The night is quiet and the mountains are empty.
The original text of birdsong creek
When people are idle, sweet-scented osmanthus falls,
The night is quiet and the mountains are empty.
The moon is full of surprises,
In the spring stream.
Appreciation of Bird Watching Creek
This poem is one of the representative works of Wang Wei's landscape poems. From the perspective of literary creation, the subtlety of this poem lies in the poetry set off by the contrast between "dynamic" and "static". The first sentence, "osmanthus flowers fall when people are idle, and the mountains are empty at night", describes the scenery with sound and skillfully uses synaesthesia to combine the dynamic scenes of "flowers fall" and "people are idle". Bloom's flowers and falls belong to the sound of nature. Only when the heart is really idle and the infatuation with worldly distractions is put down can the individual spirit be promoted to the realm of "emptiness". At that time, the background was "late at night", and the poet obviously couldn't see the falling scenery of osmanthus, but because of the "quiet night" and the "meditation" of people watching the scenery, he still felt the process of blooming osmanthus falling from the branches, floating down and falling to the ground. While reading aloud, we seem to have entered the scenic spot of "Fragrant Forest and Flowers and Rain". The "Spring Mountain" here has left us a blank of imagination. Because it is a "spring mountain", we can imagine the noisy pictures during the day: beautiful spring, birds and flowers, laughter and laughter. At this time, the night is still, the tourists leave, the noise of the day disappears, and the mountains are idle. In fact, "emptiness" is also the poet's state of mind as a Zen monk. Only when his mood is free and easy can he capture scenes that others can't feel.
The last sentence, "Birds are startled when the moon is out, and birds are singing in the spring stream", is based on moving to write quietness, a "surprise" and a "singing", which seems to break the quietness of the night, but in fact, it sets off the quietness and leisure in the mountains with the description of sound: the moon emerges from the clouds, the quiet moonlight flows down, and several birds wake up from their sleep and whisper from time to time, echoing the thin sound of running water in the spring stream.