78. Seeing Off Prefect Du on His Way to Shuzhou | Wang Bo
Text
English translation
Original Chinese text
城阙辅三秦，风烟望五津。
English translation
The city towers are flanked by the Three Qin; through wind and mist I look toward the Five Fords.
The Three Qin is the region around the capital; the Five Fords are crossings on the Min River in Shu. The first line is where the parting happens, the second the direction the friend is going — one place per line, compressing more than a thousand li into ten characters.
Original Chinese text
与君离别意，同是宦游人。
English translation
The feeling of parting from you — we are both men away from home in office.
The phrase for a man away from home in office names what the two share. With the single phrase we are both, the sorrow of parting widens from one person to a whole class of them.
Original Chinese text
海内存知己，天涯若比邻。
English translation
Within the four seas a friend who knows me — and the ends of the earth are like next door.
This is the famous couplet, and it redefines far and near: distance is not decided by geography but by whether one has a friend who understands.
Original Chinese text
无为在歧路，儿女共沾巾。
English translation
Do not, at the fork in the road, weep like children till the kerchiefs are wet.
A fork in the road is where old custom ended a farewell. The last line sets children against the two of you, and the tone lifts, closing the generosity of the couplet before it.
赏析 · Commentary
送别诗为什么不写哭 · Why a Farewell Poem Refuses to Weep
这首诗把送别的常调翻了过来。前两联承认离别的伤感，第三联忽然把标准提高：只要彼此了解，天涯就是比邻。末联再补一句，叫对方别哭。三层推进的结果是——伤感被承认了，但没有被放大。值得注意的是「海内存知己」这句的前提是「同是宦游人」：正因为都漂泊在外，才需要这样一句互相打气的话。它不是站着说话，是两个处境相同的人之间的默契。
The poem inverts the usual tune of farewell. The first two couplets admit the sorrow of parting; the third suddenly raises the standard — so long as two people understand each other, the ends of the earth are next door; the last adds that you must not weep. The result of the three moves is that the sorrow is acknowledged without being amplified. Note that the premise of a friend within the four seas is the earlier line about both being men away from home in office: precisely because both are adrift does such encouragement become necessary. It is not the comfort of an observer; it is a pact between two people in the same fix.
「五津」和「三秦」的对仗落点 · Where the Parallelism of Three Qin and Five Fords Lands
首联对仗工整：城阙对风烟，辅对望，三秦对五津。三秦是眼前的实景，五津是遥想的远方，一实一虚撑起整联。王勃把两个地名并置，不解释也不铺陈，读者自己会感到中间隔着什么。初唐律诗还没有完全定型，这一联的写法已经接近后来七律的工整，可见诗的格律演进是渐进的。
The opening couplet is exactly parallel: city towers against wind and mist, flank against look toward, Three Qin against Five Fords. The Three Qin is solid ground underfoot; the Five Fords are a distant imagining — one real, one imagined, holding up the couplet between them. Wang Bo places the two place-names side by side without explanation or elaboration, and the reader feels what lies between them. Regulated verse was not yet fully fixed in the early Tang, yet this couplet already approaches the regularity of the later seven-character form, which shows how gradually the rules evolved.
王勃写这首诗时多大 · How Old Wang Bo Was When He Wrote This
王勃是「初唐四杰」之首，二十几岁就去世。这首诗通常被认为作于他在长安做小官时，送一位姓杜的友人赴蜀。以二十岁上下的年纪，写出「海内存知己，天涯若比邻」这样的句子，常被后人反复提起。需要说明的是，这类生平系年存在不同说法，本站只取与诗中提到的地名、官称相合的一说，不推断未见于文本的细节。
Wang Bo led the Four Talents of the Early Tang and died in his twenties. This poem is generally placed while he held a minor post in Chang'an, seeing off a friend named Du bound for Shu. That a man of about twenty should write a friend within the four seas — the ends of the earth like next door is a fact later ages keep returning to. It should be said that such biographical datings differ; this site keeps only the reading consistent with the place-names and official titles in the poem, and does not infer details the text does not support.