275. Climbing Leyou Plain on the Way to Wuxing | Du Mu
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
清时有味是无能，闲爱孤云静爱僧。
English translation
In a time of peace the only relish is to be good for nothing; at leisure I love lone clouds, in stillness I love monks.
A time of peace is an age of order; the only relish is to be good for nothing is self-mockery—the world is calm, yet he has no place in it, and so idle detachment begins to seem pleasant. Loving lone clouds and monks conveys a taste for quiet and a wish for release from the world.
Original Chinese text
欲把一麾江海去，乐游原上望昭陵。
English translation
I would take up a governor's banner and go off to the rivers and seas; yet here on Leyou Plain I gaze toward Zhaoling.
A single banner is the pennant of a provincial appointment, here the post at Wuxing, present-day Huzhou; rivers and seas name the far southeast, away from the capital. Zhaoling is the tomb of Emperor Taizong. About to leave the capital for a distant post, he turns to look toward Taizong's tomb, and in that look lie admiration for a wise ruler and attachment to the court.
赏析 · Commentary
先说闲，后说远行 · Idleness First, Then Departure
前两句把姿态放得很低：自认无能，只爱云和僧。后两句忽然转到出仕远行，读者才明白前面的闲适并非真的甘心。诗的情绪是先抑后扬又转沉——看似散淡，实则有一份不得不离开的落寞。
The opening two lines take a very low posture: he calls himself useless and cares only for clouds and monks. Then the poem turns suddenly to a distant posting, and the reader sees that the earlier calm was not true contentment. The feeling moves from quiet modesty to departure and then to something heavier—it looks detached, but underneath lies the loneliness of one who must go.
为什么要回头望昭陵 · Why He Looks Back at Zhaoling
末句把个人的去留接到历史上。昭陵里躺的是唐太宗，后世常把他当作明君与盛世的象征。杜牧将要远赴江海，却在乐游原上朝那个方向望去，这一望里有对明君的追慕，也有一点对当今时局的委婉不满。（后世多如此解读；“望昭陵”三字本身只写遥望陵墓。）
The closing line links one man's departure to history. Taizong lies in Zhaoling, and later ages took him as the emblem of a wise ruler and a golden age. About to set out for the far southeast, Du Mu looks off in that direction from Leyou Plain; the gaze holds both admiration for that ruler and a gentle dissatisfaction with the present. (This is the usual later reading; the three words gazing toward Zhaoling themselves describe only a look toward a tomb.)