The north wind rolls the white grasses and breaks them;
And the Eighth-month snow across the Tartar sky
Is like a spring gale, come up in the night,
Blowing open the petals of ten thousand peartrees.
It enters the pearl blinds, it wets the silk curtains;
A fur coat feels cold, a cotton mat flimsy;
Bows become rigid, can hardly be drawn
And the metal of armour congeals on the men;
The sand-sea deepens with fathomless ice,
And darkness masses its endless clouds;
But we drink to our guest bound home from camp,
And play him barbarian lutes, guitars, harps;
Till at dusk, when the drifts are crushing our tents
And our frozen red flags cannot flutter in the wind,
We watch him through Wheel-Tower Gate going eastward.
Into the snow-mounds of Heaven-Peak Road....
And then he disappears at the turn of the pass,
Leaving behind him only hoof-prints.
Original Poem:
「白雪歌送武判官归京」
岑参
北风卷地白草折， 胡天八月即飞雪；
忽如一夜春风来， 千树万树梨花开。
散入珠帘湿罗幕， 狐裘不暖锦衾薄。
将军角弓不得控， 都护铁衣冷犹著。
瀚海阑干百丈冰， 愁云黪淡万里凝。
中军置酒饮归客， 胡琴琵琶与羌笛。
纷纷暮雪下辕门， 风掣红旗冻不翻。
轮台东门送君去， 去时雪满天山路；
山回路转不见君， 雪上空留马行处。
Interpretation:
This poem was written by Cen Sen when he was the Judge of Feng Changqing, the Northwestern Court’s Festival Minister. Judge Wu was Cen Sen’s predecessor, and this poem is Cen Sen’s farewell poem to send him back to the capital to resume his duties. The whole poem is unusually majestic in its imagery and strange in its imagery, making it one of the best poems about snow.
The whole poem begins with a very strange and magnificent tone. Using the blossoming pear as a metaphor for the snowflakes on the trees, a magnificent snow and ice scenery of the north country is immediately shown in front of the readers’ eyes. The bland northern country after a night of silver, so that the poet who woke up early to enjoy the snow recalls the good mood of viewing the spring pear blossoms in full bloom. Pear blossom is slowly waiting in the open, and snowflakes in the northern part of the country is a night that is made, the feeling of joy is naturally better! Spring blossom is the spring scenery, the winter of the killing mercilessly replaced by spring, in fact, is the performance of the poet’s optimistic attitude towards life, but also the flourishing upward, extremely confident in the Shengtang time the natural flow of the psychology.
Then use the concrete seen and heard to describe the snowy day of ice cold, read kindly and naturally. From the expedition of the general’s own feelings to write the cold outside the plug, let a person empathize. The general and the general guard is mutual text see righteousness, the general is in a far better than ordinary generals, he still feel cold, not to mention the soldiers dressed in single cold? But it is very strange, we read such a poem, not only do not feel the hard life of the generals, on the contrary, we can appreciate the generals stationed at the border of the heroic spirit, is the poet’s “curious” poetic style and passionate natural outflow.
Then write outside the camp door of the ice and snow cold wind, the weather is cold, even the red flag are frozen, in the gale motionless, how magical! The motionless red flag and the snowflakes fluttering in the gusty wind have become a wonderful contrast, matching the movement and the static, giving a person a sense of “poetry in the painting, the painting has a poem”. The last part of the poem is about the farewell scene at the east gate of Luntai, from the magnificent snow scene back to the main theme of the farewell, the feelings are sincere and touching.
The whole poem is full of snowy phrases, four different pictures of snowy scenes before farewell, farewell, farewell, and after farewell, with beautiful phrases and marvelous imaginations, which is worthy of being a representative masterpiece of Tang Dynasty’s Border Poetry. At the same time, it is also a representative masterpiece of snow poetry in classical Chinese poetry. The whole poem is full of marvelous thoughts, vivid and real imagination, and the author’s strong subjective feelings, which has a strong artistic influence. In terms of rhyme, the whole poem follows the rhyme, and the rhyme follows the poem, and the change of each scene is connected with the change of the rhyme, which makes people read the poem in an intriguing and colorful way.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Cen Shen(岑参), 715-770 AD, was a native of Jingzhou, Hubei Province. He studied at Mt. Songshan when he was young, and later traveled to Beijing, Luoyang and Shuohe. Cen Shen was famous for his border poems, in which he wrote about the border scenery and the life of generals in a majestic and unrestrained manner, and together with Gao Shi, he was an outstanding representative of the border poetry school of the Sheng Tang Dynasty.
