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Tang Dynasty Jueju Han Yu

Early Spring, Presented to Zhang Eighteen, II

早春呈水部張十八員外二首·其二

Zǎo chūn chéng shuǐ bù Zhāng shí bā yuán wài èr shǒu · qí èr

Spring invites a busy official to leave the city and look around. Hear the friendly argument that outdoor pleasures should not always be postponed.

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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.

01

莫道官忙身老大，

mò dào guān máng shēn lǎo dà

Do not say that official work keeps you busy and you are growing old,

Word meanings — Line 1
  1. 莫 mò do not
  2. 道 dào say
  3. 官 guān official work
  4. 忙 máng busy
  5. 身 shēn body
  6. 老 lǎo old
  7. 大 dà advanced
02

即無年少逐春心。

jí wú nián shào zhú chūn xīn

so you no longer have a young man's heart for pursuing spring.

Word meanings — Line 2
  1. 即 jí therefore
  2. 無 wú without
  3. 年 nián years
  4. 少 shào young
  5. 逐 zhú pursue
  6. 春 chūn spring
  7. 心 xīn heart
03

憑君先到江頭看，

píng jūn xiān dào jiāng tóu kàn

Please go first and look along the river:

Word meanings — Line 3
  1. 憑 píng please
  2. 君 jūn you
  3. 先 xiān first
  4. 到 dào go
  5. 江 jiāng river
  6. 頭 tóu bank
  7. 看 kàn look
04

柳色如今深未深。

liǔ sè rú jīn shēn wèi shēn

has the willow green deepened yet, or has it not?

Word meanings — Line 4
  1. 柳 liǔ willow
  2. 色 sè color
  3. 如 rú at
  4. 今 jīn present
  5. 深 shēn deep
  6. 未 wèi not yet
  7. 深 shēn deep

English translation by PoemWell.

Read the whole poem

Original

莫道官忙身老大，

即無年少逐春心。

憑君先到江頭看，

柳色如今深未深。

Translation

Do not say that official work keeps you busy and you are growing old,

so you no longer have a young man's heart for pursuing spring.

Please go first and look along the river:

has the willow green deepened yet, or has it not?

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.

  1. Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?

    莫道官忙身老大，

    Pronunciation hint

    máng

    Reveal meaning and translation

    忙 — busy

    Do not say that official work keeps you busy and you are growing old,

  2. Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?

    憑君先到江頭看，

    Pronunciation hint

    dào

    Reveal meaning and translation

    到 — go

    Please go first and look along the river:

  3. Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?

    柳色如今深未深。

    Pronunciation hint

    jīn

    Reveal meaning and translation

    今 — present

    has the willow green deepened yet, or has it not?

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 →

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Line-by-line notes

Lines 1–2 — An excuse in advance

Read 莫道 through the end of the second line. The friend is asked not to say that because work keeps him busy and he has grown older, he no longer has a young person's 逐春心, the impulse to go out after spring. 老大 means getting old here. The English “so” makes the proposed consequence explicit. The two lines form one piece of friendly argument.

Lines 3–4 — A question he can answer

憑君 makes a request of the friend. 先 asks him to go ahead and look by the river. 深未深 repeats the adjective on either side of 未, like asking “has the color deepened yet?” The English repeats “deepened” only once and carries the second occurrence in “or has it not?” The companion poem has already told Zhang which stage of spring the speaker prefers. This one leaves Zhang a question that can be settled only by looking for himself.

Form and tone

This is the complete second poem of the pair, a seven-character jueju. Its opening prohibition and closing question give it a social voice different from the first poem’s descriptive certainty. The repeated 深 leaves the seasonal judgment open for the friend to make.

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

Han Yu addresses Zhang Ji as a fellow official and writer. The title’s long bureaucratic designation sits beside a very ordinary proposal: go outside and see the willows. That mixture matters more than treating the poem as a general command to remain forever youthful.

Continue with Han Yu and the nature reading path. Compare Early Spring, Presented to Zhang Eighteen, I and A Spring Outing at Qujiang, Sent to Bai using the reading connections below.

Sources

昌黎先生集/卷十 — 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

Han Yu. “Early Spring, Presented to Zhang Eighteen, II” (早春呈水部張十八員外二首·其二). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .

https://poemwell.org/poems/early-spring-for-zhang-two

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.