You have left me behind, old friend, at the Yellow Crane Terrace,
On your way to visit Yang-chou in the misty month of flowers;
Your sail, a single shadow, becomes one with the blue sky,
Till now I see only the river, on its way to heaven.
Original Poem:
「送孟浩然之广陵」
李白
故人西辞黄鹤楼， 烟花三月下扬州。
孤帆远影碧空尽， 惟见长江天际流。
Interpretation:
In 725 A.D., the young Li Bai travelled out of the gorge from Sichuan and lived for ten years in Anlu, Hubei, where he met Meng Haoran, who lived in seclusion on Mount Lumen in Xiangyang.
The Yellow Crane Tower is on the riverside in Wuhan’s Wuchang district and has traditionally been a popular tourist destination. Guangling is Yangzhou, one of the most prosperous cities in the Tang Dynasty. Wuhan is in the west and Yangzhou is in the east, so when you go to Yangzhou from Wuhan, you are naturally saying goodbye to the Yellow Crane Tower to the west as you go down the river to the east. Such a sentence is easy to read and unadorned. The second sentence picks up very well. Where did he go? To Yangzhou. Jiangnan in March, the wind is bright and beautiful, Meng Haoran will go to the flowers, embroidery, beads and curtains of the famous city of Jiangnan, how can it not be refreshing. On the surface of these two lines, only the person, place, time and destination of the farewell, but through the words can clearly feel the poet’s infinite yearning for Yangzhou as the capital of the three Wu.
The last two lines cleverly express the emotion of farewell through the description of natural scenery and the farewell scene. After saying goodbye at the top of the building, Meng Haoran boarded the boat and set sail. The poet still stands by the riverside, seeing off the old man by boat only far away, gradually disappeared in the white clouds and blue water, the bright sky has a sense of loneliness and a sense of desolation. Farewell feelings such as flowing water, the poet gazed at the sky river, then only a river of surging waves, running to the end of the blue sky, as if reluctant to catch up with friends travelling far away. The whole picture is a mixture of scenes, giving people a feeling of vastness and emptiness. The poet’s parting feeling for his friend’s long journey, his regret for not being able to travel with him, and his infinite longing for Yangzhou’s scenic beauty are all there in the image of the farewell by the river.
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.
