183. From Xiakou to Parrot Isle, Gazing at Evening Toward Yueyang, Sent to Vice Censor Yuan | Liu Changqing
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
汀洲无浪复无烟，楚客相思益渺然。
English translation
On the islet there are no waves and no mist; my longing as a wanderer in Chu grows ever more distant and indistinct.
The opening fixes the weather: no waves, no haze, the river clear — only with such sight can longing look so far. Here “Chu wanderer” is the poet's self-reference, and it allusively echoes Jia Yi's exile in Changsha.
Original Chinese text
汉口夕阳斜渡鸟，洞庭秋水远连天。
English translation
In the sunset at Hankou a bird slants across the river; the autumn water of Dongting runs far and joins the sky.
The slanting bird, the water joining sky: the grand scale seen from the water's edge, and what makes the act of gazing toward Yueyang possible — the direction in which the friend stands.
Original Chinese text
孤城背岭寒吹角，独戍临江夜泊船。
English translation
The lone city backed by the ridge, a bugle in the cold; the single outpost on the river, a boat moored for the night.
Lone city, single outpost: two singular images together, the garrison system thinned and the man himself solitary. Bugle heard, boat seen — both figures of dusk and night.
Original Chinese text
贾谊上书忧汉室，长沙谪去古今怜。
English translation
Jia Yi submitted memorials out of concern for the Han house, yet was banished to Changsha — pitied from ancient times to now.
The closing returns to Jia Yi, as in the previous poem: he worried for the dynasty and was banished, pitied through all ages — beneath it, the poet's own worry for the times met with no understanding, and he enrolls himself in the lineage of the pitied.
赏析 · Commentary
寄给谁的诗，为什么写满风景 · A Poem Sent to a Friend, Filled with Landscape
题目的收件人是源中丞（一位御史中丞），但八句里只有首尾四句涉及人与人：相思、寄诗、贾谊、古今怜。中间四句全是风景——夕阳、秋水、孤城、角声、泊船。这不是跑题：正因为收信人在远处（岳阳方向），风景就是两人之间唯一的公共财产——我看见的江天，你那边也有。唐诗寄远诗的标准做法是把中二联变成「两地共视的风景」，收信人读到时等于完成了会面。刘长卿的处理尤妙在孤城独戍四字：风景里始终站着一个孤单的寄信人。
The addressee is Vice Censor Yuan, yet of the eight lines only the first and last couplets concern persons: longing, sending, Jia Yi, the pity of all ages. The middle four are all landscape — sunset, autumn water, lone city, bugle, moored boat. This is not stray: precisely because the recipient is far away toward Yueyang, the landscape is the only property the two men share — the river and sky I see, you see too. The standard practice of poems sent afar turns the middle couplets into scenery common to both places; the recipient, reading, completes the meeting. Liu's touch is in the four characters lone city, single outpost: in the scenery stands always the solitary sender.
同一条贾谊线的第二站 · The Second Station on the Same Jia Yi Line
刘长卿在江湘之间的两首七律（上首《长沙过贾谊宅》、这首）都以贾谊收尾，处理方式不同：上首是亲访故宅，用「人去后、日斜时」的光线写招魂；这首是舟行遥寄，只把贾谊当作一个被古今共怜的符号。两首合读可以看到迁客诗的完整逻辑：贾谊是谪官谱系的源头人物，凡贬至湖湘的唐代官员几乎都要经过这道仪式——过其宅、咏其人、自比其遇。贾谊上书忧汉室一句的重心在「上书」：忧国而得的回报是贬谪，这是刘长卿对自己两遭贬谪的最终陈述——不喊冤，把自己挂进谱系里让后人怜。
In his two seven-character regulated poems between the Yangtze and the Xiang — the previous one, and this — Liu Changqing ends both on Jia Yi, differently handled: the first, a personal visit to the old house, summoning the dead through the light of the man-gone, sun-slanting hour; this one, a poem sent from the river, using Jia Yi purely as a figure whom all ages have pitied. Read together they show the full logic of the exile's verse: Jia Yi is the fountainhead of the demoted minister's lineage, and nearly every Tang official banished to the Hunan country passed through the rite — visit the house, sing the man, liken the fate. The weight of Jia Yi's memorials worried for the house of Han falls on memorials: to worry for the state and be banished for it is Liu's final account of his own two demotions — no cry of injustice, only self-enrollment in the lineage for later ages to pity.
无浪无烟与远连天：水路的两种平静 · No Waves, No Mist and Joining the Sky: Two Kinds of Calm on the Water
首联与颔联的水是两种状态：汀洲附近无浪无烟，是近处的澄澈；洞庭秋水远连天，是远处的浩渺。一动一静都没有——这条江在诗里出奇地平静，与孤城寒角的紧张形成对照。这种平静不是风景的偶然，是修辞的选择：江面越平静，相思越渺然，人事的动荡（贬谪、战乱、贾谊之冤）就越显得无处着落。中唐诗人写大江多取气象，刘长卿取的是「静得能听见角声」的江——听觉的敏感替代了视觉的壮丽，这正与他五律的清瘦气质相通。
The water of the first two couplets is two states: near the islet, no waves and no mist — a local clarity; the autumn water of Dongting joining the sky — far vastness. Nothing moves, nothing stirs: this river is unnaturally calm, set against the tension of lone city and cold bugle. The calm is no accident of scenery but a choice of rhetoric: the calmer the river, the bluer the longing, and the upheavals of human affairs — demotion, war, the wrong done to Jia Yi — the more they hang with nowhere to land. Middle Tang poets usually took the great river for grandeur; Liu takes it quiet enough to hear a bugle — acuteness of hearing replacing visual splendor, kin to the spare texture of his five-character verse.