The old fort brims with yellow leaves...
You insist upon forsaking this place where you have lived.
A high wind blows at Hanyang Ferry
And sunrise lights the summit of Yingmen...
Who will be left for me along the upper Yangzi
After your solitary skiff has entered the end of the sky?
I ask you over and over when we shall meet again,
While we soften with winecups this ache of farewell.
Original Poem:
「送人东游」
温庭筠
荒戍落黄叶， 浩然离故关。
高风汉阳渡， 初日郢门山。
江上几人在？ 天涯孤棹还。
何当重相见？ 樽酒慰离颜。
Interpretation:
This poem was written around the poet’s fiftieth year and was written before the poet traveled east to Jiangling.
The first couplet. The desolate and cold old castle, the cold autumn of falling leaves, sending friends far away, parting feelings, can be described as a broken heart.
Jaw, the first day of high wind Hanyang ferry, high wind first day Yingmen Mountain. Hanyang ferry and Yingmen Mountain, one east and one west, thousands of miles away, of course, it is difficult to reflect at the same time. Here to extreme hyperbole, showing the vast and majestic Jingshan Chu water, and soughing autumn wind, Ran Rising Sun, for friends to Zhuang line color, but also on the “Haoran” sentence imagery of the supplement.
Neck line, the poet exhausts the eye, gazing back to the boat disappeared in the vastness of the smoke, one side of the remote Jiangdong friends and relatives at this moment is looking forward to the return of the boat from the sky to fly. The poet’s concern for his friend’s situation after parting is revealed through speculation about which old friends the returnee will meet and how he will be received.
The whole poem is written in autumn without sadness, and the farewell is not sentimental. Only in the opening stroke of the poet a little coloring the bleak atmosphere, then a turn of the brush, painted a picture of the mountains, sailing miles of majestic picture, in response to the first line of the “Hao Ran”, and the end of the day to reunite the reverie, a virtual and a real, can be said to be a combination of the pearl.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Wen Ting-yun (温庭筠) was a native of Qixian County, Shanxi, circa 813-870 AD. Wen Tingyun was a professional writer of late Tang Dynasty lyrics, whose achievements and influence were greater than that of poetry, and was once known as the “originator of the flowers”.
