ChineseStudy

297. Miscellaneous Poem | Anonymous

Contents

Text

English translation

Near the Cold Food Festival, rain on the lush grass; wind through the wheat sprouts, willows mirrored on the bank.

Cold Food is the festival one or two days before Qingming, when fires were once put out and cold food eaten; it falls in late spring. Lush describes grass growing thick. The word rendered touches means to attach, to reach, so wind through the wheat sprouts means the breeze blows on and stirs the young wheat. The couplet paints the late-spring fields: thick grass, fine rain, green wheat, willows mirrored along the long bank—exactly the season when a traveler longs for home. (The Gutenberg base text and Wikisource read all-through Cold Food rain; the chinese-poetry dataset and the common anthologies read near Cold Food rain, which I follow.)

It comes to the same—having a home, I cannot return; cuckoo, do not cry beside my ear.

It comes to the same means alike, all the same (some old notes gloss it as why, for what cause). Having a home, I cannot return tells of a home that cannot be reached, with the pain of wandering or disorder in it. The cuckoo is said to be the transformed soul of the Shu king Du Yu, and its cry is piercing; the ancients heard it as go home, go home, which most easily stirs homesickness. Do not cry beside my ear is a plea, and a confession that he cannot bear to hear it. (The Gutenberg base text and Wikisource read it comes to the same; the chinese-poetry dataset reads it is already; I follow the common reading.)

赏析 · Commentary

暮春景色逼出游子 · Late-Spring Scenes Press the Wanderer

前两句全是好景：草、雨、麦、柳，都是春天该有的样子；可越是这般生机，越衬出无家可归的凄凉。诗人不先写愁，而是先把节令写足，愁绪便从景里自己长出来。

The opening couplet is all pleasant scenery: grass, rain, wheat, willows—just what spring should look like; yet the more alive it is, the more it sets off the bleakness of having no home to return to. The poet does not name sorrow first; he fills out the season, and the sorrow grows out of the scene itself.

求杜鹃别再啼 · A Plea to the Cuckoo

杜鹃的叫声像“不如归去”，可诗人偏偏回不去。所以他不是请杜鹃别叫，而是请它别在自己耳边叫——同样的话，别人听了或许只是节令，他听了却是催归。结句是软语相求，却比放声痛哭更沉痛。

The cuckoo's cry sounds like go home, go home, yet the poet cannot go home. So he is not asking the cuckoo to stop; he asks it not to cry beside his own ear—the same sound others might hear as mere season, he hears as an urging to return. The closing line is a soft plea, and heavier than an open wail.

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