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76. Passing Through Zou and Lu, I Offer Sacrifice to Confucius and Sigh | Emperor Xuanzong of Tang

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English translation

What manner of man was the Master? Through a whole age he went about unsettled.

Restless is the word the Analects uses for a man who moves from place to place and never finds rest. Here it sums up Confucius's years of travel from state to state.

The place is still the town of the Zou clan; the house he lived in is now the palace of the Prince of Lu.

Zou is where Confucius was born; Lu is where he taught and died. The palace of the Prince of Lu refers to the palace of the Han-dynasty Prince of Lu, into which Confucius's old residence was incorporated. Both lines rest on place-names, pulling the legend back to ground you can point at.

He sighed that the phoenix did not come and grieved that his time was closed to him; he mourned the captured qilin and resented that the Way had run out.

Both phoenix and qilin are auspices. That the phoenix never came is Confucius's own lament in the Analects that the age showed no sign of order; the qilin taken by hunters is the event after which the Spring and Autumn Annals break off. Set side by side, the two lines say the same thing: the ideal came to nothing.

Now I see the offerings laid between the two pillars, just as they were in the dream.

The Record of Rites tells that Confucius dreamed he sat between two pillars receiving offerings, and waking, knew he would soon die. The last line joins the rite before the speaker's eyes to that foreknowledge.

赏析 · Commentary

先问一句，再用四联收拢距离 · A Question First, Then Four Couplets Narrowing the Distance

这首诗从一个问句起笔，却没有正面回答孔子是怎样的人。第二联先写眼前的鄹邑和旧宅，第三联用凤凰不至、获麟两则典故回看孔子晚年的失意，末联落到两楹之间的祭奠。四联的距离逐步收近：先概括一生，再指出故里，再进入典故，最后停在当下的祭祀现场。结尾把仪式和孔子临终前的梦连起来，眼前的祭奠就像是回应了古人的预见。

The poem opens with a question but never answers directly what kind of man Confucius was. The second couplet turns to the visible site — the town of Zou and the old house; the third looks back through the absent phoenix and the captured qilin to the disappointments of his final years; the last settles on the offerings between the two pillars. Each couplet narrows the distance: a whole life, a native place, remembered allusions, and finally the ceremony before the speaker's eyes. The close joins the rite to the dream of his last days, so that the present ceremony seems to answer a thing foreseen long before.

皇帝写的诗，敬而不亲 · An Emperor's Poem: Reverent but Not Intimate

作者唐玄宗是皇帝，位置决定了他写孔子只能有敬仰这一种调子。全诗没有一个「我」的动作，四联都是观望式的：问、指、叹、看。这种距离感不是缺点，是祭祀诗的常态——站在祭台前的人本就不该与受祭者称兄道弟。值得留意的是收尾：玄宗没有停在歌颂，而是回到一个具体场景（两楹间的奠）。敬仰落到实物上，诗才不空。

The author, Emperor Xuanzong, wrote as an emperor, and that position allowed only one register for Confucius: reverence. Nowhere in the poem does the speaker act; all four couplets are acts of looking — asking, pointing, sighing, seeing. The distance is not a flaw but the norm for a sacrificial poem: no one standing at an altar treats the one honored as a peer. What is worth noticing is the ending. Xuanzong does not stop at praise but returns to a concrete scene, the offerings between the two pillars. The reverence lands on something physical, and only then does the poem escape emptiness.

「叹」「伤」「怨」三个动词的分量 · The Weight of Three Verbs: Sigh, Mourn, Resent

第三联连续用了叹、嗟、伤、怨四个表示哀感的字，密度在全唐诗写孔子的作品里算高的。这些字通常不会用来写圣人，它们带着不平之气。玄宗作为皇帝写下这几句，等于承认孔子一生不得志——而这并不损伤孔子的形象，反而让祭祀有了理由：正因为道不行于世，后人才要年年祭他。哀感和敬仰在这里不是对立的两面。

The third couplet packs four words of lament into two lines — sigh, bemoan, mourn, resent. That density is high for Tang poems on Confucius. Such words are not usually applied to a sage; they carry a note of grievance. That an emperor writes them amounts to admitting that Confucius's life fell short of his aim — and this does not diminish him. It is precisely the reason for the sacrifice: because the Way did not prevail in his time, later ages must honor him year after year. Lament and reverence are not opposites here.

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