Quiet Night Thoughts / Li Bai, received four-line jueju text

Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts: Text, Pinyin, and Translation

Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts: 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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Find Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts with text, pinyin, translation, and meaning.

Quiet Night Thoughts, Li Bai, received four-line jueju text: read "床前明月光，疑是地上霜。舉頭望明月，低頭思故鄉。" before the English explanation.

Original text

床前明月光，疑是地上霜。舉頭望明月，低頭思故鄉。

Chuang qian ming yue guang, yi shi di shang shuang. Ju tou wang ming yue, di tou si gu xiang.

Literal layer

Before the bed, bright moonlight; I suspect it is frost on the ground. I raise my head and gaze at the bright moon; I lower my head and think of my old home.

Readable layer

Li Bai's poem turns a small bedroom scene into homesickness through two movements: looking up at the moon and looking down into memory.

Album of painting and calligraphy for Maoshu from The Metropolitan Museum of Art open-access collection — **Album of painting and calligraphy for Maoshu; Various artists; Gift of Julia and John Curtis, 2015; The Metropolitan Museum of Art.**Album of painting and calligraphy for Maoshu is used as a public-domain poem or landscape surface for line-order reading on Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts. The fit is semantic: the page asks readers to inspect Li Bai, received four-line jueju text and the term ming 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

Quiet Night Thoughts is short, but the poem should not be reduced to one word, homesickness. The first couplet asks the eye to mistake moonlight for frost; the second couplet makes the body move up toward the moon and down toward home. The translation should preserve that visual sequence before explaining the feeling.

Watch ming yue, shuang, gu xiang; these terms decide where the literal layer and the readable layer separate.
Compare another Tang moon poem after reading how this poem moves from image to homesickness.

The Poem Before Paraphrase

This block uses Quiet Night Thoughts, Li Bai, received four-line jueju text as the anchor, with "床前明月光，疑是地上霜。舉頭望明月，低頭思故鄉。" kept in front of the explanation.

Full Text: The page uses the full four-line poem rather than the earlier two-line fragment. That matters because the emotional turn depends on the final lowering of the head.

Image Order: Moonlight appears first as a visual mistake, almost like frost. Only after that does the speaker look toward the moon and then inward toward home.

Translation Choice: Old home is used for gu xiang to keep the place personal without overloading the short line with nostalgia before the poem earns it.

Reading Path: A reader comparing translations should check whether the English keeps the two gestures, raising and lowering the head, because that movement carries the poem's structure.

Images, Sound, And Emotional Turn

Why The Full Poem Is Needed: The poem is short enough that a page should show all four lines. The first couplet creates a visual uncertainty: moonlight near the bed is mistaken for frost on the ground. The second couplet turns that scene into bodily movement, raising the head toward the moon and lowering it toward memory. If only the final homesickness is summarized, the poem's method disappears.

Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts Translation Pressure: Several English choices look simple but matter. Ming yue is more than the moon as an object; it is the bright moon that draws the eye. Shuang is frost, but in the poem it first appears as a mistaken perception. Gu xiang can be old home, native place, or homeland. This working translation chooses old home to keep the feeling intimate without adding sentiment before the poem earns it.

Reading Path For Poetry: A reliable poetry page should not detach the English paraphrase from the Chinese line order. Readers comparing translations should ask whether the version preserves the mistake, the upward look, and the downward turn. Those three movements make the poem teachable for beginners: image first, gesture second, feeling last. That path is more useful than a decorative quote card that says the poem is about nostalgia.

Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts Reader Test: A reader should be able to trace the poem with the body: eyes at the bed, sight on the ground, head raised, head lowered. That physical sequence is the poem's argument. If an explanation begins with homesickness and never returns to the visual mistake, it has skipped the craft that makes the feeling memorable. This is why the page keeps the Chinese line order beside the readable translation.

Keep the term set visible here: ming yue, shuang, gu xiang. The reading changes if one of these terms is translated too smoothly.

Translation Choices To Keep Visible

Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts Reading Payoff: The page adds a reading sequence for beginners: perception, mistake, gesture, memory. That sequence is more useful than simply saying the poem is nostalgic, because it explains how four short lines create the feeling.

Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts Source Checkpoint: Let the poem move line by line before paraphrase begins: Quiet Night Thoughts, Li Bai, received four-line jueju text, opening with "床前明月光，疑是地上霜。舉頭望明月，低頭思故鄉。". Keep ming yue beside the Chinese wording before accepting the readable English. On this page the source anchor is doing real work: it tells the reader where the claim begins, which phrase is being interpreted, and why the explanation should stay narrower than a later proverb or author label.

Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts Reader Decision: The practical decision is whether the reader can watch image order, sound, and the emotional turn. Compare ming yue with shuang, then ask which English phrase compresses the most. That check blocks the common mistake of summarizing the feeling before seeing how the lines create it; it also gives the page a finish line, so the reader leaves with a source habit rather than a smoother slogan.

The reading should end in one practical move: Compare another Tang moon poem after reading how this poem moves from image to homesickness.

Next reading

Links chosen for reading movement

Li Bai's Drinking Alone Under the Moon: Text, Pinyin, and TranslationFrom Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts, open Li Bai's Drinking Alone Under the Moon to compare ming yue with a second checked passage; the path starts from Li Bai, received four-line jueju text, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.Wang Zhihuan's On the Stork Tower: Text, Pinyin, and TranslationFrom Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts, open Wang Zhihuan's On the Stork Tower to test the translation boundary against a neighboring source; the path starts from Li Bai, received four-line jueju text, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.De in Classical Chinese ThoughtFrom Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts, open De in Classical Chinese Thought to move from this wording to a concrete reader workflow; the path starts from Li Bai, received four-line jueju text, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.How To Compare Translations: A Practical GuideFrom Li Bai's Quiet Night Thoughts, open How To Compare Translations to keep the next step tied to source evidence instead of a loose related list; the path starts from Li Bai, received four-line jueju text, so the link has a specific reading job rather than a generic recommendation.