"Two Orioles Singing Green Willows" comes from "Quatrains" written by Du Fu of the Tang Dynasty. The original poem is quoted as follows:
Quatrains
Tang Dynasty: Du Fu
p>Two orioles sing in the green willows, and a row of egrets ascends to the blue sky.
The window contains Qianqiu snow of Xiling, and the door is docked with a ship thousands of miles away from Dongwu.
Translation
Two orioles sang gracefully among the green willow trees, and a neat group of egrets rushed straight into the blue sky.
I sit in front of the window and can see the snow that never melts all year round on the west ridge, and the ships that have traveled thousands of miles away from Soochow are moored in front of the door.
"Quatrain" is the name of the poem, but it does not directly indicate the content of the poem. This form is convenient for writing about a scene or object and expressing the author's feelings at a moment. What the poet saw occasionally triggered his inner passion, and he wrote down his own feelings without thinking about the topic for a while, so he used the metrical "quatrains" of the poem as the title. Du Fu wrote a group of poems in this form, consisting of four poems, with "quatrains" as the general title. "Quatrain: Two Orioles Singing the Green Willows" is one of them. The poem uses natural beauty to convey a fresh and relaxed mood. In the first two sentences, "yellow" is used to contrast "emerald", and "white" is used to contrast "green". The bright colors bring out the vitality of early spring. The first sentence is about orioles sitting on willows and singing, and the second sentence is about egrets flying into the sky. The space is much wider, from bottom to top, from near to far. The first two sentences of "The window contains thousands of autumn snows in the Xiling Mountains" have already pointed out that it was early spring and the autumn snow in winter was about to melt, which gave readers a moist feeling. The last sentence further expresses Du Fu's complicated mood at that time - saying that the ship came from "Soochow". This sentence means that the war has been calmed down, transportation has been restored, and the poet feels emotional after seeing things and misses his hometown.
Poetry Appreciation:
"Two orioles sing in the green willows, and a line of egrets ascends to the blue sky." Two orioles are singing, and there is a sound. "A row of egrets ascending to the blue sky", this is a behavior and an action. One horizontally and one vertically, "two" and "one" are opposite; one horizontally and one vertically, a very bright natural scenery unfolds. In this poem, the word "Ming" is the most expressive, using anthropomorphic techniques to describe the oriole more vividly. Then Du Fu talked about "the window contains the snow of Xiling for thousands of years". My window contains the snow accumulated in Minshan Mountain for thousands of years. The Minshan Mountain to the west is a Minshan Mountain with thousands of years of snow. "The Dongwu Wanli Ship is parked at the door." There is a ship thousands of miles long parked at my door. This creates a welcome and a send-off, welcoming the snow-covered mountains into your field of vision and sending the boat downstream. The fact that the "Thousand-mile Ship" can pass also means that the "Anshi Rebellion" has come to an end and is close to being quelled. At this time, the ship can also pass, and business people can come and go on this river. So a poem like this is very beautiful in itself, and in addition, its four sentences are all antithetical. Quatrains have been around since the Six Dynasties. After the Tang Dynasty, quatrains have become a very mature art. Many of our famous poems use quatrains. Quatrains are four sentences. The four sentences often either do not contrast with each other, or the first two sentences of the four sentences describe the scenery but the last two sentences do not contrast with each other lyrically. It can be said that it is a very neat and carefully written poem. There was a time when Du Fu wrote a poem that made people "will not stop until their words are astonishing", so he refined this poem over and over again.