So autumn breaks my homesick heart...
Few pilgrims venture climbing to a temple so wild,
Up from the lake, in the mountain clouds.
...Sunset clings in the old defences,
A stone gong shivers through the empty woods.
...Of the Southern Dynasty, what remains?
Nothing but the great River.
Original Poem:
「秋日登吴公台上寺远眺」
刘长卿
古台摇落后， 秋日望乡心。
野寺人来少， 云峰水隔深。
夕阳依旧垒， 寒磬满空林。
惆怅南朝事， 长江独至今。
Interpretation:
This is a poem about an ancient monument, which was composed by the author when he was living in Yangzhou and climbed up to Wugongtai on an autumn day. In the poem, the autumn scene of falling and drifting is used to set off the feelings of homesickness of a traveller. In the setting sun and the sound of cold chimes, the author saw the remnants of the battlefield of the Southern Dynasty and faced the rolling waters of the Yangtze River, so he could not help hanging on to the past and grieving for the present.
On a day when the autumn wind shook off the leaves and grass, the poet climbed up to the temple on the crossbow platform built by Shen Qingzhi during his attack on Liu Tan, the king of Jingling, in the Song Dynasty, and felt homesick for his hometown. Then he writes that the temple has been deserted, with few people in sight, and the peaks of the mountains are all in a cloud of mist when he looks at them from afar. The sun slowly sets along the old fortress, and the sound of bells and chimes coming from the temple slowly fills the empty forest. As it was autumn, the wind was chilly, and the sound of the bells and chimes seemed to carry a chill. In the end, it is written that the monuments of the Southern Dynasties are still there, but the people are long gone, and the Yangtze River flows alone in the setting sun of autumn.
This poem is written by the poet to climb the view, the middle four lines depict the surrounding scenery, deeply coated with a layer of travelling and wandering, homesickness hanging ancient emotional colour. The poet makes use of the dialectical relationship between silence and sound, emptiness and fullness to show the silence with sound and the emptiness with fullness, which is the finishing touch in the composition of the whole poem in the realm of emptiness and longing for the distance. This poem integrates the memorialisation of ancient monuments with the writing of scenery and homesickness, and the aria of the rise and fall of the ancient world is cool and profound, with a subtle and gentle poetic meaning.
Wu Gongtai: The former site is in the northwest of Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, which was originally a crossbow platform built by Shen Qingzhi when he attacked King Liu Tan of Jingling in the Southern Song Dynasty, and was originally known as Chicken Terrace. Later, Wu Ming Che besieged Northern Qi in Jiangdu and rebuilt it to shoot at the city, so it was called Wu Gongtai.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Liu Zhangqing (刘长卿-) was a native of Xian County, Hebei Province. He studied at Mt. Songshan when he was young, and later moved to Jiangxi, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 733 A.D. He also belonged to the Wang and Meng school of poetry. His poems belonged to the school of Wang and Meng, and he was most famous for his five-character poems, and was also most conceited, once thinking that he was “the Great Wall of five-character poems”, which meant that no one could surpass him.
