Picking mulberries Ouyang Xiu

Picking mulberry seeds·Ouyang Xiu

The West Lake is beautiful for a short boat trip, with meandering green water, long embankments of fragrant grass, and faint music and songs everywhere. The glassy surface of the windless water surface was smooth, and the boat moved unknowingly, making ripples and causing sandbirds to fly across the shore.

This poem is one of the poems in the poem "Picking Mulberries" written by the author in his later years. It uses a relaxed and elegant style to describe the beautiful scenery seen while boating on the West Lake in Yingzhou (now Fuyang, Anhui). The whole poem has a clear color tone, graceful style, full of poetic and picturesque meaning, and is refreshing and gratifying to read.

The first part of the poem, a light boat with a short boat, gives people a leisurely and happy feeling from the beginning. The following sentences unfold a beautiful spring scene of the West Lake: not only is "the spring grass green, the spring water rippling", and the long embankment shadow, what you see is a distant picture; During the process, wherever the boat goes, you will hear the soft sound of sheng and xiao, faintly blowing in the spring breeze. These pieces of music follow the poet everywhere, as if they are singing for the poet. Liao Liao creates a peaceful and tranquil atmosphere with just a few strokes. The next film focuses on the scenery of boating on the lake and the waves as flat as a mirror. The first three sentences are written in stillness. When the wind is calm and the waves are calm, the water surface is crystal clear, like glass, and smooth like a mirror. Visitors do not feel the boat moving, but only see the paddle gently paddling and small ripples forming on the water, and then feel the boat sliding. The concluding sentence uses movement to contrast stillness. The slight movement of the ripples will inevitably startle the water birds on the beach, causing them to fly past the lake shore, while the West Lake becomes more and more quiet. This sentence is similar in artistic conception to Wang Wei's "There are no people in the empty mountain, but you can hear the chirping of birds", with different approaches but the same purpose.

This poem is like a clear, lively, ethereal and distant landscape painting. It is so beautiful, fresh and lovely that it makes people forget to leave. It shows that Ou Gong is a master of describing scenery in the world of poetry.

Notes:

① West Lake: refers to Yingzhou West Lake. In the southeast of today's Taihe County, Anhui Province, is the confluence of Yingshui River and other rivers. During the Song Dynasty, it belonged to Yingzhou. Yan Shu, Ouyang Xiu, and Su Shi all served as prefects in Yingzhou. Ouyang Xiu lived in Yingzhou after retirement in his later years and wrote a set of "Picking Mulberries" (ten poems).

②Shengge: refers to the accompaniment of shengguan when singing.

③Ripple: ripples of water.

Translation:

The scenery of the West Lake is beautiful, and it is so relaxing to paddle in a light boat.

The green lake stretches continuously, and the flowers and plants on the long embankment emit fragrance.

The faint music and singing seemed to be floating on the lake with the boats.

The windless water surface was as smooth as glass. I didn't feel that the boat was moving forward, and only saw slight waves rippling beside the boat. Look! The waterfowl that were startled by the boat are flying over the lake shore.