Moonlit Night / Du Fu, Tang poem

Du Fu's Moonlit Night: Text, Pinyin, and Translation

Du Fu's Moonlit Night: Text, Pinyin, and Translation with original text, pinyin, a literal rendering, a readable translation, source location, key terms, and a careful modern reading.

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Du Fu Moonlit Night original Chinese pinyin translation meaning

Moonlit Night, Du Fu, Tang poem: read "今夜鄜州月，閨中只獨看。遙憐小兒女，未解憶長安。香霧雲鬟濕，清輝玉臂..." before the English explanation.

Original text

今夜鄜州月，閨中只獨看。遙憐小兒女，未解憶長安。香霧雲鬟濕，清輝玉臂寒。何時倚虛幌，雙照淚痕乾。

Jin ye Fuzhou yue, gui zhong zhi du kan. Yao lian xiao er nu, wei jie yi Chang'an. Xiang wu yun huan shi, qing hui yu bi han. He shi yi xu huang, shuang zhao lei hen gan.

Literal layer

Tonight, the moon over Fuzhou; in the inner room she watches it alone. From afar I pity the little children, not yet understanding remembering Chang'an. Fragrant mist wets cloudlike hair; clear radiance chills jade arms. When will we lean by the empty curtain and be doubly shone upon, our tear marks dry?

Readable layer

Du Fu's Moonlit Night is a family-separation poem that imagines the moon from the wife's side before turning toward reunion.

Poem on reclusion from The Metropolitan Museum of Art open-access collection — **Poem on reclusion; Zhou Lianggong; Gift of Julia and John Curtis, 2020; The Metropolitan Museum of Art.**Poem on reclusion is used as a public-domain poem or landscape surface for line-order reading on Du Fu's Moonlit Night. The fit is semantic: the page asks readers to inspect Du Fu, Tang poem and the term Fuzhou yue, while the image remains illustrative rather than proof of the exact manuscript, author portrait, or historical scene.

Reader focus

What this page helps you decide

Du Fu's Moonlit Night is unusual because the speaker imagines the moon being watched elsewhere. He is not simply looking at the moon and missing home. He imagines his wife in Fuzhou watching it alone, their children too young to understand longing for Chang'an. The poem then gives her body under moonlight before asking when they will stand together and have their tear marks dried.

Watch Fuzhou yue, gui zhong, xiao er nu; these terms decide where the literal layer and the readable layer separate.
Compare this page with Du Fu's Spring View and Li Bai's Drinking Alone Under the Moon before treating Tang moon poems as interchangeable.

The Poem Before Paraphrase

This block uses Moonlit Night, Du Fu, Tang poem as the anchor, with "今夜鄜州月，閨中只獨看。遙憐小兒女，未解憶長安。香霧雲鬟濕，..." kept in front of the explanation.

Full Poem: The page uses the full eight-line poem because its emotional force depends on displacement. The speaker's mind travels to Fuzhou, imagines his wife's solitary moon-viewing, thinks of children who do not yet understand, and only at the end imagines reunion. The poem is carefully staged, not merely a moonlit sigh.

Moon Over Fuzhou: Jin ye Fuzhou yue places the moon in Fuzhou, not where the speaker currently stands. That opening is decisive. The poem begins by relocating perception to the family side. The moon becomes shared by distance, but the first imagined viewer is the wife, watching from the inner room.

Watching Alone: Gui zhong zhi du kan says she watches alone in the inner chamber. The loneliness belongs first to the imagined wife. Du Fu's speaker does not center only his own feeling. He gives the poem's first loneliness to another person, which makes the poem intimate and ethically attentive.

Images, Sound, And Emotional Turn

Children Who Do Not Understand: The children are pitied from afar because they do not yet understand remembering Chang'an. This detail deepens the family scene. The poem is not only about a couple separated by war or duty; it includes children whose innocence keeps them from understanding the full shape of loss.

Mist And Hair: Xiang wu yun huan shi imagines fragrant mist wetting cloudlike hair. The image is delicate, but it is not decorative alone. It brings the wife's body into the night air. Distance has become concrete: the speaker imagines the physical effects of the moonlit, misty scene on her.

Cold Moonlight: Qing hui yu bi han says clear radiance chills jade arms. Moonlight is beautiful, but it is also cold. The body registers separation. A weak reading would make the poem only graceful. A closer reading sees that beauty intensifies vulnerability because the wife is imagined alone under that light.

Keep the term set visible here: Fuzhou yue, gui zhong, xiao er nu. The reading changes if one of these terms is translated too smoothly.

Translation Choices To Keep Visible

Double Illumination: Shuang zhao looks toward a future when both will be shone upon together. The poem does not end by escaping moonlight. It asks for moonlight to become shared again. The same light that now marks distance might one day illuminate reunion and dry the tear marks.

Du Fu's Moonlit Night Translation Limit: A careful translation should preserve the viewpoint shift. If the poem is translated as a simple I miss my family poem, it loses its unusual structure. The speaker imagines the beloved's seeing, the children's not understanding, and the body's coldness before speaking of his own hope for reunion.

Du Fu's Moonlit Night Reading Payoff: This page differs from Spring View because it narrows wartime separation into one imagined family night. It differs from Li Bai's Drinking Alone Under the Moon because Du Fu's moon connects separated people rather than creating playful companions. The article gives readers a source-based way to read moon imagery as displaced care.

The reading should end in one practical move: Compare this page with Du Fu's Spring View and Li Bai's Drinking Alone Under the Moon before treating Tang moon poems as interchangeable.

Next reading

Links chosen for reading movement

Du Fu's Spring View Text, Pinyin, and TranslationFrom Du Fu's Moonlit Night, open Du Fu's Spring View Text, Pinyin, and Translation to compare Fuzhou yue with a second checked passage; the path starts from Du Fu, Tang poem, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.Li Bai's Drinking Alone Under the Moon Text, Pinyin, and TranslationFrom Du Fu's Moonlit Night, open Li Bai's Drinking Alone Under the Moon Text, Pinyin, and Translation to test the translation boundary against a neighboring source; the path starts from Du Fu, Tang poem, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.Analects Passage on The Old And The YoungFrom Du Fu's Moonlit Night, open Analects Passage on The Old And The Young to move from this wording to a concrete reader workflow; the path starts from Du Fu, Tang poem, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.Analects Passage on Ritual After GriefFrom Du Fu's Moonlit Night, open Analects Passage on Ritual After Grief to keep the next step tied to source evidence instead of a loose related list; the path starts from Du Fu, Tang poem, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.