Crossing the Watershed
過分水嶺
Guò fēn shuǐ lǐng
A stream has accompanied a traveler for three days through the mountains. Read how its sound through the night becomes a voice at their parting.
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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
- 溪 xī stream
- 水 shuǐ water
- 無 wú without
- 情 qíng feeling
- 似 sì seems
- 有 yǒu have
- 情 qíng feeling
Word meanings — Line 2
- 入 rù enter
- 山 shān mountains
- 三 sān three
- 日 rì days
- 得 dé able
- 同 tóng together
- 行 xíng travel
Word meanings — Line 3
- 嶺 lǐng ridge
- 頭 tóu top
- 便 biàn just
- 是 shì is
- 分 fēn separate
- 頭 tóu directions
- 處 chù place
Word meanings — Line 4
- 惜 xī regret
- 別 bié parting
- 潺 chán flowing
- 湲 yuán murmuring
- 一 yí one
- 夜 yè night
- 聲 shēng sound
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
溪水無情似有情，
入山三日得同行。
嶺頭便是分頭處，
惜別潺湲一夜聲。
Translation
The stream has no feelings, yet seems to care:
for three days in the mountains, we have traveled together.
The ridge top is where our ways divide;
all night its flowing murmur seems to mourn our parting.
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?
溪水無情似有情，
Pronunciation hint
qíng
Reveal meaning and translation
情 — feeling
The stream has no feelings, yet seems to care:
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
嶺頭便是分頭處，
Pronunciation hint
shì
Reveal meaning and translation
是 — is
The ridge top is where our ways divide;
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
惜別潺湲一夜聲。
Pronunciation hint
yuán
Reveal meaning and translation
湲 — murmuring
all night its flowing murmur seems to mourn our parting.
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 · Company in motion
無情 and 有情 put two accounts of the same stream beside one another. 似 carries the change from water without feelings to water that seems to care. 三日 gives the feeling a history. The reader learns that the stream has kept the walker company for three days, and 得 in 得同行 gives the company the sense of an opportunity the walker found along the route. The English “we” follows that momentary companionship.
Lines 3–4 · One sound that lasts through the parting
嶺頭 is the top of the ridge. The repeated 頭 in 分頭 makes the place of separation audible in the wording itself. At this point their routes divide. 潺湲 describes the stream's flowing murmur, and 惜別 lets the walker hear that sound as reluctance to part. The English brings back “seems” from line 1. 一夜 makes the sound last through the night, giving the departure a duration after the route itself has already separated them.
Form and tone
The seven-character quatrain repeats 情 in its opening and 頭 in its third line. These repetitions make feeling and direction the two linked subjects. It closes with sound across an entire night, extending the farewell before the journey resumes.
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
The poem names a watershed but does not identify a human companion. Its farewell is an imaginative relation to running water. Reading it beside poems of parting between people shows how a familiar social action can be transferred to a landscape without erasing its physical details.
Continue with Wen Tingyun and the farewell reading path. Compare Farewell in the Mountains and An Old Fisherman using the reading connections below.
Sources
萬首唐人絶句 (四庫全書本)/七言卷44 — Chinese text. Checked against the linked Wikisource transcription. The text is under 過分水嶺 in the checked transcription of Wanshou Tangren jueju, seven-character poems, juan 44. 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
Wen Tingyun. “Crossing the Watershed” (過分水嶺). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/crossing-the-watershed
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.