Home › Poems › Grass on the Ancient Plain: A Farewell
Fù Dé Gǔ Yuán Cǎo Sòng BiéGrass on the Ancient Plain: A Farewell 赋得古原草送别
Bai Juyi's unstoppable grass, written at sixteen.
Original Chinese text with pinyin
离离原上草
lí lí yuán shàng cǎo
一岁一枯荣
yī suì yī kū róng
野火烧不尽
yě huǒ shāo bù jìn
春风吹又生
chūn fēng chuī yòu shēng
远芳侵古道
yuǎn fāng qīn gǔ dào
晴翠接荒城
qíng cuì jiē huāng chéng
又送王孙去
yòu sòng wáng sūn qù
萋萋满别情
qī qī mǎn bié qíng
Simplified characters; traditional title: 賦得古原草送別.
English translation
Wild grasses spread across the plain;
Each year they wither and grow green again.
Wildfire never quite consumes them—
They are tall once more in the spring wind.
Their fragrance far invades the ancient way;
Their sunny green joins ruined walls in sight.
Seeing you off again, O noble friend,
Thick grasses fill my heart with parting light.
Original translation by Poetune — literal but poetic, written for this site.
Line by line
Meaning and imagery
The famous couplet "wildfire cannot burn it all away; when the spring wind blows, it grows again" has become a proverb for resilience. The poem then returns to its assigned theme, farewell: the grass spreads along the road the traveler will take, so the speaker's feelings follow him the way the green follows the road.
Background
Said to have been written when Bai Juyi was about sixteen, as an exercise on an assigned topic ("赋得"). An anecdote says that when he showed it to the senior poet Gu Kuang, Gu was so impressed he dropped his joke about how "expensive" it was to live in Chang'an.
Key words
- 离离 lí lí
- lush, flourishing
- 枯荣 kū róng
- withering and flourishing
- 王孙 wáng sūn
- a noble young man; a departing friend
- 萋萋 qī qī
- thick and luxuriant
About the poet: Bai Juyi
Bai Juyi (also romanized Po Chü-i; courtesy name Letian) wrote in a famously plain style — legend says he read drafts to an old woman and revised anything she could not understand. An outspoken official, he was exiled to Jiangzhou and later governed Hangzhou and Suzhou. His poems were hugely popular in Heian Japan.
Lifetime: 772–846. Other famous works: On the Night of the Fifteenth of the Eighth Month, on Duty in the Palace, Thinking of Yuan Zhen (八月十五日夜禁中独直对月忆元九); A Question for Liu the Nineteenth (问刘十九); A New Mountain Cottage Below Incense Burner Peak, Written on the East Wall (香炉峰下新卜山居草堂初成偶题东壁); Grass on the Ancient Plain: A Farewell (赋得古原草送别); Song of Everlasting Sorrow (长恨歌); The Song of the Lute (琵琶行); The Old Charcoal Seller (卖炭翁).
Names from this poem
More by Bai Juyi
- A New Mountain Cottage Below Incense Burner Peak, Written on the East Wall香炉峰下新卜山居草堂初成偶题东壁
- Song of Everlasting Sorrow长恨歌
- A Question for Liu the Nineteenth问刘十九
- On the Night of the Fifteenth of the Eighth Month, on Duty in the Palace, Thinking of Yuan Zhen八月十五日夜禁中独直对月忆元九