153. Resentment in the Spring Palace | Du Xunhe

宫怨是唐诗的常见题目，杜荀鹤这首诗抓住了其中最要命的一点：不是失宠，是不知道规则。梳妆本是取悦的手段，可「承恩不在貌」，手段就失效了。第二联的提问没有答案，正是全诗的核心。前四句写心理，第三联忽然插进一段明亮春景，把封闭的内廷与外界的生机分开。

Palace resentment is a common Tang subject, and Du Xunhe's poem takes its most fatal point: not the loss of favour but not knowing the rules. Adorning is the usual means of pleasing, and if favour does not turn on beauty, the means fail. The question in the second couplet has no answer and is the poem's centre. Four lines of psychology, then a bright spring scene cuts in, separating the closed inner court from life outside.

「风暖鸟声碎，日高花影重」是典型的春景，热闹、明亮、充满生机。把它放在一首宫怨诗里，作用是对照：外面的春天这么饱满，里面的宫女却懒于梳妆。杜荀鹤不评论，只把两种状态并列。景写得越好看，人的处境越显得闷。这是宫怨诗常用的手法，也是最有效的。

"Warm wind, birdsong breaking; high sun, shadows heavy" is a typical spring scene, lively, bright, full of life. In a poem of palace resentment it works by contrast: the spring outside is so full and the woman within cannot be bothered to dress. Du Xunhe does not comment, only sets the two states side by side. The prettier the scenery, the more stifling her position looks. It is the commonest device in such poems and the most effective.

"年年越溪女，相忆采芙蓉" 把越地采莲女子引进来，她们在旧诗里常与西施相关。这一句等于说：宫里的容貌是资本，溪边的劳作却是自由。杜荀鹤没有直接说宫里的生活不好，只给了另一个画面。宫怨诗写到这种地方，怨气才落到实处——不是争宠失败，是根本没有别的选择。

"Year after year the girls of the Yue stream, remembered, picking lotuses" brings in the lotus-pickers of Yue, long associated in older verse with Xi Shi. The line amounts to this: a face is capital in the palace and labour by the stream is freedom. Du Xunhe never says palace life is bad, only offers another picture. Palace poems reach solid ground here — the grievance is not a lost contest but the absence of any alternative.