As the years go by, give me but peace,
Freedom from ten thousand matters.
I ask myself and always answer:
What can be better than coming home?
A wind from the pine-trees blows my sash,
And my lute is bright with the mountain moon.
You ask me about good and evil fortune?....
Hark, on the lake there's a fisherman singing!
Original Poem:
「渭川田家」
王维
斜光照墟落， 穷巷牛羊归。
野老念牧童， 倚杖候荆扉。
雉雊麦苗秀， 蚕眠桑叶稀。
田夫荷锄立， 相见语依依。
即此羡闲逸， 怅然吟式微。
Interpretation:
This is an idyllic poem in which the poet uses techniques to paint a picture of a rural farmhouse in late spring and early summer. In the face of the peasant’s leisurely life, the author was envious.
The poem consists of ten lines, which are written as if they are easy to read, but they are so vivid that they are like a movie screen sliding by.
In the first four lines, the village is covered with the afterglow of the setting sun, and the cows and sheep are returning along the deep alleys. The old man misses his grandchildren who are herding livestock, and waits with his staff at his house’s firewood door.
A group of distant shots is used to portray a general background for this picture of a peasant family returning home at night. Warm sunset shrouded the small village, as if to the village put a layer of warm soft veil, far away you can see people driving cattle and sheep return, hidden into the depths of the alley. The camera slowly pushes closer, then see a kindly old man leaning on his crutches, leaning on the wood door, looking into the distance, waiting for his grandson to return from grazing.
The last six lines: pheasants chirping, wheat is about to tassel, silkworms are sleeping, mulberry leaves are already thin. The farmers returned to the village with their hoes, and met each other with laughter and fondness. How can I not be envious of such contentment? I can’t help but recite the song “Shih Wei” in frustration.
Then the camera pans, we see the green wheat seedlings are spiking, while the silkworms sleep mulberry leaves have been sparse. At this time, in the distance from time to time there are a few chickens crowing, ridge, farmers carrying hoes back, they gathered in twos and threes to say rambling gossip. Not far away, a poet is looking at them, shaking his head with emotion.
Why did the poet feel despondent? Wang Wei was politically close to Zhang Jiuling in his early years, but after Zhang Jiuling, the chancellor of the court, was ostracized from the court in 736 A.D., Wang Wei felt that he had no one to turn to politically, and was in a dilemma. In such a state of mind, he walked to the field, saw such a picture of a peasant family returning home at night, and saw that the life of the peasant family is so peaceful and leisurely, while he is in the career is bumpy and tortuous, physically and mentally exhausted, and could not help but envy the heart of the precipitous, the feeling of retreat.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Wang Wei (王维), 701-761 A.D., was a native of Yuncheng, Shanxi Province. Wang Wei was a poet of landscape and idylls. His poems of landscape and idylls, with far-reaching images and mysterious meanings, were widely loved by readers in later generations, but Wang Wei never really became a man of landscape and idylls.
