Leaving Jingci Temple at Dawn to See Lin Zifang Off
Song dynasty・Yang Wanli
Classical Chinese-style Ballad
Start listening
Lotus leaves stretch to the sky in boundless green; lotus blossoms glow a special red in the sun.
-
- 无事小狗仙
- 2025-08-20 11:22
- 67 reads
West Lake in the middle of the sixth month, after all, has scenery unlike any other season.
Lotus leaves meet the sky in boundless green，sunlit lotus blossoms glow a red beyond compare.
Let poetry flow
Poetry animation
The animation remains in its original Chinese.
The animation is ready.
AI illustration
Translation
It is, after all, West Lake in June, its scenery quite unlike any other season. Lotus leaves spread to the horizon in boundless green; lotus blossoms shine in the sunlight with an especially vivid red.
Annotations
净慈寺: Jingci Temple, near West Lake in Hangzhou. 林子方: Lin Zifang, the friend the poet is seeing off. 毕竟: after all, ultimately. 六月: the sixth lunar month.
四时: usually the four seasons, here emphasizing a contrast with other times of year. 接天: seeming to meet the horizon when viewed from afar. 无穷碧: boundless green. 别样: especially or unusually.
This is the second poem in a sequence sharing the same title; this page includes this poem.
Introduction
Reading guide: Yang Wanli builds this poem from the lotus scenery he sees at West Lake while seeing a friend off in the early morning. Although the title announces a farewell, the poem itself consists entirely of landscape. There is no need to impose an unstated political meaning; the radiant lake itself provides the setting for the departure.
Commentary
The first two lines state the feeling at once, like an exclamation of spontaneous delight; the last two supply the reason, showing readers the specific sights that surprised and delighted the poet.
Green leaves stretching to the horizon spread a broad field of color, while red blossoms in the sunlight form vivid highlights. Expansive space and intense colors work together; though only four lines long, the poem has a remarkably sweeping presence.
Comments
Let words find a melody
Hear poems and stories
Chinese-Style Pop
Start listening
Lotus Light Sees You Into the Distance
Listen to music · Read lyrics →From a poem into a story
Fiction inspired by poetry
Watermarks on a Lotus Screen
A farewell screen covered in painted lotuses will earn Shen Ou three months’ wages, enough to repair her mother’s boat and send her younger brother to learn to read. Yet sixteen households behind the screen must move out within ten days, and the Shen family is among them. She is accustomed to painting the silvery gray undersides of lotus leaves and knows every waterline along the foot of the old walls; the farewell banquet presses her to finish the painting, but the pond-dredging plan at the government office does not match those watermarks.
Start readingAI-assisted writing · Fictional characters and events
Popular poems
- Waiting for a Guest by Lamplight on a Plum-Rain Night
- In Youzhou's twelfth month, a woman longing for her husband ceases singing and smiling, her mothlike brows bowed with grief.
- Helplessly I watched Youzhou cavalry drive on, plunging He-Luo into darkness.
- Farm families toil through the autumn harvest; a neighbor girl pounds grain in the night's cold.
- How much sorrow lies in autumn’s colors and the cries of geese，all gathered in the slanting sun.
- How could it bear to await the clear autumn days, already bearing the setting sun and cicadas?
- At sunset my heart remains strong; in the autumn wind my illness seems to ease.
- A noble man dies for one who knows his worth，sword in hand, he leaves the capital of Yan.
- The little pond’s chilly green seems about to ripple; the rain clears, and already the sun is sinking west.
- In the tenth month I reached Youzhou，spears and lances spread like stars。