Farewell in the Mountains
山中送別
Shān zhōng sòngbié
Wang Wei closes a gate after a friend leaves, then asks about next spring. Chinese, pinyin, word gloss, original translation, and notes on the final question.
Read the poem
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
- 山 shān mountains
- 中 zhōng within
- 相 xiāng you
- 送 sòng see off
- 罷 bà finished
Word meanings — Line 2
- 日 rì day
- 暮 mù dusk
- 掩 yǎn close
- 柴 chái brushwood
- 扉 fēi gate
Word meanings — Line 3
- 春 chūn spring
- 草 cǎo grass
- 明 míng next
- 年 nián year
- 綠 lǜ green
Word meanings — Line 4
- 王 wáng prince
- 孫 sūn descendant
- 歸 guī return
- 不 bù not
- 歸 guī return
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
山中相送罷，
日暮掩柴扉。
春草明年綠，
王孫歸不歸？
Translation
In the mountains, the farewell is over.
At dusk I shut the brushwood gate.
Next year the spring grass will turn green—
my friend, will you come back, or 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.
-
Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?
山中相送罷，
Pronunciation hint
xiāng
Reveal meaning and translation
相 — you
In the mountains, the farewell is over.
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
春草明年綠，
Pronunciation hint
míng
Reveal meaning and translation
明 — next
Next year the spring grass will turn green—
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
王孫歸不歸？
Pronunciation hint
guī
Reveal meaning and translation
歸 — return
my friend, will you come back, or 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 →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: after the farewell
罷 says that seeing the friend off is finished. We arrive too late for the conversation or the walk together. 日暮 moves the scene toward dusk, and 掩 gives the remaining person one small action: closing the gate.
柴扉 is a brushwood gate, a modest boundary between the dwelling and the world outside. It need not be a symbol with a fixed meaning. The door's closing makes the completed departure tangible.
Lines 3–4: what will return?
明年 makes a leap to next year. The grass's return is stated; the friend's return is questioned. That difference carries the feeling. Our English gives “will” to the grass and lets the last line remain unresolved.
王孫, literally a prince's descendant, is used here as an elevated address to the departing person. “My friend” avoids suggesting that the poem has identified a member of a royal family. The phrase recalls the older Summons to a Recluse, where the absent 王孫 and flourishing spring grass also belong together.
歸不歸 asks “return or not return?” Repeating the verb makes the uncertainty insistent. It is not a rhetorical assurance that the friend must come back.
What the English question keeps
The translation repeats the uncertainty in “come back, or not?” after the dash. That pause is worth hearing. 明年綠 lets a familiar seasonal change be imagined with confidence, while the doubled 歸 forces the reader to stay with a human possibility that confidence cannot settle.
Form and tone
This five-character jueju ends the second and fourth lines with 扉 and 歸. Its strongest turn is temporal: from this evening to next spring. A pause after the closed gate gives that change room.
The source's alternative 年年, “year after year,” would widen the recurrence. Our reading 明年 keeps the question fixed on the coming year. Pinyin supplies modern Mandarin, and a historical level/oblique grid is omitted.
Historical context
Wang Wei shows how little of an actual parting a farewell poem needs to narrate. The friend is absent from the visible action. A gate, the future grass, and a question make that absence perceptible.
Compare Sending Yuan Er to Anxi, which addresses the friend before he leaves. Grass on the Ancient Plain expands the older grass-and-traveler association into eight lines. In both, seasonal nature does more than provide a backdrop: its recurrence becomes a way to think about human separation.
The text does not identify the friend or date this occasion. The translation and notes are original to PoemWell.
Sources
《全唐詩》, juan 128, 送別, checked against 送別（山中相送罷）. The source records 山中送別 and 送友 as alternative titles and 年年 as a variant for 明年; we print 明年. Punctuation is 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
Wang Wei. “Farewell in the Mountains” (山中送別). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/farewell-in-the-mountains
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.