On the boundless beach, the tide rose, like a white rainbow; I guess it wasn't the fairy on the Yao altar who accidentally spilled nectar on the earth, so she came rushing.
In the turbulent tide, the reflection of the blue sky in the water bumps and shakes; Sunset sets and floats around in the rough waves of Hongbo.
Qiantang River Tide is a famous spectacle. Every year in the middle of August of the lunar calendar, especially on the 17th and 18th of August, a tidal surge forms at the mouth of Qiantang River, with a wave as high as several meters, just like the "Yucheng Snow Ridge", standing upright on the river surface with great momentum.
Chen Shidao's "Watching the Tide at Seventeen" records the observation of the Tide at Qiantang River (now Zhejiang) on August 17th of the lunar calendar. ? As we all know, one of the characteristics of poetry as a literary style is its concise language and high artistic generalization. To achieve this, we should not use words such as "more is better" like "General Han Xin", but cherish ink as gold, so as to generalize, that is, express extremely rich ideological content with the most limited words. The following words in Watching the Tide on the 17th are only general. The whole poem only uses four sentences and 28 words, presenting the amazing scene of the Qiantang River surging, surging, shaking down the blue sky and ups and downs of the sunset to the readers. This highly artistic generalization is amazing.
It goes without saying that a poetic language must be quite subtle. The first two sentences of 17 Tide Watching are ingenious and quite telling. "Long flat sand leads to Bai Hong", and the tide of Qiantang River rushes to the wide and flat riverbank like a dancing Bai Hong. The poet compares the turbulent Bai Hong to the monstrous waves set off by the river tide, which has at least three wonders: the rainbow is a colorful arc in the sky after the rain, and the poet uses it to describe the river tide, highlighting its rapidity and wave height. There are seven colors of rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and purple, but the poet just compares "Bai Hong", giving up the primary colors of the rainbow and taking its momentum, which are two different things; The rainbow was originally static, but the poet wrote it as dynamic, which was novel and unique to describe the surging tide. The phrase "the jade cup is empty in Yaotai" is a metaphor for the legendary fairy who lives in Yaotai leaking the nectar in the jade cup. Imagination is strange and full of romanticism. These two poems are similar to Pan Lang's poem "When you come to doubt the empty sea and beat drums all around" ("Jiuquanzi Watch the Tide for a long time").
The last two sentences, "Sunny days shake the bottom of Qingjiang River, and steep waves float and sink in the evening", continue to write the river tide with the "sunny days" and "dusk" reflected by Qiantang River. Here, the poet doesn't know that the waves of the river tide are undulating and surging, but the reflection of the clear sky and the brilliant sunset reflected in the river are swaying and sinking, as if the river tide is shaking the blue sky and floating the sunset, with vivid images, especially the words "shaking" and "floating and sinking" are quite subtle, which makes the whole picture move and come alive.
Obviously, the concise language, clever metaphor and vivid image are the main reasons why Chen Shidao's poem "Watching the Tide on the 17th" describing the tides in Qiantang River has been spread through the ages. This also shows how Chen Shidao, a miserable poet, tempered his poetic language.