Spring View / Du Fu, Tang poem

Du Fu's Spring View: Text, Pinyin, and Translation

Du Fu's Spring View: 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 Spring View original Chinese pinyin translation meaning

Spring View, Du Fu, Tang poem: read "國破山河在，城春草木深。感時花濺淚，恨別鳥驚心。烽火連三月，家書抵萬..." before the English explanation.

Original text

國破山河在，城春草木深。感時花濺淚，恨別鳥驚心。烽火連三月，家書抵萬金。白頭搔更短，渾欲不勝簪。

Guo po shan he zai, cheng chun cao mu shen. Gan shi hua jian lei, hen bie niao jing xin. Feng huo lian san yue, jia shu di wan jin. Bai tou sao geng duan, hun yu bu sheng zan.

Literal layer

The state is broken, yet mountains and rivers remain; in the city spring, grasses and trees grow deep. Moved by the times, flowers splash tears; grieving separation, birds startle the heart. Beacon fires have continued for three months; a family letter is worth ten thousand gold. Scratching my white hair makes it still shorter, nearly unable to hold a hairpin.

Readable layer

Du Fu's Spring View makes national ruin, spring growth, family separation, and bodily aging meet in one compressed wartime scene.

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 Spring View. The fit is semantic: the page asks readers to inspect Du Fu, Tang poem and the term guo po, 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

Spring View is one of Du Fu's most concentrated wartime poems. The country is broken, but mountains and rivers remain; spring plants grow deeply inside the city. Flowers and birds do not simply decorate the scene. They intensify grief because the speaker is separated from family while beacon fires continue. The poem ends on the body: white hair scratched shorter, almost unable to hold a pin.

Watch guo po, shan he, feng huo; these terms decide where the literal layer and the readable layer separate.
Compare this page with Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts and Wang Wei's Deer Enclosure to see how Tang poems handle home, absence, and perception differently.

The Poem Before Paraphrase

This block uses Spring View, Du Fu, Tang poem as the anchor, with "國破山河在，城春草木深。感時花濺淚，恨別鳥驚心。烽火連三月，..." kept in front of the explanation.

Full Poem: The page uses the full eight-line regulated poem. That matters because the emotional movement depends on sequence: public ruin, spring growth, troubled perception, war news, family longing, and the body under strain. Quoting only the opening couplet can hide how the poem moves from landscape to personal collapse.

Broken State, Remaining Rivers: Guo po shan he zai is a devastating contrast. The state is broken, but mountains and rivers remain. The line does not say nature consoles the speaker. It lets endurance and ruin stand together. The landscape's survival makes political disaster more visible, not easier to forget.

Spring Inside The City: Cheng chun cao mu shen places spring within the city, where grasses and trees grow deep. The season's growth is not simple renewal. In a damaged capital, deep vegetation can feel like abandonment and overgrowth. The line turns spring into evidence of time continuing while human order has failed.

Images, Sound, And Emotional Turn

Flowers And Birds: The middle couplet gives flowers and birds emotional force. Moved by the times, flowers seem to splash tears; grieving separation, birds startle the heart. The poem does not need to decide whether nature literally feels. It shows how wartime grief changes perception so that ordinary spring images become painful.

Beacon Fires: Feng huo lian san yue points to continuing war signals. Three months gives duration, not just a moment of crisis. The family letter becomes precious because communication has been cut by ongoing conflict. The poem's public disaster and private longing meet in this couplet.

A Family Letter: Jia shu di wan jin says a letter from home is worth ten thousand gold. The value is not financial. It measures scarcity, distance, and fear. The line is famous because it turns ordinary correspondence into the most precious object in the poem's world. Under war, proof that family is alive becomes treasure.

Keep the term set visible here: guo po, shan he, feng huo. The reading changes if one of these terms is translated too smoothly.

Translation Choices To Keep Visible

White Hair And Hairpin: The final couplet brings the poem into the speaker's body. Scratching white hair makes it shorter, nearly too thin to hold a hairpin. This is not decorative self-pity. The state of the hair gives visible form to worry, age, and helplessness. The poem ends with a body unable to keep its own form.

Du Fu's Spring View Translation Limit: A careful translation should keep the poem's pressure rather than turning it into vague sadness. Broken state, remaining rivers, deep spring growth, beacon fires, family letter, and white hair all need to stay visible. If one smooth English paraphrase absorbs them, the reader loses the poem's hard sequence.

Du Fu's Spring View Reading Payoff: This page differs from Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts because homesickness here is inseparable from war and public ruin. It differs from Wang Wei's Deer Enclosure because Spring View is dense with historical pressure rather than sparse perception. The article gives readers a source-based way to translate the poem without softening its political grief.

The reading should end in one practical move: Compare this page with Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts and Wang Wei's Deer Enclosure to see how Tang poems handle home, absence, and perception differently.

Next reading

Links chosen for reading movement

Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts Text, Pinyin, and TranslationFrom Du Fu's Spring View, open Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts Text, Pinyin, and Translation to compare guo po 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.Wang Wei's Deer Enclosure Text, Pinyin, and TranslationFrom Du Fu's Spring View, open Wang Wei's Deer Enclosure 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 Ritual After GriefFrom Du Fu's Spring View, open Analects Passage on Ritual After Grief 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 The Old And The YoungFrom Du Fu's Spring View, open Analects Passage on The Old And The Young 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.