On an Autumn Night, Sent to Qiu
秋夜寄邱員外
Qiū yè jì Qiū yuán wài
A solitary autumn walk becomes an imagined visit to a distant friend. Read how falling pinecones connect two unseen people through one quiet night.
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Read the original and its translation together. Open a line’s word meanings for a closer look.
About the text and pronunciation
The simplified view changes character forms, not the edition. Notes and sources retain the cited text.
The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.
Word by word, in the order of the line. A gloss is a crib. It is not the translation.
Word meanings — Line 1
- 懷 huái think of
- 君 jūn you
- 屬 shǔ just at
- 秋 qiū autumn
- 夜 yè night
Word meanings — Line 2
- 散 sàn leisurely
- 步 bù walk
- 詠 yǒng chant
- 涼 liáng cool
- 天 tiān weather
Word meanings — Line 3
- 空 kōng empty
- 山 shān mountain
- 松 sōng pine
- 子 zǐ seeds
- 落 luò fall
Word meanings — Line 4
- 幽 yōu secluded
- 人 rén person
- 應 yīng probably
- 未 wèi not yet
- 眠 mián sleep
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
懷君屬秋夜，
散步詠涼天。
空山松子落，
幽人應未眠。
Translation
Thinking of you on this autumn night,
I walk at ease, chanting into the cool air.
On the empty mountain, pine seeds fall;
the man in seclusion must still be awake.
Try it from memory
After reading, recall the underlined word or phrase in each line. Say its meaning before opening the answer. These prompts use the text edition printed above.
-
Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?
懷君屬秋夜，
Pronunciation hint
shǔ
Reveal meaning and translation
屬 — just at
Thinking of you on this autumn night,
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
空山松子落，
Pronunciation hint
sōng
Reveal meaning and translation
松 — pine
On the empty mountain, pine seeds fall;
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Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
幽人應未眠。
Pronunciation hint
yīng
Reveal meaning and translation
應 — probably
the man in seclusion must still be awake.
One more question: what changes?
Compare the opening and closing lines. What changes in the scene, the speaker’s attention, or the feeling? Choose a Chinese word as evidence, then compare your reading with the notes. More than one answer may be reasonable.
Line-by-line notes →Self-check at your own pace. No score or progress is saved. Open only the answers you want included when printing.
Line-by-line notes
Lines 1–2 · A walk prompted by remembrance
懷君 begins with attention to the absent friend. 屬 places that thought in the present occasion, the autumn night. 散步 is walking at ease. 詠 lets the speaker give voice to the experience, and 涼天 makes the cool night the space into which the voice goes. The English “thinking of you” carries the first action into the second line.
Lines 3–4 · Imagining a listener elsewhere
The scene shifts to an empty mountain. 松子 makes the falling thing small enough that its sound might be noticed only in the quiet. Pine seeds or pine nuts conveys that scale. The friend becomes 幽人, the person in seclusion. 應 is conjectural, represented by “must,” and 未眠 means he has yet to fall asleep. The speaker moves from his own audible chanting to an imagined sound another person may be awake to hear. That link is made by attention across distance.
Form and tone
The five-character quatrain makes one quiet turn between its two couplets. Walking and chanting belong to the sender; the mountain and likely sleeplessness belong to his thought of the recipient. Nothing marks the change with a long explanation, so the ending’s 應 helps the reader locate it.
See jueju for the larger formal pattern. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; a historical level/oblique grid is not inferred from those modern tones.
Historical context
員外 is an official designation in the title, while 幽人 presents the addressee as a person living apart. These roles can coexist. The poem establishes friendship across distance without telling us the precise size of the separation or proving that Qiu really stayed awake that night.
Continue with Wei Yingwu and the nature reading path. Compare To a Daoist in the Quanjiao Mountains and Night Rain: Sent North using the reading connections below.
Sources
秋夜寄邱員外 — Chinese text. Checked against the linked Wikisource transcription. The displayed traditional text follows this reading. Punctuation and line breaks are editorial. Translation, glosses, and reading notes are original to PoemWell.
English translation, gloss, and notes by PoemWell. The translation is original to this site.
The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.
Updated .
Cite this reading
Wei Yingwu. “On an Autumn Night, Sent to Qiu” (秋夜寄邱員外). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/autumn-night-to-qiu
Credit the poet for the Chinese original and PoemWell for this translation and commentary. Use the permanent page link above; source editions are listed separately.