167. In Reply to Supervising Censor Guo | Wang Wei

酬答诗的难点在分寸：对方居官得意，写得太热是谄媚，写得太冷是嫉妒。王维的解法是两副笔墨各管一半：前六句浓墨写郭给事的世界——宫阁余辉、省中清景、晨趋夕拜，把对方的官场写得庄重清雅，恭维不着一个谀字；尾联突然转到自己：老了、病了、要解朝衣了。一热一冷，一进一退，两种人生并排放着，谁也不压谁。赠答诗的礼貌因此成全了诗的层次：如果通篇都写对方，诗就只有一面；有了结尾这一退，前面的辉煌才有了对照。

The difficulty of a reply poem is proportion: the other man flourishes in office — too warm reads as flattery, too cold as envy. Wang Wei's solution is two registers, one for each half: six lines in rich ink on Guo's world — pavilions in the last glow, the quiet secretariat, morning haste and evening bow — his official life made dignified and elegant, the praise never once crossing into servility. Then the closing couplet turns to the self: old, ill, about to take off the court robes. Warm and cold, advance and retreat, two lives set side by side, neither pressing the other. The courtesy of the genre thus becomes the poem's structure: had it been all about the other man, the poem would have one face; the closing retreat gives the brilliance its contrast.

写官署的诗容易写得森严，这一句偏偏写鸟叫和人稀。它在诗里的功能有二层：表面上承首联写暮色渐深，公务收尾；深一层是为郭给事作衬——吏人稀而政务不乱，说明主事者从容。旧评家特别欣赏王维笔下官署的清贵之气：不是繁忙衙门，是钟声稀疏、鸟鸣可闻的清雅之地。这与王维自己半官半隐的身份有关：他把官署写成可居可游的园林，官与隐在他那里不是对立的。读者若拿这首与《积雨辋川庄作》对读，会发现同一支笔写的朝与野，气质相通。

Poems on government offices tend to the severe; this line writes instead birdsong and departing clerks. It works twice over: on the surface it carries the evening forward, the day's business ending; underneath it sets off Guo — the clerks few yet nothing disordered, a sign the man in charge is unhurried. Earlier critics prized the pure-and-noble air of Wang Wei's offices: not a bustling bureau but a place where bells are sparse and birds can be heard. This has to do with Wang Wei's own half-official, half-reclusive standing: he writes the office as a garden one could dwell in or wander, for in him officialdom and reclusion are not opposites. Read beside After Long Rains at the Wangchuan Farmstead, the same brush paints court and country with one temperament.

「将因卧病解朝衣」写这首诗时王维还在朝，但退意已说了很多年。他的母亲崔氏信佛守节，王维本人丧妻不娶、斋居办道，晚年虽官至尚书右丞，心早已在辋川。酬答诗里说自己老病，有客套的成分；但「解朝衣」这个意象在他晚年诗里反复出现，不是虚辞。有意思的是退意从不影响他应制、酬答时的认真：该写的场面照样写得富丽堂皇，写完才淡淡补一句我要退了。这种身在朝而心在野的双轨，正是理解王维晚年全部应酬诗的钥匙——场面上的功夫他一样不缺，只是不再把它当成归宿。

When this poem was written Wang Wei still held office, yet the wish to withdraw had been spoken for years. His mother, a devout Buddhist widow, and his own widowed, vegetarian, scripture-copying life meant that even at the post of deputy minister his heart was at Wangchuan. Speaking of age and illness in a reply poem has its share of politeness; but the image of taking off the court robes recurs through his late work, no empty phrase. What is striking is that the withdrawal never dulled his diligence at occasions: the required scenes are still written in full splendor, and only then, quietly, comes the line — I shall retire. This double track, body at court and heart in the wilds, is the key to all his late occasion-poems: the craft lacks nothing; he simply no longer takes it for a home.