Late Spring: Grass and Trees
晚春·草樹知春不久歸
Wǎn chūn · cǎo shù zhī chūn bù jiǔ guī
Flowers seem determined to display themselves before spring ends. Read how drifting catkins and elm seeds enter the scene as unexpected performers.
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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
- 草 cǎo grass
- 樹 shù trees
- 知 zhī know
- 春 chūn spring
- 不 bù not
- 久 jiǔ long
- 歸 guī depart
Word meanings — Line 2
- 百 bǎi hundred
- 般 bān kinds
- 紅 hóng red
- 紫 zǐ purple
- 鬥 dòu compete
- 芳 fāng fragrance
- 菲 fēi beauty
Word meanings — Line 3
- 楊花 yáng huā willow fluff
- 榆莢 yú jiá winged elm fruits
- 無 wú without
- 才思 cái sī inventive talent
Word meanings — Line 4
- 惟 wéi only
- 解 jiě know how
- 漫 màn fill
- 天 tiān sky
- 作 zuò as
- 雪 xuě snow
- 飛 fēi fly
English translation by PoemWell.
Read the whole poem
Original
草樹知春不久歸，
百般紅紫鬥芳菲。
楊花榆莢無才思，
惟解漫天作雪飛。
Translation
Grass and trees know spring will soon depart;
reds and purples of a hundred kinds compete in bloom.
Willow catkins and winged elm fruits have no such invention:
they only know how to fill the sky, flying as snow.
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?
草樹知春不久歸，
Pronunciation hint
chūn
Reveal meaning and translation
春 — spring
Grass and trees know spring will soon depart;
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
楊花榆莢無才思，
Pronunciation hint
yáng huā
Reveal meaning and translation
楊花 — willow fluff
Willow catkins and winged elm fruits have no such invention:
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
惟解漫天作雪飛。
Pronunciation hint
tiān
Reveal meaning and translation
天 — sky
they only know how to fill the sky, flying as snow.
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 — Racing the season
In 春不久歸, it is spring that will soon depart. 草樹知 gives the plants knowledge of the approaching change, while 鬥 makes their flowering an act of competition. 紅紫 names the colors by which we see the flowers. The English keeps “reds and purples” as the competing subjects, so the colors crowd the line before the poem names particular plants.
Lines 3–4 — The plants without talent
楊花 is willow fluff here, a literary sense recorded in the Ministry of Education dictionary. 榆莢 are the small winged fruits of the elm. 無才思 says they lack inventiveness, and 惟解 narrows their repertoire to one trick. But 漫天 immediately gives them the entire sky. In 作雪飛, their pale matter flies in the likeness of snow. The dismissive language and the scale of the result pull in opposite directions. Ask which image stays with you after the verdict about talent.
Form and tone
The seven-character quatrain divides between brilliant flowers and pale airborne seeds. Both groups compete for attention, even though only the first is explicitly praised. The last verb 飛 releases the crowded colors into movement, giving the apparently inferior plants the final image.
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 has more than one poem titled Late Spring. The opening words in this page’s title identify this particular complete work. Its personification is a literary way of noticing seasonal competition, not a botanical claim that plants consciously understand the calendar.
Continue with Han Yu and the nature reading path. Compare Spring Snow: The New Year Has No Flowers Yet and Early Spring, Presented to Zhang Eighteen, I using the reading connections below.
Sources
朱文公校昌黎先生文集 (四部叢刊本)/卷第九 — Chinese text. Checked against the linked Wikisource transcription. This is the 晚春 beginning 草樹, not the other Han Yu poem beginning 誰收春色. Graphs 乆 and 闘 are normalized to 久 and 鬥. 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. “Late Spring: Grass and Trees” (晚春·草樹知春不久歸). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/late-spring-han-yu
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.