A Farewell by the Yi River
於易水送人
Yú Yì shuǐ sòng rén
A present farewell recalls Jing Ke’s departure; the people are gone, but the river remains cold. Read the original Chinese with pinyin, word meanings, an original English translation, and notes.
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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
- 此地 cǐ dì this place
- 別 bié part from
- 燕丹 yān dān Prince Dan of Yan
Word meanings — Line 2
- 壯士 zhuàng shì brave man
- 髮 fà hair
- 衝冠 chōng guān rise against the cap
Word meanings — Line 3
- 昔時 xī shí former times
- 人 rén people
- 已沒 yǐ mò have died
Word meanings — Line 4
- 今日 jīn rì today
- 水 shuǐ water
- 猶 yóu still
- 寒 hán cold
English translation by PoemWell.
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Original
此地別燕丹，
壯士髮衝冠。
昔時人已沒，
今日水猶寒。
Translation
Here he took leave of Dan, the prince of Yan;
the brave man's hair bristled against his cap.
The people of that time have passed away;
today the water is still cold.
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?
此地別燕丹，
Pronunciation hint
cǐ dì
Reveal meaning and translation
此地 — this place
Here he took leave of Dan, the prince of Yan;
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
昔時人已沒，
Pronunciation hint
xī shí
Reveal meaning and translation
昔時 — former times
The people of that time have passed away;
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
今日水猶寒。
Pronunciation hint
jīn rì
Reveal meaning and translation
今日 — today
today the water is still cold.
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.
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Line-by-line notes
Lines 1–2 · A remembered departure
此地, “this place,” makes the Yi River common to the farewell in the title and the older departure recalled in the verse. 燕 is yān, the state whose prince was Dan. The English “he” lets the allusion bring Jing Ke to mind. 髮衝冠 pictures emotion so fierce that hair bristles against a cap. We print 壯士髮衝冠, with the source graph 髪 normalized to 髮. The transcription also records a variant with 壯髮上.
Lines 3–4 · What the river keeps
昔時 turns the remembered people into people of the past. 沒, mò, is to die or pass away here. 已 says that change has already happened. 今日 then places the reader beside the river now, and 猶 says that the water is still cold. Read the two time words together. The river remains available to the person seeing someone off today, so its cold can carry the force of the remembered farewell.
Form and tone
The five-character quatrain balances 昔時 with 今日 and 已 with 猶: then and now, already and still. 冠 and 寒 close the even-line rhyme. The strongest turn is temporal, so its four lines contain both a remembered departure and a present encounter with the same named water.
See the jueju guide for the form. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin; no historical tone grid is supplied.
Historical context
The older story of Jing Ke is part of the poem’s language of courage and irreversible departure. This reading does not treat the Tang speaker as a witness to that earlier event. What the speaker can encounter is the site, and the enduring water becomes the bridge between remembered history and the farewell of the title.
Read more by Luo Binwang, or follow the farewell shelf. The English translation, gloss, and notes are original to PoemWell.
Sources
於易水送人, public transcription. We follow 壯士髮衝冠, normalizing the source’s 髪 to 髮. The transcription records a variant with 壯髮上. Punctuation and reading-line divisions are editorial.
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
Luo Binwang. “A Farewell by the Yi River” (於易水送人). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/farewell-by-the-yi-river
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.