才把话说清：这里不是家乡，想念的人在扬州。末句的「寄泪」承接了这个距离——既是空间的远近，也是消息不通的无奈。四联的结构是先景后情、先近后远，最后落在一个无法完成的动作上。
The gibbon's cry at the start is an indifferent sound of nature; the poet's word chou fixes its character, and with it the pitch of the whole poem. Wind in the leaves and moonlight on the boat then unfold the surroundings of one lonely person. Only in the third couplet does the poem say plainly what is wrong: this is not home, and the people missed are at Yangzhou. The closing "sending tears" takes up that distance — both the miles and the failure of any word to cross them. The arc runs from scene to feeling, from near to far, and ends on an action that cannot be completed.
「寄」字把不可能写成可能 · The Word "Send": Making the Impossible Happen
末句是全诗的着力处。眼泪寄不到扬州，这是常识；诗人偏偏用了一个投递的动作，把无望写成了有托付。唐诗里这类「寄」的用法不少，作用都是一样的：当现实中的联络断了，诗就自己造一条路。这也解释了为什么前面三联都在写景——景写得越具体（山、江、叶、舟），末句这份寄不出去的心意才越显得实在。
The last line is where the poem puts its strength. Tears cannot reach Yangzhou; everyone knows it. The poet uses a verb of posting anyway, and hopelessness becomes a kind of entrusting. Such "sending" turns are common in Tang poetry, and they do the same work every time: when contact in the real world is cut, the poem builds its own road. It also explains the three scene-couplets before it — the more concrete the scene (mountain, river, leaves, boat), the more substantial the undeliverable feeling at the close.
孟浩然写夜，不渲染只排列 · Meng Haoran's Nights: Arrangement, Not Embellishment
这首夜泊诗没有夸张的形容，四联几乎都是名词加动词：「听」「照」「非」「忆」「寄」。孟浩然的长处在于选取——山、猿、江、叶、月、舟，全是江上夜行能见到的东西，不用一个生僻字。景物本身已经够用，多加修饰反而稀释。这种写法看似平淡，实际极难：选错一样东西，整首诗就散了。
This night-mooring poem uses almost no heightened adjectives. The couplets run on nouns and plain verbs: hear, shine, is-not, recall, send. Meng Haoran's strength lies in selection — mountain, gibbon, river, leaves, moon, boat, all things actually visible on a night crossing, not one rare character. The scene is enough on its own; added ornament only dilutes it. The method looks plain and is very hard: pick one wrong object and the whole poem comes apart.