River Scenes on a Spring Evening Written to Accompany Two Pictures Drawn by Monk Huichong
- Poetry of Su Shi

《惠崇春江晚景二首》

English Rendering

Behind bamboo two or three sprays of peach-tree grow,

When spring has warmed the stream,ducks are the first to know.

The land o'verrun by weeds and water studd'd with reeds,

It is time when globefish to swim upstream preceeds.

Returning wild geese from the flock would break away,

North-going wayfarers are reluctant to go.

Knowing from afar the desert's still covered with snow,

For half a month more in the South they would fain stay.

River Scenes on a Spring Evening Written to Accompany Two Pictures Drawn by Monk Huichong by Su Shi
River Scenes on a Spring Evening Written to Accompany Two Pictures Drawn by Monk Huichong by Su Shi

Original Text (中文原文)

其一

竹外桃花三两枝,春江水暖鸭先知。

蒌蒿满地芦芽短,正是河豚欲上时。

其二

两两归鸿欲破群,依依还似北归人。

遥知朔漠多风雪,更待江南半月春。

Analysis & Context

Hui Chong(965- 1017)was a Song Dynasty monk, and a painter particularly famous for his landscape paintings with mountains and water features often enriched with geese, ducks and birds – an expression of everyday life in the country, or in an academic word, humanism. It could be a collector seeking for an inscription from Su Shi on the painting. Unfortunately, like many artistic works lost to the invasion of the Jin and the Liao, or later in history, the painting is no longer found. Fortunately, the picture has lived through this poem, and has been very well-known ever since.

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