138. Grass | Bai Juyi
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
离离原上草，一岁一枯荣。
English translation
Li-li is dense growth. "Once a year withered, once a year flourishing" gives a cycle: both are normal, not accidents.
Original Chinese text
野火烧不尽，春风吹又生。
English translation
The poem's famous couplet and the line most often quoted for resilience. Note how plain the method is: no claim of toughness, only that fire does not finish it and wind revives it.
Original Chinese text
远芳侵古道，晴翠接荒城。
English translation
The verbs "invade" and "join" make the grass the active party: it does not grow by the road, it advances onto the road and toward the town.
Original Chinese text
又送王孙去，萋萋满别情。
English translation
"Prince's grandson" comes from the Chu Ci: "The prince's grandson wanders and does not return; spring grass grows lush." Qi-qi means lush, carrying on the li-li above.
赏析 · Commentary
八句写草，其实是写别情 · Eight Lines on Grass That Are Really About Parting
这首诗的题目一作「赋得古原草送别」，说明是送别之作。前六句都在写草：草的生长周期、草的顽强、草蔓延到路和城。看起来与送别无关，但草在这里承担的是「重复」这一层意思——年年枯荣是重复，送别也是重复，被送的人走了，草照旧长出来。末联才把话说破。这种先铺后点的写法，让「别情」两个字有了分量。
An alternate title, "Grass on the Ancient Plain: Seeing Someone Off," marks this as a farewell. Six lines describe the grass: its cycle, its resilience, its spread onto road and town. None of it seems to bear on a parting, and the grass is there for repetition — the yearly withering and flourishing is repetition, and so is a farewell: the person leaves, the grass comes up again. Only the last couplet says it outright. Laying it out first gives "the feeling of parting" its weight.
「野火烧不尽」为什么流传最广 · Why "Wild Fire Cannot Burn It All" Travels Farthest
这一联没有用一个生僻字，也没有用一个典故，却把「再生」这个抽象概念写成了看得见的过程：先烧，烧不尽，风吹，又生。四个动作连成一条链，谁都能懂。白居易写诗求「老妪能解」，这一联是典型的例子。流传广不是因为辞藻好，是因为它把一个意思说到了最简。
The couplet uses no rare character and no allusion, and it turns an abstraction — regeneration — into a visible sequence: fire comes, does not finish it, wind blows, it grows again. Four actions in a chain anyone can follow. Bai Juyi aimed to write so plainly that an old woman could understand, and this couplet is the type specimen. It travels not for its diction but for saying one thing as simply as it can be said.
「侵」和「接」 · "Invade" and "Join"
第三联的两个动词是这首诗的骨节。如果写成「远芳生古道，晴翠满荒城」，草就只是长在那里；用「侵」和「接」，草就有了方向，是从原野往人类的地方推。这条推的路线经过古道，通到荒城，正好与末句送别的路重合。草铺到哪里，别情也铺到哪里。
The two verbs in the third couplet are the poem's joints. Written as "fragrance grows on the old road, green fills the ruined town," the grass would merely be there; "invades" and "joins" give it a direction, pushing out of the wild toward where people are. That line of advance runs along the old road to the ruined town, exactly where the farewell road in the last line goes. Where the grass spreads, the feeling of parting spreads with it.