The sweet-scented osmanthus falls when people are idle, the night is quiet and the spring mountains are empty.
When the moon rises, the mountains are startled, and the sound of spring sounds is heard in the streams.
The meaning of this poem is that in the silent valley, only the sweet-scented osmanthus is falling silently. It is deeper in the night and everything is silent, as if there is nothing. The bright moon rises and shines brightly, startling the mountain birds, who chirp from time to time in the spring stream.
This poem was probably written while traveling to the south of the Yangtze River between 713 and 741 (Kaiyuan of the Tang Dynasty), which was the peak of the Tang Dynasty. This poem is the first of the group of poems "Five Miscellaneous Poems on Yunxi by Huangfuyue" written by Wang Wei about the Yunxi Villa where his friend Huangfuyue lived.
"The osmanthus flowers fall when people are idle, and the spring sky is in the quiet night." The scenery is described with sound, and the synesthetic technique is cleverly used to combine the dynamic scene of "flowers falling" with "people are idle". The flowers blooming and falling are all sounds of nature. Only when the mind is truly free and let go of the obsession with worldly distractions can the personal spirit be elevated to a state of "emptiness". The background was "late night", and the poet obviously could not see the scene of the falling osmanthus, but because of the "quiet night" and the "quiet mind" of the people watching the scenery, he still felt the blooming osmanthus falling off the branches and falling down. , the process of landing. And we seemed to have entered the scenic scene of "Fragrant Forest and Rain of Flowers". The "Spring Mountain" here also leaves a blank in our imagination. Because it is a "Spring Mountain", we can imagine the noisy scene during the day: beautiful spring sunshine, birds singing, flowers fragrant, laughter and laughter. At this time, in the dead of night, the tourists have left, the noise of the day has disappeared, and the mountains and forests are empty. In fact, what is "empty" is the poet's state of mind as a Zen practitioner. Only with his free and easy state of mind can he capture scenes that others cannot experience.
The last sentence "The moonrise scares the mountain birds, and they sing in the spring stream", which uses movement to describe tranquility. The word "startle" - "call" seems to break the tranquility of the night, but in fact it uses sound. The description sets off the tranquility and leisure in the mountains: the moon emerged from the clouds, the quiet moonlight streamed down, a few birds woke up from their sleep, and murmured a few times from time to time, along with the gentle sound of the mountain stream in spring. The sound of running water highlights the overall artistic conception of this silent mountain forest in front of the reader's eyes, which is similar to Wang's "The noisy forest is more peaceful than the quiet bird singing mountain, and the mountain is more secluded" ("Entering Ruoye Creek"). Wang Wei likes to create a tranquil mood in his landscape poems, and this poem is no different. But what is written in the poem is the falling flowers, the moonrise, and the singing of birds. These moving scenes not only make the poem appear full of vitality but not dull, but at the same time, through movement, they more prominently show the tranquility of the spring stream. Moving scenery can achieve a static effect instead. This is because the contradictory sides of things are always interdependent. Under certain conditions, the reason why movement can occur or be noticed by people is precisely based on stillness. "The mountains are more secluded when birds sing", which contains the dialectics of art.