Ouyang Xiu was a famous writer and politician in the Northern Song Dynasty. Together with Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan, Su Shi, Su Zhe, Su Xun, Wang Anshi and Ceng Gong, they are called "the Eight Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties". On the one hand, Ouyang Xiu attached importance to the characteristics of Han Yu's poems, on the other hand, he put forward the poetic theory of "poetry is poor and backward". His poetic language is fresh and fluent, and his style is graceful and euphemistic. For example, his classic poem "Stay in Yueyang for the night".
Sleeping in Yueyang was written by Ouyang Xiu when he was demoted to the county magistrate of Yiling, Zhou Xia (now Yichang, Hubei) and temporarily stayed in Dongting Lake outside Yueyang. This poem mainly describes the night scene of Dongting Lake to express Ouyang Xiu's homesickness during his journey. The whole poem is plain and smooth, and the scene blends. The following small series will introduce Ouyang Xiu's Sleeping in Yueyang:
I smell the bells of Yueyang city, and I am rowing under the trees in Yueyang city.
Look at the bright moon in Jiang Lai, with boundless clouds and water.
In the middle of the night, Jiang Yue found Hui, and the water man song month returned;
I haven't heard the sound for a long time, and the canoe flies away.
The first couplet "I heard the bell in Yueyang City and tied the boat to the tree in Yueyang City" means that I was lying on the boat and heard the bell in Yueyang City, so I tied the boat to the tree on the edge of Yueyang City. These two poems point out the place where Ouyang Xiu stopped the ship this time, and render the environmental atmosphere. First, the poet heard the bell, then he couldn't continue to lie idle in the lonely boat because of the bell, so he tied the boat and moored it, and finally he naturally turned his pen and ink to the river and the sky. In terms of expression, it is natural and smooth, which is amazing.
Zhuan Xu "saw the bright moon empty Jiang Lai, and the clouds and water lost their rivers endlessly". After Ouyang Xiu stopped the boat, he looked up and saw a bright moon hanging high on the empty lake. In the distance, the water meets the sky, and the water is boundless, so he can't see the way to sail. These two sentences describe the spacious scene of Dongting Lake through a long description. At the same time, it also implies the poet's smallness, loneliness and helplessness, so that he sighs "Where is the way?" .