Dreaming of the South: Countless Regrets
夢江南·千萬恨
Mèng jiāng nán · qiān wàn hèn
Sleepless regret meets an indifferent moon and wind. Read how a brief song uses repeated phrases to make longing continue beyond its few lines.
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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
- 千 qiān thousand
- 萬 wàn ten thousand
- 恨 hèn regrets
Word meanings — Line 2
- 恨 hèn regret
- 極 jí utmost
- 在 zài at
- 天 tiān sky
- 涯 yá edge
Word meanings — Line 3
- 山 shān mountain
- 月 yuè moon
- 不 bù not
- 知 zhī know
- 心 xīn heart
- 裡 lǐ inside
- 事 shì affairs
Word meanings — Line 4
- 水 shuǐ water
- 風 fēng wind
- 空 kōng in vain
- 落 luò drops
- 眼 yǎn eyes
- 前 qián before
- 花 huā flowers
Word meanings — Line 5
- 搖 yáo sway
- 曳 yè drift
- 碧 bì blue
- 雲 yún clouds
- 斜 xié slant
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
千萬恨，
恨極在天涯，
山月不知心裡事，
水風空落眼前花，
搖曳碧雲斜。
Translation
Regrets by the thousand,
regret at its utmost, at the edge of the sky.
The mountain moon knows nothing of what the heart holds;
wind off the water only scatters flowers before my eyes.
Blue clouds drift and lean away.
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?
千萬恨，
Pronunciation hint
wàn
Reveal meaning and translation
萬 — ten thousand
Regrets by the thousand,
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
山月不知心裡事，
Pronunciation hint
zhī
Reveal meaning and translation
知 — know
The mountain moon knows nothing of what the heart holds;
-
Line 5 · What does the marked word mean?
搖曳碧雲斜。
Pronunciation hint
bì
Reveal meaning and translation
碧 — blue
Blue clouds drift and lean away.
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
Phrases 1–2 · A feeling that takes up space
The first three characters give a multitude of regrets. 恨 can carry grief, frustrated longing, or regret. Repeating it immediately at the next phrase break gives the feeling a pressure that carries past the first exclamation. 極 then pushes that feeling to an extreme and 天涯 gives it a place as far off as the edge of the sky. The English keeps the repeated “regret” to preserve the linkage.
Phrases 3–4 · Two kinds of indifference
The moon is high over the mountains and cannot know what is in the heart. The wind is close enough to scatter flowers right before the eyes, and that action offers no consolation. 空 is “only” or “in vain” here. The parallel is also one of distance. 心裡 hides the matters within the heart, while 眼前 gives a change in plain sight. The source's 裡 has the same function here as 裏.
Phrase 5 · Motion continues
搖曳 gives the blue clouds a drifting motion and 斜 makes the line end at a slant. After the emphatic voice of the first two phrases, the close leaves the reader with the ongoing movement of a thing in the sky.
Form and tone
The ci follows the same 3/5/7/7/5 phrase lengths as Washed and Combed. Here the short opening is an exclamation instead of an action. The matched seven-character phrases deny understanding to moon and wind before the shorter final phrase returns to a visual image.
See ci 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 tune name Meng Jiang Nan identifies a lyric pattern. It does not guarantee a dream narrative or a specified place south of the river. Read this work beside Wen Tingyun’s other lyric to the tune: identical phrase lengths can support very different ways of beginning an emotional scene.
Continue with Wen Tingyun and the love reading path. Compare Dreaming of the South: Washed and Combed and Chang’e using the reading connections below.
Sources
夢江南 (千萬恨) — Chinese text. Checked against the linked Wikisource transcription. The source reading 裡 is retained in 心裡; it has the same function here as 裏. 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. “Dreaming of the South: Countless Regrets” (夢江南·千萬恨). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/dreaming-south-countless-regrets
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.