My office has grown cold today;
And I suddenly think of my mountain friend
Gathering firewood down in the valley
Or boiling white stones for potatoes in his hut…
I wish I might take him a cup of wine
To cheer him through the evening storm;
But in fallen leaves that have heaped the bare slopes,
How should I ever find his footprints!
Original Poem:
「寄全椒山中道士」
韦应物
今朝郡斋冷， 忽念山中客。
涧底束荆薪， 归来煮白石。
欲持一瓢酒， 远慰风雨夕。
落叶满空山， 何处寻行迹。
Interpretation:
This poem is the poet in the stormy night by his own in the county of the cold feeling associated with the Quanjiao mountain Taoist monk at this moment and the situation. Poetry through the image of distinctive pictures of life in the mountains, expresses the memory of the Taoist priest in the mountains, but also reveals the poet to the seclusion of the life of the infinite desire for leisure and fun.
The first line remembers the Taoist priest. This morning county Zhai especially cold, from oneself and others, suddenly miss the Taoist priest in the mountains of Quanjiao, what is his situation now? Here naturally also conveys the poet usually yearn for the life of the Taoist priest in the mountains.
In the third line, the poet imagines that the Taoist priests in the mountains are living in a specific situation. In this cold weather, the Taoist priest must have gone to the mountain stream alone to collect dry wood, and when he came back from collecting wood, he must have cooked white stones alone. The Taoist priest lives freely, away from the world, but full of coldness and loneliness.
The neck line expresses the desire to visit. The poet continues to imagine: why don’t you bring your own wine and go to the Taoist priests in the mountains on a stormy night to warm each other’s lonely hearts and relieve your inner pain?
The last line explains the reason for writing. I want to visit, but I have some worries. The Taoist priest’s whereabouts in the mountains are uncertain, and the fallen leaves are all over the mountains, covering the paths long ago, so I don’t know where to look for the Taoist priest’s traces. These two lines not only write out the fallen leaves, but also the depth of the mountain; not only write out the hopelessness of not finding the Taoist, but also write out the poet’s own inner loneliness that can not be resolved.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Wei Yingwu (韦应物), circa 737 – 786, was a native of Chang’an, Beijing. His poems were collected in the Wei Suzhou Collection, which included poems concerned with the plight of the people, expressions of disobedience to the times and indignation against the world, and descriptions of idyllic landscapes, etc., of which the ones describing idyllic landscapes are the most famous, and have been sung by posterity in particular.
