The wind is strong, the sky is high, the ape is howling in mourning, and the white bird is flying back from the clear sand in the desert.
Boundless falling trees rustle, and the endless Yangtze River rolls by.
Interpretation:
The wind is strong, the sky is high, and the cries of apes are very sad. There are birds circling on the riverbank with clear water and white sand.
The endless trees are slowly dropping their fallen leaves, and the endless Yangtze River is rolling in.
From Du Fu's "Ascend the High"
Appreciation:
This poem is included in "Du Gongbu Collection". The whole poem expresses feelings through the scenery of the Autumn River seen from climbing high. It reflects the poet's complex emotions of wandering around for many years, being old, sick and lonely, and is impassioned and touching.
The first four sentences of this poem describe what you have experienced while climbing high. First couplet. The poet focused on the specific environment of Kuizhou and used the word "fengji" to drive the whole couplet. From the beginning, he wrote a good sentence that has been passed down through the ages. Kuizhou is famous for its large number of apes, and the Xiakou is famous for its strong winds. It's a crisp autumn day, but it's windy here. The poet climbed to a high place, and the sound of "the high ape roaring" kept coming from the gorge, which had the meaning of "the sound is heard in the empty valley, and the sorrow lasts for a long time" ("Shui Jing Zhu·Jiang Shui"). The poet moved his gaze from the heights to the river and Zhouzhu. On the background of clear water and white sand, there are dotted with flocks of birds flying in the wind and constantly circling. It is really a beautiful picture. Among them, the sky, wind, sand, and rivers, the roar of apes, and the flight of birds are all created by heaven and earth, and they are naturally paired. Not only are the upper and lower sentences corresponding, but there are also self-contrasts within the sentences, such as "sky" vs. "wind" in the previous sentence, "gao" vs. "ji"; "sha" vs. "Zhu", "white" vs. "qing" in the next sentence, It reads rhythmically. After the poet's artistic refinement, the fourteen words are precise and accurate, and none of them are false. The use of words is "all thanks to the ax and chisel", reaching a wonderful and indescribable state. What's more noteworthy is that in the first sentence of the couplet, the last word is often in oblique tone, but this poem uses flat tone to rhyme. Shen Deqian was praised for his "reuse of rhyme in the two-sentence couplets, which changes the style" ("Biecai of Tang Poems").
Creative background:
This poem was written in the autumn of the second year of Emperor Dali of the Tang Dynasty (767), when Du Fu was in Kuizhou. This was written by a fifty-six-year-old poet in extreme embarrassment. At that time, the Anshi Rebellion had been over for four years, but local warlords took advantage of the situation to rise again and compete with each other for territory. Du Fu originally entered the Yanwu shogunate and relied on Yanwu. Soon after Yan Wu died of illness, Du Fu lost his support and had to leave the Chengdu thatched cottage that he had been running for five or six years and buy a boat to go south. He originally wanted to go directly to Kuimen, but due to illness, he stayed in Yun'an for several months before arriving in Kuizhou. If it weren't for the care of the local governor, he wouldn't have been able to live here for three years. In these three years, his life was still very difficult and his health was very poor. One day, he climbed alone to the high platform outside Baidi City in Kuizhou. He climbed up and looked at it, with mixed feelings. What he saw aroused what he felt; the bleak scenery of the Autumn River aroused his emotion of his wandering life, and infiltrated his sorrow of old age, illness, and loneliness. Thus, there was the song "Ascending", which is known as the "Crown of Seven Rhythms".
Reference materials
Ancient poetry website: http://so.gushiwen.org/view_11098.aspx