265. Hearing a Flute on the Surrender City Wall at Night | Li Yi
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
回乐峰前沙似雪，受降城外月如霜。
English translation
Before Hui-le Peak the sand looks like snow; beyond the Surrender City the moonlight is like frost.
Hui-le Peak is a mountain near Hui-le County, and the Surrender City is a Tang frontier stronghold. Both similes grow out of the pale moonlight and convey the barren cold of a frontier night; there is no actual snow or frost.
Original Chinese text
不知何处吹芦管，一夜征人尽望乡。
English translation
No one knows where the reed pipe is being played; all night long, every frontier soldier gazes toward home.
The reed pipe is a frontier instrument like a reed flute. No one knows where expresses the vagueness of its source, which makes it feel all the more vast. Every shows how many share the homesickness and how alike their feeling is; all night long shows the length of time and implies that no one can sleep.
赏析 · Commentary
颜色先造出寒意 · Cold Made First by Color
前两句不写风，也不写温度，只把沙写成雪、把月写成霜。白茫茫的颜色先让读者感到冷，边地的荒凉与孤寂也随之而来。景是静的，人的情绪却在这片静里一点点凝重起来。
The opening lines mention neither wind nor temperature; they turn sand into snow and moonlight into frost. The sheer whiteness makes the reader feel cold first, and the desolation of the frontier follows. The scene is still, yet within that stillness the soldiers' feeling grows steadily heavier.
一支笛子让所有人转向故乡 · One Pipe Turns Everyone Homeward
前两句的静，到第三句被一支芦管打破。谁在吹、吹的是什么曲子，诗都没有说；正因为来处不明，笛声才像从四面八方同时响起。末句的“尽”把个人的乡愁变成整支队伍的乡愁，“一夜”又把这一刻延长到天亮。
The stillness of the opening is broken by a single reed pipe. Who plays it and what tune it is the poem never says; precisely because its source is unknown, the sound seems to rise on every side at once. The word every turns one man's homesickness into the homesickness of an entire garrison, and all night long stretches the moment until dawn.