秋夜将晓出篱门迎凉有感
Thoughts on Stepping Out of the Hedge Gate to Greet the Coolness at Dawn on an Autumn Night
Original
三万里河东入海，
五千仞岳上摩天。
遗民泪尽胡尘里，
南望王师又一年。
Translation
The three-thousand-li Yellow River flows east into the sea,
The five-thousand-ren mountains pierce the clouds to touch the sky.
In the dust of foreign rule, the displaced people have wept their tears dry,
Looking south for the imperial army, another year passes in vain.
Line by Line Analysis
About This Poem
This poignant lyric captures the raw patriotic sorrow of Lu You in his later years, set against the backdrop of Southern Song complacency amid national division. The opening lines paint a grand, awe-inspiring portrait of China’s iconic rivers and mountains, a testament to the motherland’s enduring majesty. This grandeur stands in stark contrast to the desperate plight of northern “yi min” (displaced people), trapped under Jurchen Jin rule, their tears exhausted from decades of waiting for the Southern Song imperial army to reclaim their homeland. As the poet steps out at dawn to greet the autumn coolness, his own grief merges with the collective suffering of the people, embodying a lifelong longing for reunification that remains unfulfilled with each passing year.
About the Poet
陆游
Lù Yóu
Lu You (1125–1210), a towering figure in Southern Song Dynasty poetry, is renowned as one of China’s most prolific poets, with over 9,000 extant works. Fueled by intense patriotism, his verses frequently articulate his unyielding longing to reclaim northern territories seized by the Jurchen Jin Dynasty. His writing style seamlessly merges heroic, pathos-laden tones with gentle, idyllic depictions of rural life, capturing both the turmoil of his divided era and the quiet warmth of everyday moments, solidifying his status as a timeless voice of national sentiment.
Cultural & Historical Context
The historical background centers on the 1127 fall of the Northern Song capital to the Jurchen Jin Dynasty, splitting China into two regimes and leaving northern territories under foreign rule for nearly a century. Culturally, patriotic poetry dominated Southern Song literature, as literati channeled national grief over territorial loss into works advocating for reunification. Socially, the Southern Song court was controlled by peace factions, ignoring calls for military reconquest and leaving millions of northern refugees in abject hardship. Personally, Lu You wrote this poem in his late years, living in rural seclusion after being repeatedly marginalized and exiled for his pro-reconquest stance; his patriotic fire remained unextinguished despite advanced age and fading health. His creative purpose was to arouse the court’s conscience and amplify the people’s suffering. Artistically, the poem uses striking contrast between majestic natural imagery and human despair, with concise, vivid language that transforms collective national trauma into intimate, resonant emotion, marking it as a classic of Chinese patriotic verse.