My old friend bids farewell to Yellow Crane Tower in the west, traveling downriver to Yangzhou in the radiant spring. His lone sail gradually disappears at the edge of the blue sky; before me, only the Yangtze remains, flowing toward the horizon.

之: to go to, to arrive at. 广陵: present-day Yangzhou, Jiangsu. 黄鹤楼: Yellow Crane Tower, which stood on the Yangtze riverbank in present-day Wuhan, Hubei, during the Tang dynasty. 西辞: to bid farewell to Yellow Crane Tower in the west. 烟花: a spring scene of mist mingling with abundant blossoms, not fireworks. 下扬州: to travel eastward downstream to Yangzhou.

碧空尽: the sail’s silhouette disappears into the distance where sky and water meet. 唯: only. This page follows the commonly used version “孤帆远影碧空尽” (“The distant silhouette of a lone sail vanishes into the blue sky”); variants include “碧山尽” (“vanishes by the blue-green mountains”) and “绿山尽” (“vanishes by the green mountains”).

Reading guide: This seven-character quatrain conveys deep friendship through a farewell on the river. The first two lines establish the place, season, and destination of the departure; the last two slow the narrative into a lingering gaze, keeping the emotion within the broad, clear landscape throughout.

“烟花三月” (“the third month of mist and blossoms”) gives the farewell the richness of spring. The friend is traveling to a prosperous place, so the poem holds both reluctance to part and an imagining of the journey; its mood is not uniformly downcast.

“孤帆,” the “solitary sail,” does not mean that only one boat is on the Yangtze; it means that the speaker’s gaze follows only his friend’s boat. After the sail vanishes, he still “唯见,” “sees only,” the flowing river, revealing how long his gaze lingers. The scenery naturally conveys his reluctance to part.