So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed -
Could there have been a frost already?
Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight.
Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home.
Original Poem:
「静夜思」
李白
床前明月光，疑是地上霜。
举头望明月，低头思故乡。
Interpretation:
This poem is about thinking of one’s loved ones in the silence of the night.
The night is cold, the moonlight shines very brightly in front of the bed, because of homesickness and difficult to sleep, the poet saw a piece of mercury like white in front of the bed, suddenly thought it was autumn frost landing. Here, the word “frost” is used very well, not only describes the brightness of the moonlight, but also expresses the coldness of the season, suggesting the emotion of homesickness. If the poet hadn’t been awake most of the night, how could he have felt the cold in bed? The poet simply got up, looked up through the window, the night sky on a round of lonely light.
This lonely cold moon naturally caused infinite melancholy, so that the poet could not help but lower his head to contemplate, more and more miss their hometown and sad. Looking at the moon and thinking of home is a common feeling of the ancients when they lived abroad. This poem is a scene, the image of the poet’s mental activity process, in plain language, will be a distinctive moonlit night homesickness picture vividly presented in front of us. This poem in a few words will be so a thousand people chanting, ten thousand people sing the theme of the best performance, such as clear water hibiscus, without any modification, without any artifice traces, all from the heart of the natural outflow, thousands of years of popular, widely circulated.
Poem translator:
Kiang Kanghu
About the poet:
Li Bai (李白), 701 ~ 762 A.D., whose ancestral home was in Gansu, was preceded by Li Guang, a general of the Han Dynasty. Tang poetry is one of the brightest constellations in the history of Chinese literature, and one of the brightest stars is Li Bai.
