Red leaves are fluttering down the twilight Past this arbour where I take my wine; Cloud-rifts are blowing toward Great Flower Mountain, And a shower is crossing the Middle Ridge. I can see trees colouring a distant wall. I can hear the river seeking the sea, As I the Imperial City tomorrow - But I dream of woodsmen and fishermen.
Original Poem:
「秋日赴阙题潼关驿楼」
许浑
红叶晚萧萧，长亭酒一瓢。
残云归太华，疏雨过中条。
树色随山迥，河声入海遥。
帝乡明日到，犹自梦渔樵。
Interpretation:
The Tongguan Pass is in a dangerous situation and has a beautiful scenery. Scholars and writers to this, every poem to record victory. Xu Hun, on his first trip from his hometown of Danyang to the capital Chang’an, passed through the Tongguan Pass and wrote this five-character poem.
The poem draws a picture of an autumn journey, introducing the reader to a realm where autumn is as thick as wine and travelling conditions are gloomy.
In the third line, the jaw and neck couplets draw the scenery around the Tongguan Pass with a huge brush like a rafter. As far as the eye can see, Mount Hua in the south towers into the clouds; in the north, separated from the Yellow River, Zhongtiao Mountain is shrouded in the sparse rain. Nearby, you can see the colour of the trees with the city all the way away, outside the Yellow River from the north of the deep canyon rushing to the foot of the Tongguan Pass, such as the dragon turned its head violently, rushed straight to the three gates, roaring straight into the sea.
The end is to say that tomorrow can be to the capital, seems to give a sense of ease, but the next sentence is surprisingly said “still dreaming of fishermen and woodcutters”, implicitly expresses their own is not exclusively for the rich and famous. So the end, euphemistic and appropriate, leisurely and not forced, but also as a different peak, unexpected. It can be said that the craftsmanship is unique, and the idea is strange and novel.
About the poet:
Xu Hun (date of birth and death unknown), a native of Jiangsu Province. He was a scholar in the sixth year of the reign of Emperor Wenzong Daho, and served successively as a magistrate of Dangtu and Taiping, but was exempted due to illness. Later, he was appointed as the Secretary of Runzhou. Dazhong years into the supervision of the imperial censor, due to illness, begged to return, and then returned to the civil service, served as the Ministry of Yu, transferred to the Mutual, Ying two state assassins. In his later years, he returned to the village of Danyangqiao to live in idleness, and compiled his own collection of poems, which he called “Dingmao Collection”. His poems are all close to the style, five or seven rhymes, especially more, the syntax is rounded and stable, the tone of the level and oblique self-contained pattern, that is, the so-called “Ding Mao style”. His poems were mostly about “water”, hence the irony of “Xu Hun’s Thousand Wet Poems”.
