"Returning to Nanshan at Dusk" is a poem by Meng Haoran, a poet of the Tang Dynasty.
Returning to Nanshan at the end of the year
Bei Que Xiu wrote a letter, and Nanshan returned to my hut.
If you are not talented enough, you will give up, and if you are often ill, your friends will be sparse.
White hair makes you grow old, and green hair makes you grow old.
I will never sleep with sorrow, the window is empty at night under the pine moon.
Vernacular translation:
I will no longer state my meeting in front of the imperial palace, and return to my dilapidated thatched hut in Zhongnan Mountain.
It is because of my lack of talent that my ruler has abandoned me, and because of my frequent illnesses, my friends have alienated me.
Grey hair is gradually increasing, urging people to age slowly. The end of the year is approaching and the New Year is approaching.
My heart is full of melancholy, which keeps me awake at night. The shadows of the pine trees and the moonlight illuminate the windows, which are empty.
Creative background:
This poem was written by the poet in seclusion. Around the 16th year of Kaiyuan in the Tang Dynasty (728), the forty-year-old Meng Haoran came to Chang'an to be a Jinshi but failed. Wang Wei and Zhang Jiuling praised it, and it has become quite famous as a poet. This failure in taking the exam made him very depressed. He wanted to write directly to the emperor, but he was very hesitant. This poem was written under such extremely complicated circumstances.
"Returning to Nanshan at Dusk" is a poem by Meng Haoran, a poet of the Tang Dynasty. This poem was written by the poet when he was in seclusion. The poem vents a kind of resentment. The first two sentences of the first couplet describe an event, narrating that he stopped pursuing official career and retired to Nanshan; the two sentences of the chin couplet express the emotion of not being able to realize his talent; the two sentences of the neck couplet describe the scenery, lamenting that he wasted his years and could not realize his ambition; the last two sentences of the last couplet express the feeling of loneliness and emptiness. The whole poem has rich language, repeated layers, long and profound style, and full of charm.
Meng Haoran (689-740), named Haoran, nicknamed Haoran, was born in Mengshan, Xiangyang, Xiangzhou (now Xiangyang, Hubei), and was known as Meng Xiangyang in the world. Because he had never been an official, he was also called Mengshanren. He was a famous landscape pastoral poet in the Tang Dynasty.
Meng Haoran was born in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. He had ambitions to serve the world in his early years. After being frustrated and painfully disappointed in his official career, he was still able to respect himself, did not flatter the world, and practiced Taoism and lived in seclusion for the rest of his life. He once lived in seclusion in Lumen Mountain. When he was 40 years old, he traveled to Chang'an and failed to win the imperial examination. He once wrote poems in Taixue, and became famous among the officials. He was so impressed that he wrote for him. In the twenty-fifth year of Kaiyuan (737), Zhang Jiuling attracted the shogunate and lived in seclusion. Most of Meng's poems are five-character short stories, mostly describing landscapes, pastoral scenes, the joy of living in seclusion, and the mood of traveling and traveling. Although there are some cynical words in it, it is more of the poet's self-expression.
Meng Haoran's poems have unique artistic attainments. Later generations called Meng Haoran and Wang Wei, another landscape poet in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, "Wang Meng" together. There are three volumes of "Meng Haoran Collection" handed down to the world.