Hearing Wild Geese
聞鴈
Wén yàn
Rain darkens an autumn night as migrating geese pass overhead. Follow the brief connection between a homesick listener and a familiar distant sound.
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
- 故園 gù yuán old home
- 眇 miǎo distant
- 何 hé what
- 處 chù place
Word meanings — Line 2
- 歸思 guī sī longing to return
- 方 fāng just
- 悠 yōu far-reaching
- 哉 zāi exclamation
Word meanings — Line 3
- 淮 huái Huai
- 南 nán south
- 秋 qiū autumn
- 雨 yǔ rain
- 夜 yè night
Word meanings — Line 4
- 高 gāo high
- 齋 zhāi study
- 聞 wén hear
- 鴈 yàn geese
- 來 lái come
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
故園眇何處，
歸思方悠哉。
淮南秋雨夜，
高齋聞鴈來。
Translation
Where, far away, is my old home?
Thoughts of return stretch out without end.
South of the Huai, on an autumn night of rain,
from my high study I hear geese arriving.
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?
故園眇何處，
Pronunciation hint
gù yuán
Reveal meaning and translation
故園 — old home
Where, far away, is my old home?
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
淮南秋雨夜，
Pronunciation hint
qiū
Reveal meaning and translation
秋 — autumn
South of the Huai, on an autumn night of rain,
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
高齋聞鴈來。
Pronunciation hint
wén
Reveal meaning and translation
聞 — hear
from my high study I hear geese arriving.
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 · A question of distance
故園 gives home the concreteness of familiar grounds. 眇 makes it seem far beyond sight, and 何處 asks where it lies from the speaker's present vantage. The question voices remoteness. 歸思 is the desire or thought of going back, and 方 makes it active at this moment. 悠哉 stretches that thought out beyond what the next line can resolve.
Lines 3–4 · An arrival the listener can hear
淮南, 秋雨, and 夜 give the present location, weather, and time in a single line. 高齋 brings that setting down to the listener's study. 聞 identifies the sense by which the geese arrive (來). The poem keeps the birds out of sight, and their coming into hearing briefly gives movement to a scene where the listener has only imagined going home. The source's 鴈 is a graph variant of 雁, with the same reading yàn.
Form and tone
Four five-character lines move from an indefinite “where” to the precise present of Huainan and the study. The poem postpones its title action until the final line. This order makes hearing the geese feel like an answer to a question that the birds cannot literally resolve.
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 source writes 鴈, a variant of 雁; its pronunciation remains yàn. Wild geese carry many literary associations, but the four lines do not say they deliver a letter. The immediate relation is between their movement, autumn weather, and the listener’s desire to return.
Continue with Wei Yingwu and the homesickness reading path. Compare Early Departure from Shang Mountain and On an Autumn Night, Sent to Qiu using the reading connections below.
Sources
聞鴈 (韋應物) — 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
Wei Yingwu. “Hearing Wild Geese” (聞鴈). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/hearing-wild-geese-wei
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.