83. Passing by the Foot of Beigu Mountain | Wang Wan

这两句在唐代就受到推重，宰相张说曾把它题在政事堂上，作为诗作的范例。好处在于用字：日「生」于夜，春「入」于年，都不是陈述一个已成的状态，而是写出正在发生的过渡。时间本来是抽象的，这里给了它一个动作。而且两句的顺序是「夜未尽而日已生」「年未终而春已入」——新东西在旧东西还没结束时就已经出来，这个观察比单纯写景深一层。

These lines were prized already in the Tang; the chancellor Zhang Yue is said to have hung them in the hall of state affairs as a model of poetry. Their merit lies in the words: the sun is born in the night, spring enters the year — neither states a finished condition but shows a transition in progress. Time is abstract by nature, and here it is given an action. And the order of the two is telling: the night is not yet over and the sun already rises; the year has not ended and spring already enters. The new thing is out before the old has finished — an observation a step deeper than plain scenery.

首联是行程的总览，时间是「客路」这条长线；颔联是眼前停船的一刻；颈联由一夜推及一年，是时间尺度最大的一处；末联又回到当下，想着将来把信寄出。四联在「此刻—一夜—一年—将来」之间来回，跨度不小，但都由船上这个固定视点串起。王湾没有移动过位置，动的只是他看的东西和时间本身。

The opening couplet surveys the journey, its time the long line of the traveler's road; the second is the single moment of halting the boat; the third stretches from one night to a whole year, the widest scale in the poem; the last returns to the present and thinks of mailing a letter in the future. The four couplets move among this moment, a night, a year, and what is to come — a considerable span, all strung on the fixed viewpoint of the boat. Wang Wan never changes position; only what he looks at and time itself move.

题目里的「次」已经点明他不在家里，而在路上过夜。整首诗的景物因此都带着「客」的眼光：青山外是路，绿水前是船，两岸阔是水涨，一帆悬是风好，都是行旅中人才会细看的。而「乡书」「归雁」把这份客居感落实成具体的挂念。唐诗里写羁旅，往往靠一个身份词撑起全篇，这首用的是标题的「次」和正文的「客路」「乡书」，前后照应得很紧。

The title's word halt already says he is not at home but spending the night on the road. Every feature is therefore seen through a traveler's eye: the road beyond the hills, the boat before the water, the wide banks where the tide has risen, the high sail in a fair wind — things only a man on the move would note so closely. And the letter home and the northbound geese bring that lodged-away feeling down to a particular worry. In Tang poems of travel, one word of condition often holds up the whole piece; here it is the title's halt and the body's traveler's road and letter home, closely matched front and back.